June 21, 2018

Whales and Otters and Seals, Oh MY!

Happy Solstice!  That’s what we Alaskans say today.  Back home it would be “Happy Pride!” This is nominally the first day of summer and the longest day of the year in the land of the midnight sun.  As it turns out it is a second shorter than yesterday.  It’s hard to trust anything anymore.

After our cancelled glacier cruise in Shittier (I really accidentally typed that instead of Whittier—Hmmm) we booked a wildlife cruise here in Seward. We have an 11:00 am check-in and we want to pick up a sandwich before we board.  There is a Safeway just beyond the boat harbor where we explore a bit and grab a couple sandwiches and a bag of Fritos. There is a lame buffet on board but we have fallen for that one before.

Seating is assigned based on when you made your reservation.  Our table of six is about three-fourths of the way toward the front of the ship on the upper of two decks.  We are joined by a family of four Russkies.  Mom and Dad are speaking only Russian and the two kids (ages 9 and 12) speak Russian to the folks but an unaccented English to the rest of us. The parents don’t say a word to us throughout the trip but Dad comes out with an occasional “Oh Da” and “Nyet, nyet.” We arrive at the table first and grab the window seats which we immediately reconsider after we get pinned in like sardines. The tables are so close together that you can’t pull away from the table, nor move left or right. We non-verbally communicate to each other that we’re screwed for the next five hours.

Fortunately once we got moving there was constant motion among the passengers and our table mates were up and down as were we so we had some breathing room.  Temps were in the mid-fifties with low clouds and damp air.  It was the type of cold that didn’t alarm you, but it worked its way into your bones if you were out long. That limited the amount of time we wanted to be outside.  We normally waited until the skipper or on-board ranger announced a sighting of some sort.

Over the five hours all of the suspects made an appearance thanks to a lot of local knowledge by the captain. We saw Dall porpoises, harbor seals, puffins, eagles, sea lions, sea otters, and the stars of the show, humpback whales. We saw four separate whales including one pair feeding together. Bear glacier was very dramatic. Everyone considered it a successful cruise.

Our problem was kids.  We normally travel in the fall and we will try to never travel in the summer again after today. The small children on board probably made up 40% of the population and created at least 90% of the noise. There were so many kids that there were always at least a couple screaming their little lungs out.  About three hours into the trip the parents had given up, any semblance of order had gone overboard, and the kids had literally taken over the ship.  They should have been shot as pirates. It was Chuck E. Cheese with no escape. Crotchety?  You betcha!

And yet, we survived. Until we got back to the hotel at 5:30 and our room had not been cleaned. We called the front desk and they said the Do Not Disturb sign was hanging on the door.  Actually it was the Please Make Up the Room sign. They were very sorry but the cleaning staff had gone home for the day. There was a fellow doing laundry and they would see if he would clean the room. At 7:00 we had heard nothing else so stopped at the desk on our way to dinner. A new person was there who knew nothing of the problem.  Good grief. We told them to bring towels and coffee and that eventually happened.

We had made reservations for the hotel dining room, a little 4-table place with one server/bartender, one cook and a two-item menu. When we made the reservation we got to pick one of the two items and selected grilled salmon.  It was served with unseasoned white rice, asparagus spears with the woody ends intact and a dill butter sauce that was pretty good. Once again we uncovered about three hours of incredibly weak performance by our hospitality brethren. Disappointing.

We brought our bottle of wine back to our room so we had that going for us, which was nice.

Today’s good idea:  Adult Wildlife Cruises!