Okay, for you folks at home playing along with Pickles in Alaska, if you had pod of Orcas, Humpback Whale sighting, Salmon in the wild, Bald Eagle, Clam Chowder, King Crab Legs, and Eddie gets a Blow Job, you can bubble in those squares on your bingo card.
Just like the 5:00 news, I will wait until almost the end to tell you about Eddie’s blow job. No reading ahead, that would be cheating. Everyone’s card had the pristine scenery, snow covered mountain tops, and verdant green forests. So, we will skip reviewing those things. Twenty years later, the natural beauty of Alaska still is some of our favorite. After going to Norway, Chile, and Iceland with all the natural raw fjordian beauty-Alaska is still our favorite. We started this adventure in Ketchikan. It use to be a tendered port, but somewhere along the way it has gone from a sleepy little town with lots of Diamond International shops to a much more tourist savvy destination-with multiple deep water berths, town side. Float planes dot the skies. Three ships in port-Ruby Princess and Carnival Splendor and Celebrity Solstice. For those of you unfamiliar with Alaska cruising-Princess created the market and the infrastructure. Carnival, Princess and Holland are the same parent corporation. All other cruises companies get what is left as far as tour priority, berths in port and access to Glacier Bay. We are at the beginning of the tourist season, despite three ships, the town people are all smiles and more than happy to take your money. No shortage of workers either. Guess Covid made them count their blessings for folks on cruise ships. No supply chain shortages for t shirts and stuffed animals. Must have had left overs for two years with no tourists. Check off T shirts, stuffed Alaskan animals, and Christmas ornaments on your bingo board. Yeah, we purchased two for our collection, made in China, I am sure.
When selecting our excursion for the day, Eddie said no early morning tours, no zodiac boats (too rough on his back), I countered with no float planes and open boats since this is the most Northern Rain Forest with 13 feet of rain a year on 300 out of 365 semi wet or really wet days. We decided on the 11:00 boat trip to Misty Fjord with wildlife encounter. Remember the part about Princess and Carnival in the port with us, well, apparently their folks called dibs on the 11:00 run, we got the 7:45 slot. 7:45 and we gained an hour last night, so 8:45 new old time…we could live with that. This is my third trip into Ketchikan, it is always overcast with heavy clouds in the morning-reason #18 I will not take a float plane. 1-18 reasons revolve around fear of flying and the recent number of tourist float planes that just drop out of the air or crash into the mountains. The fear of flying is strong in me when there are propellers, bad weather and sea birds involved. As we motored out, Eddie spotted the tell tale puff from a whale’s blow hole followed by the back fins of the humpback splashing the water. Our on board naturalist, Care, (yeah, Care is her name, I did not misspell it) was barely through her self introduction. She was a recent graduate of UC Monterey Bay in Marine ecology-Like, you know, totally. She used impressive professional college terms like eeewk, yucky, gross and sucky to describe the various Alaska species that we might encounter. Eddie hit the mental mute button after the first uh,uh, uh, totally in her presentation. He can be such a snob. If you had Eddie as a intellectual snob, you can mark that square on your bingo board. Misty Fjords did not disappoint-the skies broke blue just as we entered the waterfall portion of the Fjords. Waterfall -check. I had on polarized sunglasses and was treated my own private color show-the various minerals in the stone and granite showed colors of pink, blue, purple and yellow. Eddie missed the show cause he has Transitions. We saw no less than a dozen bald eagles in flight, in pairs and one rather large nest with no one at home. The salmon have begun the run so there were some salmon rolling top water was we returned to the dock area. By far the favorite was a pod of 20 Orcas that appeared close to land where we had seen the fish (and a large number of fishing boats). They were playing with the young calves and each other, we would see groups of 4 and 5 breaking the water together. Never gets old or less exciting.
We returned to the dock and decided that we wanted to try some King Crab or Dungess Crab at a local restaurant. We had heard from some of the crew that King Crab is crazy expensive. It you had $60 for one crab leg on your card, you get to color that space in, use a green marker. While we don’t remember Clam Chowder being a big thing before, it is now. We had it in Seattle, on the excursion boat and at the restaurant for lunch. Eddie said they give you chowder to make up for the small amount of crab. It is all good-I guess clams are still plentiful and cheap…that or they are cutting up rubber bands and putting it in potato soup to feed the tourists.
Now for Eddie’s blow job. A few of the Celebrity ships have Glass works on board. Yes, the hot ovens, long rods, and Molten glass. Would love to been in that planning meeting when they decided that a Glass Blowing operation should be included in their ship designed. Red hot oven, melting glass, in rough seas letting people that have an unlimited liquor package dyi their souvenirs. What could go wrong there. We all know Eddie has a creative side to him, so before I left home, I signed him up to make a object d’ art-code for another Christmas Ornament while we were sailing the Alaskan coast. Since this is not our first rodeo, we secured an 11:00 in the morning (remember, no early morning activities) for our second day on board. There is a lot of hand holding by the professional glass blower. But Eddie got to choose he colors, melt the glass beads in the oven, blow the molten glass on the long metal rod—- several times causing the phallic shaped glass blob-yes it was red- to form a bubble which he then stretched. So, blow job at sea. Check that off your list.
Tomorrow is an early morning….5:30 AM approach to Endicott Fjord and Dawes Glacier. This is the fourth glacier I have been to in the Alaskan Basin in the various trips…no repeats. We will start early on our Balcony and go to the Helipad at 7:15 for an exclusive vantage point. Only the best for our Eddie. We can nap in the afternoon. Oh yeah, if you had Eddie taking a nap this afternoon, you can color that square in. Anyone got Bingo yet?
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