Day 7: July 13 – Hubbard Glacier and on to Seward, Alaska

Today’s portion of the voyage took us to Hubbard Glacier, which measures six miles across. Pretty sweet, huh? Two problems: 1) We had to be up at 6:30 a.m. to see it and 2) we had to stay a few miles away because of the ice field the glacier has calved into the water. Apparently, Captain Stubing didn’t want a Titanic moment. Good call, Merrill.

Speaking of the Captain, I’ll take this moment to address a couple of things we don’t like about his ship. First, all I’ve ever heard about cruises since the first time I laid eyes on Gopher, Julie and Isaac, was how awesome the food is. I would like to dispute that as complete fiction. Honestly, I’d rather have Carl’s Jr./Hardee’s…not gonna lie.

The service has always been awesome, almost annoyingly so…I don’t need every single crew person I pass to greet me. My tongue hurts from responding the 7, 347 times it’s happened in the last week. Enough already. But the food leaves A LOT to be desired. As I said, give me a chicken club from Carl’s and I’m set. The presentation of the food has been cool, it’s the taste that’s been missing. It’s nothing to write home about, yet here I am typing for the blog. As Alanis would say, “Isn’t it ironic?”

Secondly, there is a willful lack of communication on the ship in matters of sightseeing. For example, let’s say that a gaggle of whales suddenly appears off the port side juggling flaming harbor seals while smoking crack off the head of an Inuit baby. No announcement would be made to make one aware of such an unnatural phenomenon. They wouldn’t even announce when we were approaching the Hubbard Glacier this morning, so if you were catching a few extra winks of shuteye, you were SOL (and that ain’t Spanish for sun, honey). WTF? You’re on the water for seven days and they can’t throw us a bone if they see cool shizz? Would it kill them to tell us that? Maybe they are saving their words for the overabundance of greetings they smear us with throughout the day. Whatever the reason, it sucks moose buttocks. Fo’ real.

Finally, I’m not sure I’m comfortable with the concept of “Gentlemen Hosts,” aka travelling whores. These are men whose job it is to saddle on up next to lady folk to encourage them to join them on the dance floor for the old bump and grind. Patrick Swayze these tools are not. They are thousand year-old fossils in bad clothes doing the Uma Thurman Pulp Fiction to ridiculously cheesy karaoke sung by the ship’s “entertainment” staff. While it makes me quiver, and our NC friends liked to see my disdain for the practice, it did actually provide much entertainment to those of us who like to judge the actions of those with the courage, liquid or otherwise, to participate in such shenanigans…bless their hearts.

That’s it for my ship critiques, except for the touching of my stuff, which I’ve already mentioned. Should I think of anything else, I will post at another time. For now, we’re at sea until tomorrow morning when our cruise ends in Seward and we move on to our next leg, the Alaska Railroad to Denali. Our ship friends made it fun…Hank and Martha from Peoria celebrating their 35th wedding anniversary, and Katie and Alice, the mother/daughter dermatologist and economist (and fellow luggageless) friends for NC… and have helped us close the restaurants almost every night. Thanks friends. I don’t know if I’ll ever catch up on sleep. But I’ll sure as hell try.

Now, on to Seward and Denali…

Oh yeah, see today’s photos HERE.

BLOG UPDATE!

I know. I hear you crying and I can smell your tears. It's been WAY too long since my last post and a lot has happened. What can I say? I like TV and I spend a lot of time watching it. There are special "Dave" grooves where I park it for viewing. Special thanks to Mega for introducing me to Tosh.0. Genius...simply genius.


Anyway, you'll notice that our last few posts came during Memorial Day Weekend once again spent in Chicago for the annual Bike the Drive. I'll post more about that later and get the photos up too.


In other news, I got some cool shots inside of the Basilica during my niece's Confirmation. I'll post those...maybe. Stop crying.


I know what you really want to know... What's up with the countdown clocks at the top? What's with Julia going to Italy? And didn't Dave just get back from Alaska? One question at a time, please. Our friends, we'll call them the Pherron's, due to the near 7-foot-tall husband of the Pherron Clan, is apparently a god at his work and, thus, gets to go on an all expenses paid trip to Venice and Rome. In order for their daughter to join them, she must have a chaperon. Julia is that chaperon and they didn't need two. So I hate them all since Rome is one of the two places I must still visit before I pass on an take my inevitable seat among the hell fires of Gehenna (Florence, Italy is the other). Did I mention that I hate them all? Even the child.


And Alaska? Remember THIS post? Well I'm going again only this time Julia gets to go too! She got chosen to be the host for a trip at work and I get to go for a steep discount! It's a seven-day cruise from Vancouver to Seward, Alaska. Then we'll take a train to Anchorage and board the Alaska Railroad to Denali. We'll be Audi 5000 from July 6 to the 20th, so try not to miss us. Two EXTREMELY strange things to note about this trip...there will be no driving and no baseball. I don't think I'll know what to do. Hopefully I'll manage.


That's about all for now, but I will get those other photos up soon. That is unless TV rears its ugly head to distract me.

Day 1: Anchorage, Alaska

Due to the joy of owning the Blackberry Storm and being able to post to the blog from it, I'll be updating more frequently on this trip. Lucky you!


Here's a photo I took from the plane. You can see a glacier meeting the water in the foreground by the plane's engine. In the center of the photo, two more glaciers meet. Pretty sweet, huh?


Phil and I got to the John Wayne airport this morning at 7:35. We got into Anchorage around 4:30 p.m. (that's 7:30 p.m. CST). We dropped off our stuff at the hotel and headed out for some eats since we last ate at 8 a.m.


It's now 10 p.m. and it's still not dark here, nor will it ever be. This is Alaska, after all.


We're heading to Kenai Fjords National Park tomorrow to check out the glaciers firsthand and hopefully some fishing for Phil since he brought his poles up to catch some salmon.


See today's photos HERE.