Alaska - Done and Dusted

Breakfast on the boat



Seen in Skagway




Well, just for us, and just that southwest bit of it to which we were transported in the most cosseted possible fashion. Here's one last blog post re: the trip, written on board for later blogging purposes. Back to work tomorrow...

Cabin 5562 Log – Thursday July 14, 2011


The very clever people who know how to move a luxury hotel full of people into the Arctic Circle and then take it out again are at their posts. We are steaming dieseling (?) into Glacier Bay National Park. I have already been up for breakfast (7 AM local time). Scrambled eggs with peppers and onions, fried potatoes, coffee, cranberry juice. Then, cause I saw it for the first time, some smoked salmon with fresh onions, accompanied by French bread and finished off with a few slices of fresh pineapple. The pioneering spirit, as you can tell, is not dead…

This is as far north on the planet as I am ever likely to get at 59 degrees north latitude. For the first time on this trip, everything is shrouded in mist and the sun is nowhere to be seen. I took a turn around the upper decks and thought of the Rime of the Ancient Mariner (although no one here is dying of thirst). It is 7:50 AM local time and Shack is still snoozing off the effects of yesterday’s tourism. We were in Skagway, Alaska – a gold-rush born town of 800 people with 10,000 tourists there yesterday. The effects were predictable. All during this trip I have been thinking back to an essay by the late David Foster Wallace called “Consider the Lobster” It’s all about lobsters and their place at the center of a Lobster Fest in Maine.

At the time I read it (heard it on audiobook, actually) I was irritated by his attitude toward the masses in search of a good time. What an easy target - a straw man. Wallace did, however, talk about himself as part of the problem, as ruining the thing he came to see - a “parasite on a dead thing” . Skagway still has the bones of a frontier town but the face of a rapacious tart. Diamonds for sale at eight different places within 200 yards of the ships. (What’s with all these diamonds and “tanzanite?” Can people not buy this at home? Do they only want it when they’ve left home on a boat?) But yesterday, after Shack and I bought our T-shirts and postcards in Skagway (playing our parasitic part), we went up a scenic railway, naturally with a thousand other people, and saw scenery that was so beautiful it almost didn’t seem possible that it was real. It was, the conductor said, the nicest day of 2011 in the area so far. The views of mountains, crags, cataracts, forests primeval etc. stretched for miles in all directions. We were, all of us parasites, coming to see and, in a way, to pay our respects to these sights of this world. And, let it be said, we are a natural part of it too and if there were no on lookers to see it, would the world still be so beautiful? We tourists may not be attractive, but there was nothing but goodwill in our hearts for all those crags and cataracts and, I think, a sense that we were very small in the face of this splendor.

The View from Cabin 5562

Hey - anybody out there? Breaking news: We're back in Seattle at an airport hotel that FINALLY offers up some free internet. Bless them. We are having a proper internet wallow tonight after a week of deprivation at sea. I couldn't connect the night I wrote this (more on that below) but now I will be catching things up a bit. One more day in the northwest, on land, then back to Vermont. Today's banner is a shot I took (then messed with) in the White Pass on the way to Yukon Territory.

(Norwegian Pearl – Monday, July 11, 2011 – 10:15 PM)

First, let me say that it is after 10 PM and it is still light, as I can see through the porthole in this cabin.

I was too poor for a proper window and too claustrophobic for an inside cabin, so Shack and I are down here on what amounts (almost) to the bottom floor – just above sea level.

This cruise to Alaska aboard the Norwegian Pearl was one of several ideas we considered for a big trip, in recognition of Shack’s having achieved 10 years. France and England were other contenders. He is happy with his choice (did I mention about the bottomless self-serve soft-serve?) but I am pining for some old city – Paris or London would have done nicely. I am not cut out for this kind of thing.

My heart sank when I got on board and was greeted by a pretty blond girl in a strapless knee-length red dress. Are we going for 1890s saloon here, I wondered, or is this just what the average cruiser expects by way of elegance? I mean, I am as fat and badly dressed as the rest of the crowd on board – well, not quite as badly dressed since I had sleeves - but I mean, really.

The décor in the reception area was apparently the result of a collaboration between Donald Trump and My Little Pony. I can hear it now:

Svend: "Pony, Donald, what we need in the reception area is something that will really blow their clogs off. Something elegant, like Vegas, and refined - like a high-end Bangkok brothel - but also something that will delight the eight-year-old girls and NASCAR fans we're expecting."


Well, really, you say, what were you expecting? It’s a cruise. Duh.

True -- but, in my defense, since the cruise line is Scandinavian, I suppose I was expecting some teak or something Danish-y. A little restraint. And since it was destination Alaska I thought there’d be a lot of outdoorsy types. Wrong and wrong.

OK – Maybe I am being an bit harsh. Here’s what I like so far. I like our cabin. It has that cunning way of a ship in using the limited space to maximum advantage. I like the fittings of the ship itself – our porthole is like a manhole cover – solid and no corners cut. The decks are scrupulously cleaned and all the railings and every lick of paint is perfect. (I suppose, before they got around to upholstering banquettes and the bottom of the silver columns in the reception area with pink and turquoise, they had to build something that would not try to cheat the ocean). Today, also, I liked the view. We got to see the coast of British Columbia and it was gorgeous. We both like the shuffleboard – that oldest, lowest tech cruise pass time.

I will post this once I get some free wireless Internet somewhere. I did go online for 12 minutes today. I know because when I signed off I got a message about the $12.95 that I had spent for checking my email and saying hello to the Understudy. But that (the ceaseless merchandising and chiseling on board) is another story…. More later.