Family Vacation to Alaska - Day 5

Monday, 28 May, 2007 – Glacier Bay

I hit the fitness center again this morning at about 6:15 am and used the elliptical machine then lifted weights for about 25 minutes. We had already entered the Bay and I spotted otters, whales, and birds on the water. Pretty cool. I returned to the cabin at about 7:30 and soon our breakfast arrived. I don’t remember Seth and I utilizing room service when we last cruised on HAL – of course, we were pretty “green” then and not the seasoned cruisers we are now. ;-) Room service was great and on time each morning. I ate my usual cereal with 2% milk, sliced bananas, coffee, and fruit. I got showered and we then headed up to the Lido restaurant to meet up with Mimi, Papa, and Amina. Rhys ate breakfast again with them and then we moved to the aft deck to “stake out” our spots for viewing Glacier Bay.

While I was on the elliptical machine, I watched as a small boat pulled up to the ship carrying the Park Service Rangers and Tlingit interpreter who would be spending the day on our ship narrating and telling us about the glaciers that we would be seeing today. We had “Ranger Rick” doing most of the narrating over the ship’s PA system. We first saw the Lanplugh glacier and saw a small part of it calving.

As we studied the glaciers, we were purchased HAL coffee mugs which they filled with hot chocolate and we were also given bowls of Dutch pea soup which I enjoyed immensely.

It was chilly out again – high 40’s, low 50’s today but it was mostly clear and dry. Our next viewing was the Johns Hopkins glacier then the Margerie and Grand Pacific glaciers.

As we came upon the Margerie glacier there were 2 episodes of calving – a smaller one followed by a much larger one. It was awesome and almost on cue.

The Grand Pacific glacier was covered in black silt.

As we were cruising to the Margerie glacier, Ranger Rick pointed out 3 brown bears on the mountain side which were tricky to see but we were thrilled that we had finally seen some bears.

After viewing all of the glaciers, we packed our things up and went for lunch in the dining room. They were setting up for an Alaskan salmon bake on the Lido deck but we wanted to eat in the dining room today. I stopped by to take a picture of the largest pie I’ve ever seen (or maybe it was cobbler).

In the dining room, I had the peach soup which was delicious.

It seemed like all of the fruit based soups were very tasty. I went with the gourmet burger and fries which was very good.

After lunch, Rhys went to the kids’ Club to meet the park rangers while Amina went with Mimi and Papa to the National Park Rangers and Tlinglit Hoonah Interpreter presentation at 2:15. I parked myself in the library and worked on my journal and actually took a brief nap too. At 4 pm, I picked Rhys up from Club HAL and we went back to the cabin to change as the kids were dying to go swimming.

We went up to the 8th deck, Lido, and snapped some pictures by the bears in the pool.

It was quite chilly – the air temp outside being only in the low 50’s. The ceiling of the pool area is retractable but was actually partially open this afternoon. Nevertheless, the kids enjoyed themselves hopping in and out of the pool and hot tub.

The pool was heated. As they were swimming, they did slide the ceiling closed with a loud metallic thud. At 5 pm, we headed back to the cabin to get ready for dinner.

This evening was a casual evening and we were treated to Dutch night. We all donned our Dutch caps – black caps for the boys and white ones for the ladies – and took pictures.

I did remember to take pictures of the menu this evening.

This evening I tried the crab and artichoke dip which was very good.

I had another bowl of Dutch pea soup which I had really enjoyed up on deck this morning. For the entrée, I chose Nasi Goreng Rijstaffel which was an Indonesian combination plate with Indonesian fried rice, spicy chicken drumstick, beef Sumatra, prawn crackers, and a fried banana.

It was absolutely delicious – spicy but not too spicy. I remarked to Krish, our dining steward, that this was my favorite entrée of the entire trip thus far. He mentioned that this was the food that he frequently ate for breakfast each morning. You really can’t go wrong in a dining room full of Indonesians ordering Indonesian food. For dessert, I had the Bananas Foster which was very good.

This evening we split up from the kids sending Rhys to Club HAL and Amina with Mimi and Papa to see the show. Seth and I wanted to catch the movie in the theater this evening at 8:00 pm. We missed the complimentary popcorn. Krish had mentioned that for dinner tomorrow night the crew was planning a special show/presentation “not to be missed”. It was the Master Chef dinner but we were scheduled to have dinner at the Pinnacle Grill. Seth and I stopped off at the Pinnacle Grill and changed our reservations for a second time to Thursday evening at 6 pm. Since this was our evening in Victoria and many people were going ashore on excursions, we had no trouble changing our reservations. We had no plans to leave the ship this evening since we were docking so late.

We watched Freedom Writers in the Wajang theater which was very good. It resembled Morgan Freeman’s “Lean on Me” somewhat and starred Hilary Swank who, at times, seemed a little too girlish and cheerleader-like. It was based on a true story and was inspiring. We returned to the cabin after the movie and called it a night. A very relaxing day with wonderful views of glaciers that we’d not seen before.

Family Vacation to Alaska - Day 4

Sunday, 27 May 2007 – Juneau

This morning, we sent Rhys over to Mimi and Papa’s cabin while Seth and I headed to the gym. We arrived just before they opened at 6 am. Our clocks had been set back another hour last night. It was my long run day and I would be running 10 K on the treadmill – something I’d never done before as I’d always been able to run outside on Sundays. The seas were still a teensy bit rocky but nothing near what it had been like the day before. I finished my run in about 1 hour and 5 minutes – still need to shave about 5 minutes off my time before our race in October.

Seth and I then went to the Lido restaurant for breakfast which, for me, consisted of fat free cereal, skim milk, sliced bananas, fruit, orange juice, coffee, and some cold smoked salmon. Yes, I think I will eat salmon daily while on this cruise and have no problems with doing that. We headed back to the cabin where I showered and got ready for my appointment at the Greenhouse spa. I was scheduled for reflexology this morning at 9:15 am. I was directed to the “relaxation room” and filled out the questionnaire being careful to write at the bottom “No Sales please - thank you!”. I was greeted by my masseuse who took me back to a room where I took my shoes/socks off and opted to slip my jeans off too so that I could be more comfortable. The massage was great and included some acupressure which, at times, were ever so slightly uncomfortable which I attributed to my recent run. Afterwards, though, my feet felt great and when I stood up for the first time, there wasn’t the usual stiffness/heel pain that I frequently had after a long run.

I went back to the cabin and it was probably just around 10:30 am. We wouldn’t be docking in Juneau until 11 am and our excursion was not until 5:30 pm. We decided that we would eat lunch on the ship then debark and look around town. We definitely had to check out the Mendenhall glacier which I had already read online would be easy to do via bus that could be booked right on the pier. We had lunch in the Lido restaurant buffet which was pretty good and then headed back to the cabin to gather our things. Although the ramp to leave the ship was just around the corner from our cabin, we couldn’t access it directly as they had blocked it off. We had to go all the way around to the port side of the ship and around to reach the ramp.

We walked along downtown Juneau peeking in the shops and stopping to buy a Juneau magnet for our fridge.

We posed by the infamous Red Dog saloon which we later learned housed Wyatt Earp’s gun that he checked in but never returned to claim. This was the Saloon’s claim to fame.

I had called the American Airlines baggage service again to find out about our lost bag. Apparently, there was still confusion even on the number of bags that were missing. I went over the information once again. For reasons that were unclear to me, our case was “closed” according to the agent I spoke with but we obviously had not received our bag. The entire situation was very frustrating.

We headed over to the little booths by the ship and booked 6 round trips to Mendenhall Glacier which cost $6 each way. We waited about 20 minutes for the bright blue bus which ran every 30 minutes.

Our bus driver was a real character giving us his spiel which I’m sure he’s done hundreds of times – interesting factoids, observations, advice, and other random musings. We chuckled frequently at his banter.

The bus dropped us off just down the street from the Mendenhall Glacier National Park entrance.

We walked in the drizzling rain over to the observation areas to see the glacier which was just as awesome as the first time we had seen it about 4 years ago.

Blue and white ice with large chunks of ice floating in the water, the roar of the waterfall in the background.

We walked along the pathway snapping pictures along the way then headed back towards the visitor center wanting to find the trail to the waterfall.

We walked past the visitor center and found the trail head for the East Glacier loop and hiked for quite some time stopping a few times to take more pictures. It had started raining pretty briskly and the trail was pretty muddy but the views were just beautiful. We hiked for about a mile then turned around and went back – it took us about an hour total. We never did find the trail to the waterfall but were told that the walk was along the beach and wasn’t a real trail. We had overlooked it since there was no trail head.

We found Mimi and Papa at the bus station and boarded the same bus back to downtown Juneau then went back on board the ship to freshen up a bit before going for our scheduled excursion. We stopped at the Explorations Café and got coffee – we had purchased a coffee card earlier on the cruise – 10 coffees for $20 which probably saved about $5. You could get a grande specialty coffee but they wouldn’t refill HAL mugs using the coffee card. We each got a coffee and some pastries/cookies then headed down to the ramp to meet up for our excursion. As we approached the crew member who would scan our room keys, the crew informed us that we could not take food off the ship. Coffee was ok to take off, but not food. What a strange rule. We stood there finishing our cookies and pastries then got off the ship and met up with Mimi and Papa.

Our excursion met just at the pier and we were directed to a small van that would take us to the gold panning area. Our tour guide was “Mudslide” Mike who was pleasant and full of good information about Juneau. He drove about 10 of us out to the Gold River, demonstrated panning techniques then handed everyone a pan of dirt (laced with gold pieces, of course) and we set out to pan for gold.

The kids got a big kick out of this and each panned about 4 pans of dirt that Mike gave them. They saved their gold pieces in small plastic containers with lids that Mike provided sucking them up into little medicine droppers then dropping them into the small vials. We even remembered to pick up some Juneau dirt to take back to Rhys’ teacher, Mrs Phyllis.

We got on the bus again thankful to warm up slightly before the salmon bake. The day had been rainy and in the chilly low 50’s. We arrived at the salmon bake and were given a small steaming bowl of clam chowder which was very good.

We scouted out a few spots at a table under a warming lamp, finished our chowder, then went through the buffet line. The food was overall as delicious as what I remember when Seth and I were here 4 years ago. The cole slaw with raisins was one of my favorites. There was also corn bread, beans, salad with some kind of Caesar dressing, short ribs, chicken, and, of course, large pieces of salmon grilled over a large open grill which came with a ladle-full of salmon sauce which had an obvious brown sugar base.

They also provided water, tea, and hot chocolate. For dessert, there was blueberry cake which wasn’t as good as I remembered it to be. A woman was playing the guitar during our meal.

After dinner, the kids roasted about a ½ dozen marshmallows then we walked up the trail to see the waterfall. It was too early in the season to see salmon. When Seth and I had last walked this trail we could see the fish making their way up the stream and the base of the waterfall was teeming with fish. It really was too bad that the fish weren’t spawning yet – it was still a few weeks early for them to start.

We stopped by the gift shop where I bought a bag of the salmon sauce for $5 then boarded the bus back to ship. There was an elephant on Rhys' bed when we got back to the cabin.

After walking around in the mud and rain, the kids’ jeans were filthy so we rounded up some quarters and I did a load of laundry. The laundry facility was right around the corner on the starboard side of the ship but the washing machine was so small that I really couldn’t fit all of our laundry in it. A load cost $2 in quarters to run for just the washer which included soap that was dispensed directly from it. The dryer was free. I stuffed in what I could and ran the load then came back later (while watching “Pursuit of Happyness” on tv) to put it all in the dryer which was quite a bit bigger than the washer. I finished the laundry at around 10:30 pm and turned in the for the night.