Zipping thru Icy Strait Point

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We arrived in Hoonah Alaska for our tendering stay at Icy Strait Point. Breakfast was in the Lido, because we needed to assemble in the Wajang lounge for our tender departures to catch our tours just after 8 am. John had the eggs benedict and some fresh squeezed orange juice and Sharon had waffles again (She didn’t see they had chocolate chip pancakes until she already had the waffles).

For today’s tours, we split up to go our separate ways… John chose the zip-rider and Sharon went to see the whales, wildlife and bear search. This was my first experience tendering ashore in the life boats. It is comforting to know that the life boats get regular use, and the crew is familiar with using them. My group left before Sharon’s, and I was the last in my group to get aboard the tender. Zip-riders convened at the salmon cannery to the left upon exiting ashore, everyone else in the restaurant to the right. In the cannery we signed waivers acknowledging that just about anything can kill you, and that you’re okay with that. After signing the waiver, then getting on the scale, you had to register in the black (not in the red areas signifying that you’re too heavy or too light to ride), then, and only then do you get your pink wristband. Finally, they called for the 9 o’clock group to assemble, and twenty-four of us embarked on the 8-mile bus trip to the top, along with the zip-rider crew. Our driver noted that it was a 90 second ride back down on the zip-rider, and a 90 second ride through the town of Hoonah, so don’t blink. Atop the 1,330 foot vertical, taller than the empire state building, there is an impressive view of the sea, and cruise ship below, if you are fortunate enough to be here on a clear day as this. There was a 5 minute walk down a very steep and winding smooth gravel pathway, and the very first thing I noticed on the trail was a very large bear scat on the left side of the trail. The first group of six zip-riders were ready, and on their way down the hill. Now the second group of six riders was identified. The harnesses are pulled back up the hill by a pulley system that connects three harnesses together and whisks them back to the top. As the second group readied to descend, one lady decided to bail out, and I took her place. They strapped me in quickly, handed me some goggles to go over my glasses, reminded me to keep my feet out in front at the bottom, and we were off. It really was pretty easy this way, because I didn’t have any time to think about it like the lady I replaced. The gate your feet are horizontally propped against opens, and we were off. I was easily the heaviest in our group of six riders, and I was out in front to start… and then the wind began to blow, turning me sideways 90-degrees, and the little streamlined guy shot ahead. It was a good thing I was wearing goggles, and that I left my hat in the cabin because the wind was very strong (whether from blowing through the pass, or just from the 60 MPH speed of racing down the cable, I don’t know), but there was a very good reason they warned people about glasses, hats and hearing aids. The entire descent is about 60 MPH, which is all the way to the bottom, until your harness hits their breaking system at the bottom, probably not unlike how cables catch a jet landing on a carrier. There appears to be a coiled spring to absorb much of the speed of the harness, but there is a real jolt when the braking system first catches you… and it’s very important to have your feet up until after you’ve slowed down. But it is thrilling, especially the first time when you’re not sure how you’re going to stop. I would definitely recommend this for you at Icy Strait Point.

While watching the HAL TV Channel, I had noticed the Crab Station in its coverage of Icy Strait Point. I had gotten the idea that this was a dine-in restaurant. What it is, is a walk-up restaurant offering different types of crab (half or whole), crab dinners, and crab bisque. I was hoping for crab cakes, but settled on the crab bisque. There was a nice sized bowl of crab bisque, quite tasty, served in a throw-away bowl with a small plastic spoon… and a $13 price tag. My bowl had a few small pieces of crab meat, but nothing to get excited about. I accompanied this with a glass of Alaskan Amber Ale for $6, simply because I’d wanted to try an Alaskan beer and wasn’t sure if I’d get another chance. As my mother would say, it was okay. The soup was very good, I finished every bit. The ale, I didn’t finish that.

I’m dining alone today for lunch, Sharon is still off on her wildlife adventure. I ordered the fish cake and mango slaw, followed by the green chili and corn chowder and then the lamb curry with rice. For desert I had the chocolate triferitos, three chocolate cream filled pastry puffs topped with dark chocolate icing. I dined with two ladies from North Carolina, and a couple from California. I had a lot to tell them, because the lady from California asked if anyone had seen whales, so I told her about our outing to Point Howard, and about even seeing whales breeching. When I told the couple from California that I was originally from there as well, they wondered what caused me to leave a year ago. Then one of the other ladies asked if anyone had done the zip-line, so I told her about my morning adventure, and about why I was dining alone. The woman seemed to unanimously support Sharon’s decision not to go zip-riding with me. And everyone loved the story about how Sharon and I met, and met again, and got married about a year ago… and how it’s great to hear another wonderful love story on a cruise ship.

Ok time for Sharon to break in for her tour:
My tour was on the tender after John’s. We had to make our way up the assembly area to wait for 15 minutes and then go back down the pier, to the tender area, to board the whale watching vessel. There were two tours that included the Whale Watching first but the boat was nowhere near full so there was quite a bit of room to spread out. The crew was actually from Juneau and from the same company we’d been with the day before. They come out to Icy Strait a couple days a week to do the tours from there. They were also excited because of the wonderful weather we had. The previous two days they’d been in a storm watch with 7 foot swells. Today was sunny and blue skies. We headed out quite a ways where the captain thought there would be more whales than the one or two we passed along the way. When we got out to where he was heading they found one of their sister ships from Juneau. They were surprised since it was quite a way out for them. But the reason was there was a group of whales bubble-netting. The crew was very excited and said this almost never happens in September. That is usually a behavior the whales do for a few weeks in July but they have seen it increase over the past few years. You get the idea they’re really excited when they all grab their cameras too to get pictures. The whales all dive down and form a circle then one of the females swims in a circle blowing bubbles. The fish are afraid of bubbles so they group together and then the whales all come up and scoop them into their mouths. It was an unbelievable site and we got to watch it for quite a while. It appeared to be about 8 adult whales and it was spectacular to see them all come up almost together. I’d heard about this behavior but had never seen it before. We then headed back to port but did see another whale near a fishing boat on the way back in that decided to show off by doing some tail flapping. He put it up several times and slapped the water.

When we got back they said we had about 15 minutes before the Bear Search part of our tour. We then boarded the bus and drove thru the town of Hoonah and out several miles on a gravel road. Our guide was a local woman who has lived here most of her life other than a few years she spent in Anchorage. Her mother was actually from Washington State who had come up here to teach and fell in love. She told us a lot of information about the life in Hoonah and their history. The area is the home of the Tlingit (pronounced Kling ket) tribe. They are originally from the Glacier Bay area but were driven out of there when the glaciers started taking over so they settled here in Icy Stait. The buildings where we tendered to and waited for our tours used to be the fish canning factory. It was a very busy factory until the 1950’s when they had to shut it down. They then relied on timber and fishing but were struggling.
About 9 or 10 years ago they approached Royal Caribbean about setting up as a cruise port and they are now the only privately owned (by the tribe) port in the US.

When we got to the area for the bear search another guide joined us to be our protection (we got the one that carries the gun the other carries bear spray but was with the other group). Just as we started our walk we saw 2 eagles flying overhead. We were told to make sure we stay on the boardwalk as we walked thru the mudflats and she later did a demo that made it clear why. The area is full of sink holes and she showed it by dropping a large stick into one that ate it up to the last few inches very quickly. We then headed up to a series of lookouts over the river to see if there were any bears but we didn’t see any. We saw lots of jumping salmon but no bears. It was still a nice walk thru the forest and I enjoyed hearing about the life there from our Guide.

Ok back to John….

Sharon returned to the cabin just before 3PM, where I was busily recording my morning exploits for the blog. We had just a few minutes to make our way to the crow’s nest for Team Trivia. We couldn’t find any of our team members from our earlier triumph, and ended up going it alone. Today’s trivia featured lots of math and science questions, and we really should have done better. How Sharon came up with the beer question, I’ll never know: “What beer has a green bottle cap with a star on it?” The quiz started out easy, “How many sides does a hexagon have?” It then moved on to “What branch of mathematics derives its name from the Latin word for ‘pebbles’? We went with algebra, as most teams did, but the real answer was calculus. John of course knew which king in a deck of playing cards has a different number of eyes than the other kings, another question many teams missed. But the final bonus question we really should have gotten right, if you think about it all, was: “What two elements are the most common in the Earth’s crust?” Each element was worth one point, and John’s carbon and oxygen would have been worth one point. Sharon was convinced it was hydrogen, not oxygen. And being distracted by someone wanting to exchange papers for grading, I wrote down carbon and nitrogen. Well, the key to the question is Earth’s crust, things like dirt and sand, which of course means the answer they were looking for was silicon and oxygen. And if you’re wondering about that beer, it was Heineken.

At 4PM we made our way to the main lounge for bingo. It was my turn to buy the cards. Today’s patterns was a regular bingo, the small picture frame (no B’s or O’s) and the “X” (no N’s), finishing with the jackpot blackout bingo, worth $50,000 if you fill your card in 46 calls. Sharon got to stand once on the “X”, but again we were foiled.

The 5PM mass looked like it might be poorly attended, but over 20 people showed up. We had to make our way back to our cabin quickly to change in to formal duds for our evening at the Cirque in the Pinnacle. The bread and appetizer plates are the same as used in the Cirque restaurant in New York, with a pinkish read border and a couple of dangling monkeys. For my appetizer I enjoyed the lobster salad very much, which combined a sizeable lobster section on a couple of salad leaves, and an assortment of vegetable/fruit sections artfully presented. Sharon couldn’t find an appetizer to suit her. I next had the huckleberry and butternut squash soup, which was served with just the small portion of huckleberries in the middle of the bowl with a small amount of cream. Our waiter presented it as the complete dish, of course he was holding the pot from which the hot part of the soup was poured around the huckleberries. This was a very interesting looking and delicious course which I enjoyed immensely, with the contrasting tastes blending nicely, and with the recommended merlot wine selection I had chosen. Sharon couldn’t find a soup or salad to suit her, so she just watched me eat. We both chose the Chateau Briand served with a horseradish pudding and red pickled beets. Okay, Sharon wouldn’t try the final two parts of the dish, but I thought they were tasty, even the beets, which constituted just a few small pieces on the plate. The beef was just tender and delicious and prepared exactly as we had ordered them, medium and pink for Sharon, medium rare with some red for me. We also had the chocolate soufflé with vanilla ice cream for dessert, and the soufflé was as good as any I’d ever had. And of course, I had my evening cordial, a “Pick-me-Up” comprising Kahlua, Irish Cream, Frangelica and Cointreau.

After dinner we decided to try our luck in the casino. The blackjack table had openings, and I was able to get a seat at my favorite spot on first base. Other players came and went, some knowing how to play, but many playing very poorly. One lady thought it would be good to split tens because the dealer had a six, which meant that she knew that six was a bad card for the dealer. She wound up with 17 and 16. The dealer wound up with 18 (instead of busting if she’d stood on twenty) and beat the table. Oh well. Later she decided to hit 16 against the dealer’s 6, so I guess she must have learned that 6 isn’t that bad of a card for the dealer. She busted of course, but at least the dealer did too! I never won more than three hands in a row, but I never lost more than three either, so I was hanging in there. I was losing my double downs, five of six of them anyway. But the dealer was either busting, or making 21. The dealer didn’t get a single blackjack while I played, while I had four, and that helped me to walk away up $55. Sharon had tapped out earlier, having reached her daily limit.

We had thoughts of going to the show (Alfreda Gerald “A tribute to the Divas”) but from what we heard at breakfast this morning we didn’t miss anything and sounds like quite a few people left it early.

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