Fun facts

Here's something I bet you didn't know.  Alaska is the ONLY STATE whose name you can type on just one single row of yer keyboard.  It's true, you could look it up.

More great Alaska facts to follow in the ensuing days, so keep it right here.

Here's another semi-fact-slash-joke the locals like to recite. "When yer anywhere in Anchorage, you're only twenty minutes from Alaska."  In other words, Anchorage is a kind of artificial modern world somehow plunked down in the midst of something else. There's a lot of truth to that, as anchorage is a pretty major city and Alaska -- even including Anchorage -- has the fewest number of humans per square mile of the 50 states and by far the most mountains, wilderness, remote islands, reindeer farms, caribou,wild rivers, and old- timey homesteaders.

Anywhooo... We escaped the big city last night and spent the evening in a quaint little motel in the little town of Palmer, about 50minutes north of the big metropolis. 'Twas good to be back in the real Alaska.

Reindeer sausage is big here. Last night Jim had what he thought was going to be a reindeer burger. It turned out to be a thick beef burger PLUS reindeer sausage. A little more hoofed-mammal meat than absolutely necessary.  Good though. Regina was smarter and ordered a personal pizza, though it too proved rather voluminous for one sane person.  So pizza for lunch today.

We're now headed out to hike and camp.

Preview for tomorrow's entry: How to Deodorize a Horse Blanket.  You won't want to miss it!!

Spectacular Train Ride

Took the train yesterday evening from Whittier to Anchorage, a two and a half hour ride. Clouds lifted at just the right time.  The views were so spectacular that you might have asked yer self, "geeze, why did I ever go anywhere else on vacation!"

Countless mountains in all directions, seemingly going on forever.
All rising abruptly from sea level to several thousands of feet, several with turquoise glaciers in between them, most with shiny white snow fields at their tops.  In two of the rivers we passed over, we watched as a fisherman would pull out a salmon about the length of a yardstick.

It's also a tradition for fishermen and others along the way to wave happily at the train riders gliding by. Winters are so long here that that there There's a pronounced sense of exhilaration when it's summer.

Even Giddier for Whittier

Gonna take back one thing we said earlier about Whittier. The fog lifted briefly yesterday revealing it's even MORE spectacular than we thought. It's surrounded by steep, lush mountains in EVERY direction, including across the narrow inlet of water our boat came in on.

Also, Whittier has an appreciation for high culture. They have, for example,  a creek in town named after the great master of the English language, the Bard of Stratford-on-Avon, the man who revolutionized live theater. That's right: Shakespeare Creek.

And here's another point for Whittier: While waiting for our 6 pm train, we took a little hike in the rain, then had a remarkable lunch at a place called, aptly enough, The Inn at Whittier.  It turned out the Inn at Whittier has gourmet dining. We split an extremely flavorful clam chowder and -- the coup de gras -- The Inn's completely unforgettable Woodshed Whittier Burger. This is no ground-up leftover cow-parts sandwich.  Instead, it's made from a "custom ground combination of short rib and pulled pork brisket."

So let's stop the hating on Whittier. It's gotten a bad rap.  

The Case for Whittier

Whittier, Alaska.  Socked in with fog all day Wednesday the 27th on the boat and still socked in in Whittier this morning.  We're now off the ferry after riding it for 1,629 miles up the western coast of Canada and a chunk of what is called Southeast Alaska. 

Incidentally, there is no SouthWEST Alaska.  Owing to alaska's unusual shape, the part called southeast is a kind of needle-shaped piece that sticks out dramatically from the main part.  To the west of that is nothing but ocean and some islands.  You could probably say that the long Aleutian chain of islands is southwestern Alaska, but it's not known as that.

Anyway enough eighth grade geography.  Yesterday, as mentioned, we were fogged in all day, and it drizzled rain continually.  And, we were out in the more open water of the Gulf of Alaska, so the boat rocked all day long.  So kind of a slow day. Lots of reading, dozing, and game playing. There was one couple that seemed to be playing Yahtze all day and night, with charts of scores and data from, I imagine, their previous games.  They seemed serious enough about it to,earn the nickname The Yahtze Nazis.

We're here in Whittier for about twelve hours, waiting for the 6 pm train up to Anchorage. At least two people had mentioned to us that Whittier is the "armpit of North America" or maybe the world.  I really don't get that. It is tiny, and a good chunk of it is railroad track. But it has a pleasant little harbor, a nice lodge/hotel, a cafe, a fishing charter, and a couple of kayak outfitters. And oh yes, the air may be damp but it's clean. What else do you need?

More importantly, Whittier sits in the middle of a rather breathtaking setting. It's surrounded on two-plus sides by rugged mountains cloaked in rich green forest with snow around their tops, and several narrow waterfalls streaming down to the sea. What's not surrounded by forested mountains looks out onto Prince William Sound.

So I could easily name you a hundred towns that would put Whittier to shame in the category of armpittery. All we are saying is give Whittier a chance.

Tents aboard the Kennicott: you can sleep for free if you want to

Jammed up in Juneau

We are anchored in Juneau , the state capital. We've Now gone over 1000 miles since boarding the H/V Kennicott in Bellingham, Washington three days ago.  

Never really did see Juneau because the actual city is twelve miles up the road from the port.  So we took about a three mile walk in a drizzling rain up the road to another tiny little harbor called Auke Bay.  

Our sleeping quarters are reminiscent of an old "I Love Lucy" bit where Lucy and Ricky have to dance around each other in their tiny sleeper car. There's about room for two people to stand up and even change positions if they work together and practice it a little.  I (Jim) have the top bunk and enjoy the gymnastics of climbing up into it each evening.


What's really spooky though is that there's a couple in the berth next to us who look a lot like Fred and Ethel Mertz.

They show films on the ferry, and the first night was one about how an enormous Boulder was blown up in 1958.  The Boulder was just under the water along our route, which is often called the Inside Passage..  Many lives were lost when ships struck the troublesome rock.  And so the proper authorities put their heads together and blew the thing to smithereens.  It was, we are proudly told, "the biggest non-nuclear explosion in history.!

So that's yet another reason we Americans can and by God should be proud. We own the record for both kinds of enormous explosions, nuclear and non.

The place where the nasty Boulder once did its evil work is still pretty hazardous, however.  A guy in a pilot-looking uniform told me that the water rushes through that narrow pass at up to 20 miles per hour when the tide is going in or out.  This creates all manner of crazy whirlpools that keep ship pilots on their toes.

Speaking of speeds, our ship travels at around 15 to 17 knots.  A knot is actually very close to one mile per hour, so it's easily convertible.  But this does beg the question: why the heck don't they just say "miles per hour"?  I guess it's for the same reason we have to say " port side" for "left side of the ship" and "starboard" for the right side.

If you get caught saying, say, "whales on the right side of the ship," Instead of saying " whales to starboard," you get lashed by theCaptian with a Cat O' Nine-tails, which hurts.

Discipline is key at sea.

Made it all the way to Ketchikan, Alaska. Little shipping town of 12 to15 thousand souls carved into the mountains which come right down to the shore almost vertically.  

Ketchikan gets 12 feet of rain per year. By my math, that's a foot a month, or 3 inches every week, week after week. No wonder the slopes of the mountains are lush with evergreen forest.

Cruise ships stop here too, so you can buy all kinds of items you don't need. ("Kids' alaska socks!")

They let us off  our boat, the Kennicott, for several hours, so we walked the couple of miles into the little downtown area. (It wasn't raining, only overcast.)

One whale spotted yesterday but pretty far from our boat.

Boat was a little rocky yesterday for a few hours when we were exposed to open ocean. We made one friend by supplying a nauseated woman with Dramamine.  

Planes, trains, buses, shuttles, ferries, and automobiles

well, they let us on the ferry today despite our appearances. Pretty soon it'll leave for Alaska and we won't be able to post anything til Monday, July 25.

Maybe by then we'll figure out how to post a pic or two here,  or not to make a bolloxed up post  like the one for Friday, below.

Our room on the ferry is about the size of a two-person coffin.  Nice, though.

Southwest air gets a new motto

Southwest Airlines earned a new motto a few days ago: "Make America Wait Again!"  Their computer went sideways on Wedesday, and they had to cancel 700 flights.  On thursday, the day we flew to Seattle , they had to cancel 300 more.

Lucky for us, we only had an hour delay. But there were some grim faces at the southwest gates.

Also lucky for us, the airport TVs had wall to wall coverage of the walk-through of Donnie Trump's acceptance speech, which he would deliver later that evening to a basketball arena full of silver-haired, pale-faced whooping morons. Time just flew.

The airports, though, are dropping the ball on one thing: they should have casinos in them for people waiting for their flights. Got to be revenue there.

Anyway the flight itself was simply marvelous.  As soon a we flew over Colorado it was announced that they would now be able to have deliver "the cannibas service."  They wheeled out trays of brownies and little candies laced with marijuana (no smoking on the plane, of course.)

We declined, but many of the passengers seemed to enjoy this new innovation. Of course, they had to do it fast, before the plane reached Utah airspace.

Ha Ha!!!  Just kidding about the dope service.

FRIDAY,

Our motel is in Kent, Washington, just outside Seattle. Having a day layover here, we walked to a bus terminal , rode the bus to downtown Seattle, walked around town, caught the light rail train back to Kent,

The people here Are pretty scared. There's a werewolf  warning been issued. It seems there was recently a hairy- handed gent who ran amok here in Kent, and lately he's been overheard inSpokane.  Werewolves of Washington again.

Skedaddle in Seattle We report, you decide.fortunately, the airport televisions were working. Delayed passengers could enjoy wall to wall coverage of Donald trumps walk-throughout of his historical speech to an arena full of war whooping morons later that evening.south

Saw many signs of america's terrible fall from Greatness yesterday.  At McDonald's in Nashville , Illinois, they messed up our oatmeal order. Sure, they were effusively apologetic, but the snafu must have cost us 8 or 9 minutes of precious time.  Would this have happened if Ray Krok were still alive. Well, we report, my our decide.

Even worse, as mentioned below, our plane out of St. Louis was delayed. It turned out Southest airlines had a computer meltdown that caused them to cancel 400 flights the day before and 300 yesterday?  Would this have happened in the good old days, say 1950?has a new motto: " make America late again!"

Skedaddle to Seattle

first phase accomplished. Made it thru security at lambert airport, st.louis.  Plane delayed an hour.

95 in the shade

tuesday, July 19.    Ninety five degrees here in Illinois as we pack stuff for Alaska. Won't do much here at blog central until  we board the ferry in Bellingham , Washington on Saturday, the 23d.

But stay tuned because boy is this gonna get exciting .  We'll be wrestling Grizzlies, getting hopelessly lost in the wilderness, getting chased by hungry wolves, angling for 300 pound marlin, and whatnot.  Maybe you saw that movie,  "The Revenant"?  Guy gets mauled by a griz, gets abandoned by his friends then crawls back to civilization with revenge on his mind? That's gonna seem like backyard picnic compared to the macho stuff we're gonna be getting up to!

And we might even learn how to post pictures here.  Desperate times, desperate measures.

Stay tuned.