Day Six in Alaska

Wednesday, August 6, 2008
Day Six

This morning we experienced cruising at its best. After an early rise at 6 am, we headed to the sun deck to enjoy the scenery in Tracy Arm Fjord. It is hard to put our experience in words because what we saw was unimaginably beautiful. The naturalist was on the loudspeaker letting us know what we were seeing as the ship moved through the fjord.

The fjord was created by a glacier and was over 1000 feet deep. In fact, the cruise ship could dock right next to one of the mountains and not get stuck because it was 1000 feet deep all the way until the shore.

As we moved through the fjord, we saw large and angel hair-like waterfalls cascading down the mountains. As we moved past one of the green valleys, the naturalist told us about how he camped there while kayaking through the fjord, and a bear had attacked the camp because one of the folks in his group had brushed her teeth with peppermint toothpaste and had left a small bit on the tube. Crazy!
We didn’t see too much wildlife, but we did see a few sea lions playing around in the water. They were so adorable!

As we moved along in the fjord, more and more icebergs littered the water. Some were a brilliant blue, some were pretty dirty, and they all ranged in size. The water was amazingly green but very murky. The naturalist said that is because the glaciers moved a lot of dirt and rocks as it moved through the area. As icebergs fell from the glacier and entered the water, they were often carrying a lot of dirt, contributing to the green in the water.

Finally, we reached the glaciers. We couldn’t get too close because of the amount of ice in the water. However, we got a spectacular view of both of them from where we were. We snapped a lot of pictures. If we ever ended up coming back, who knows how much they will have retreated at that point?

After viewing the glaciers, we started to head back out of the fjord. Tim and I decided to have breakfast then as we were frozen and hungry. We ate at the buffet and were lucky enough to get a window seat. We set our stuff down and got our food. When I headed back to the table, I was surprised to see a young gal sitting at our table. I asked her if she was joining us as we had our stuff sitting on the chairs of the table, and she said, “My friend thought that since those two chairs had stuff on them that these chairs would be open.” Stupid kids. If there is stuff on chairs at a table, that means someone is sitting at the table. It’s not a sharing zone! If you want to eat with the adults, then go to the dining room. Oh well, what’s in my head doesn’t always come out, and we told them it was fine. I tried to make conversation with them and asked them if they had seen the glaciers. I think they could have cared less about being on an Alaskan cruise, and especially could care less about some dumb glacier. The one gal had sat in her room and watched TV while the boat was sailing through the fjord. Typical.

We headed back to the room and relaxed. We decided after a bit to grab a couple books and relax in the library. That was really nice. I ended up sleeping in there for most of the time, but I got a bit of reading done for school. I also checked out the books of other cruises. There is one that goes all around the world and is 161 days long! Tim and I decided that that will be our gift to ourselves when we retire. Talk about my dream vacation!

We headed to lunch and sat with some very interesting folks. They were from Yorkshire, English and had traveled all over the world: South America, Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe etc. In fact, before this cruise, they had already spent time in Canada traveling. They said that they travel about 6 months throughout the year. They are my heroes. I want to be just like them when I retire and travel like that. I thought it was neat that Florence was one of their favorite cities because that was ours, too. After all the amazing places they have traveled, they picked a city like Florence as their favorite. Yay! While we were eating lunch, we saw some whales out the window. In fact, one leaped right out of the water!

After lunch, we came back to the room. I continued to watch for whales as Tim slept. I was lucky enough to see another whale.

Later, we decided to take another stab at Bingo. We didn’t win, but we ALMOST won the first game. We were ONE number away. She told us what the next number would have been, and we had it! Arrghhh…we were sore losers and sulked as we walked away from the lounge back to our room.

At that point, it was time to get ready for dinner. We changed into our formal clothes and got all fancied up. As we exited the room, we soon realized that it wasn’t formal night. People were walking around in shorts and jeans. We looked at each other and quickly headed back to the room to check to see if it was formal night. Oops! Formal night is tomorrow! We snapped a quick picture to get something for dressing up and changed into more casual clothes.
We ate at the Desert Rose restaurant, a steakhouse. The steak was delicious! We both had filets. Mine was 8 oz; Tim’s was 10oz. We were so full when we were finished, but the food was delicious! We waddled slowly over to the Vista Lounge for a comedian show. The comedian was an award-winning juggler. He was amazing when it came to juggling. The downfall of the show was that he also thought he was a musician, and his songs were awful. He needs to give up the music and stick to the juggling. We still had fun, and it gave us something to do. [Tim’s note] I thought the guy was really creative and fairly funny too. Ginny missed some of the best part of the show where he did this whole unicycle and knife bit because she went to the restroom. So we disagreed on the quality of the performance. [Ginny’s counter to that] I was there for most of that part actually. BESIDES, it was all contrived. The guy “from the audience” was a plant. If the “comedian” actually had balls, he would have picked a REAL person from the audience.

After the show, we got black and white photos taken of us, but then we headed back to our room. We were exhausted and we have a big day tomorrow. We have to get up at 5:30!!! Eek!

Quote of the day:
Tim: “The show’s in the Vista Lounge at 8, right?”
Ginny: “No, the show is in the Vista Lounge…at 8…”