Getting Seaworthy…Again!

Johnny-on-the-Spot … by John Foster …

My wife and I are getting ready to embark on our next cruise.

This one is to our 49th state and we’re taking the “Alaska Inside Passage Cruise”.

We leave from Vancouver, British Columbus and visits places Juneau, Skagway, Glacier Bay and Ketchican.

We expect to see whales, bald eagles, brown bears, glaciers and lots of other “wildlife we don’t often see in southern Indiana.

(We do get frogs and mice in our pool skimmer, though.)

Our two previous cruises were in the southern Caribbean but I’m pretty pumped to see some of the state that joined the union on January 3rd, 1959.

It’s state fish is the Chinook salmon. It’s a big state with more total area (665,400) square miles, making it bigger than Texas, California and Montana combined.

We bought it from the Russian Empire in 1867 $7.2M, (2023 equivalent of $129M) or about 2 cents per acre. U-S Secretary of State William H. Seward negotiated the deal.

Saying we had acquired “useless land”, opponents labeled the deal “Seward’s Folly” or “Seward’s Ice Box”.

(Sounds like CNN had potential viewers back then.)

Then there was the “Klondike Goldrush” in 1896 and the sparsely-populated state started seeing people interested in living there.

After this hot and humid southern Indiana weather, I’m looking forward to a week of cooler weather offered up by Alaska, even if it’s the rainy season.

This cruise is on Holland America and I hope I don’t need to buy a pair of wooden shoes before we leave but I do like tulips.

Our previous cruises were with Princess and we even took the “Love Boat”.

That was cool because every day at noon, they played the “Love Boat” them with the ship’s horns.

Never did see Julie or Gopher.

But I looked!

The food is always superb and the crew really fusses over you.

Normally, we ate in the “food courts” with has everything you want and then some.

We did do a couple of fancy dining nights but frankly, I don’t need to do the dress-up thing on vacation but it is fun to have a waiter pull out your chair and place your napkin in your lap.

Your glass of water always seems to be full.

We kinda enjoy the lounges where you can watch travelers compete in silly contests with the crew or listen to some live entertainment.

We always manage to get “chummy” with a bar waiter.

Some of them can do amazing things while serving drinks.

On one cruise, we had a waiter who would toss drink napkins onto the table like he placed them there.

You also have stewards who take care of your room and you’ll always return to find the bed made and some information about activities on-board.

We enjoyed the trivia games and Bingo.

Going ashore is always interesting because sometimes you need to board a smaller watercraft to get ashore.

They always see somewhat crowded and cramped.

As much as I look forward to getting up close to whales and such I’m really interested in hitting the streets of some of the towns we see.

It will probably be hard to remember that we’re still in the United States.

The entire state only has about 740,000 residents while the city of Indianapolis is home to about 891 thousand folks.

Now, the only drawback for me is flying from Indianapolis to Vancouver with a lay-over in Denver.

At least I shouldn’t have to take off my shoes when going through airport security.

I hate getting re-dressed before waiting on a my flight.

I’m a long-legged dude and I just don’t like the feeling of being in a can of sardines.

The only thing missing is the mustard sauce.

My Dad used to eat sardines from a tin and our Boxer would drool big spit bubbles watching him.

There’s still about 15 hours of sunlight in Alaska, the “Land of the Midnight Sun” but I spent a year on Greenland with the Air Force so I’m use to the longer days in the summer.

You suppose I can find a totem poll on this trip?

Probably cost me a future cruise to ship it home but that might make a way-cool keepsake.

Stay tuned.