The Sister-In-Law Cruise Event - Day 5

28 August 2024 – Day 5 – Sitka          

 

Sitka has changed their cruise ship dock to a bit out of town, so there are now shuttle buses taking passengers in to the downtown area.  Three years ago we just walked off the ship, up a ramp, and there we were – somehow progress doesn’t always make life easier.  Also, our cruise ship recommended we try to catch the shuttle before 9 AM because a much larger ship was arriving at 9, and that would greatly slow down our getting to downtown in time for our excursions. 

 

However, the 15 minute ride did give us a chance to see more of Sitka Island, rather than only downtown.

 

We were dropped off at Centennial Hall, and I realized I was early for my excursion.  I had chatted with two women at the info counter down at the cruise ship dock, and they said I should try the Chocolate Moose shop for their amazing hot chocolate.  They also make chocolates in the shape of moose, and I thought that would be a fun gift for Richard.

 

I followed their directions, as much as I remembered them.  Apparently I didn’t walk quite far enough, because I didn’t see the Chocolate Moose.  I stopped by a bank and asked the person on the line if he knew where this shop was.  The woman at the teller turned around and said oh, they moved – fortunately, the man in line knew the new location.  It turned out to be barely half a block away.  I thanked everyone, and headed back out into the foggy misty rainy day.  Typical Sitka weather from what I heard.

 

Well, the Chocolate Moose was closed early because they had deliveries.  No hot chocolate for me.  But I could see the old Russian church, and I remembered that my destination, Wild Arts Glass Studio, was a bit to the left of that.  I wandered onward. 

 

Somewhere in my wanderings, I realized I had forgotten my camera.  Yes, that “hurry up to catch the shuttle” surprise at 8:30 AM had me rushing around our cabin, and I completely forgot to grab my camera.  So, the photos here are from 2021 – but these are from the glass studio, and the Russian church is still exactly the same.

 

Of course, the studio is no longer there, they moved.  No one was sure where.  Fortunately, Sitka is not a large city (they have roughly 8500 residents), so it was a short walk back to Centennial Hall.  I found the person collecting excursion participants, and we chatted a bit as she waited for the tour guide to show up.  Everyone else was already gathered and waiting, rather than walking around and getting rather wet.  Oh well.

 

Eventually we headed off, visiting a couple of art galleries before moving on to the glass studio.  Our dedicated readers might remember that I participated in this excursion during our 2021 cruise to Alaska.  I had so much fun, I wanted a repeat.  Plus there aren’t very many art-based excursions, so I was happy to have something that is a make-and-take project.  Art teachers tend to be all about the hands-on kinds of activities.

 

I won’t repeat all the technical and scientific information about working with glass.  Instead, here’s a link to the previous blog, if you’re interested.  I found it all fascinating, and the properties of glass plus the chemicals used to color it definitely make it a challenging medium with which to work!  2021 blog:  https://rollingluggagers.blogspot.com/2021/09/pandemic-diaries-year-2-august-part-iv.html?zx=38436f80c5866825

 

But it turns out the second time pulling a cane is easier than the first!  Also, the current directions are to pull a little bit of molten glass down from the crucible, then turn to create the cane, feeling the tension as the glass twists and cools.  Pull a little more, turn some more – or even try turning in the other direction.  Doing the pull and turn, rather than turning while gently pulling, is definitely easier.

 

Three years ago, I had my cane used in fused glass coasters, and they were lovely.  The instructor and head artist could see my vision, and the resulting coasters are cheery and beachy – they’re that pale aqua green sea glass color, lightly frosted, with a red swirl in a paler “glacier blue” cane.

 

Today, I chose a bright red swirl in a clear glass, and that will be inset in cobalt blue for salad or dessert plates.  I didn’t have a specific design in mind, but the instructor/artist understood that I’m fine with asymmetry and maybe a somewhat avante garde style – we’re leaving it as “artist’s choice” for the exact design.

 

Meaning the plates will be mailed to me in the winter, and they will be a complete surprise!

 

Art glass is a splurge, but being able to participate in making at least a part of any of the items is 100% thrilling!!!

 

 

The Sister-In-Law Cruise Event - Day 4

27 August 2024 – Day 4 – Glacier Bay and Icy Strait Point

 

On Day 4 we sailed up Glacier Bay, a huge waterway stretching up through the islands and mainland of SE Alaska.  Glacier Bay is full of twisting inlets and bays branching off the huge main bay, and is all national park.  No houses, no buildings.  Just water, ice, mountains, and the animals that live here.

 

We cruised up several of the inlets so we could see some of the more impressive glaciers.  Margerie Glacier, in Tarr Inlet, is probably the most beautiful – it has very little moraine mixed in with the ice, moraine being all the rocks and gravel and stuff that gets churned up into a glacier as it moves across the landscape.  Margerie is bright white with blue glowing through the center, truly a pristine glacier!

 

We had all kinds of excitement as we stood on the bow of the ship and watched the glacier.  Some of the early viewers saw a pack of six to eight wolves climbing around on one side of the inlet.  (I wasn’t one of those early people.)  Others saw groups of baby sea otters, though I did hear them chirping and yipping as they swam by.  We saw groups of adolescent (or possibly younger) seals on an ice floe, sleeping young seals as they floated along.  And at least one young sea otter, also slumbering on an ice floe.

 

There were all sorts of birds, mostly a small white gull with a black bar almost at the end of their wings.  I looked for puffins, but didn’t see any.  However, I did see a huge brown and gold raptor kind of bird soar across the water in front of our bow, a HUGE bird!  I’m talking multiple times the size of the gulls!  At first I thought maybe it was a golden eagle, it had that kind of shape and size and coloring.  However, I spoke with the national park ranger who came on board to talk with us about the glaciers, and she said it would be very unusual to see a golden eagle in Alaska.  Our best guess is that this was most likely a young bald eagle, as in a juvenile – they’re dark brown with some mottled golden brown until they’re a few years old, and then they begin to develop the signature white head and tail feathers.  So that was exciting, seeing a juvenile bald eagle!

 

Other big excitement – we saw and heard Margerie Glacier calving!  When chunks break off a glacier, it’s called calving, just like when a chunk of ice breaks off an iceberg and it turns into a smaller ice floe.  The first calving, there was a sound like a giant crack of thunder – BOOM!  We all looked, some in time to see the chunk of ice fall into the water and create a mini tsunami, with waves rolling back and forth.  But then there were numerous smaller calvings, some almost most like a shower of powdered glacier raining down along the face of the glacier!  I actually caught some of that on my camera, although I have to say it looks more like just a blur of white powder.  Still, very exciting!  And more mini tsunamis after each one, marking the displaced water!

 

We also saw Johns Hopkins Glacier, Lamplugh Glacier, and other random glaciers in Johns Hopkins Inlet.  One of these was super dark around the edges with a thin layer of white in the center – that’s a perfect example of moraine, the rocky debris that gets accumulated around the sides of some glaciers as they slowly slowly slide across the land.

           

We saw a whale during lunch – just a few spouts as it exhaled, and glimpses of the back as it dove.  Probably a humpback, always a thrill!  So of course everyone spent half the afternoon looking for more whales!

The Sister-In-Law Cruise Event - Days 1 through 3

24 to 26 August 2024 – Days 1, 2 & 3

My sister-in-law J called me in the late spring/early summer, and said she wanted to go on a trip to Alaska.  And thought it would be fun to do this together.  She knows I’m pretty much up for any adventure.  So we looked at various cruise options, she picked the best dates for her work schedule, and we booked it – another Holland America cruise (because I’m already a something-star Mariner, so I could get us a reasonable discount). 

 

We set sail from Seattle on Saturday 24 August.  It was grey, cold, and rainy, sort of an early end to summer which is all too often typical of the Pacific Northwest.  And also the reason I don’t live here full time any longer.

 

Most cruise lines plan the trips with a sail to the northernmost point they will go to in Alaska, and then schedule port calls as the ship slowly heads back to the point of origin (Seattle or Vancouver).  Actually, on Day 4 we’ll be a bit more north than our stop in Juneau on Day 3, but that’s another half-day of cruising before another land stop, so I suspect that was the plan.

 

At any rate, heading to that northernmost point means roughly two full days of “at sea” time – cruising up through Puget Sound, around the Olympic Peninsula and across the Strait of Juan de Fuca, and then north along the west coast of Vancouver Island.  Onward along the west coast of British Columbia, and then through Stephens Passage to Juneau.  Basically, winding our way through the various waterways that comprise the Salish Sea before heading up to Alaska.

 

That first day, I like to get familiar with the ship’s layout.  A lot of walking back and forth on the non-stateroom decks to figure out what is where, and what things there are to do with all this free time.  Also meeting our room steward, unpacking, all those settling in sorts of things.

 

Day 2 (Sunday) was more exciting.  I always take time to walk through each and every deck, checking out the artwork.  I call it a photo safari, even though there are never any animals.  But I take photos of the artwork and other displays.  This is one of the reasons I really like Holland America, they have wonderful artwork on their ships.  Other cruise lines try to create a more party kind of atmosphere, but HAL has sort of an old world European vibe that I find more relaxing.  (I’ve never really been a party girl.)

 

I found one staircase, from Deck 1 through to 9, dedicated to Rembrandt!  You KNOW I was in retired art teacher Heaven or Nirvana or whatever you’d like to call it.  My idea of the perfect stairway decoration!

 

So I walked ALL over the ship.  Well, I haven’t gone through all of Decks 1 and 2, and there were some closed rooms near the dining rooms on 2 and 3, so I have yet to complete my rounds.  But I have photos of most of the art, and one of these days will do an art blog focusing on all of the wonderful and gorgeous real and reproduction art on HAL ships.

 

J and I wanted to attend a watercolor painting workshop at 1:30.  Turned out it was insanely crowded and there wasn’t a free seat, so we went to the buffet for a quick lunch and returned early to ensure we had seats at the 3 PM reprisal of the workshop.  Yes, I know how to use watercolor.   I’ve taught how to use watercolor.  But I will likely never ever turn down a chance to PAINT!  Well, or to play with any kind of art medium, if I’m being honest.

 

We had a lovely young man instructor, Justin, and we’ll have a series of watercolor workshops throughout the cruise.  Today we learned basic paint techniques (wet-in-wet, dry brush, changing brush pressure, and the fancy word for using salt to create texture – of course, I never remember the word, but the salt crystals draw in the water and create a mottled textured look wherever you sprinkle them).

 

Once everyone experimented with these techniques, we then painted a jellyfish!  Fun!  Lots of experimenting, changing the color intensity to create a look of depth and making our jellyfish more three-dimensional.  Adding mini fish to create movement.  I added a bit of color splash to give some underwater look to my jelly.  It really was fun.

 

So we plan to continue with these workshops.  Justin is also teaching origami at other workshops, as well as other simple one-hour one-and-done sorts of activities.  I’m really pleased to see art workshops onboard the ship – there rarely are such activities, so you know I’m having fun with this!  (And of course, I have my own sketching supplies, so who knows, I might have some artwork to post in these blogs.)

 

Day 3, our morning was spent cruising through Stephens Passage.  We were told this is one of the best places to see whales from the ship, but alas, we only had mysterious islands and mainland wrapped in atmospheric fog, hiding the tops of the rugged hills and mountains.  Grey-green-bluish seas, seagulls, and that has been it.  Lovely and very scenic, but no sea mammals.  And no eagles.  Oh well.

 

As I write this, we’re arriving in Juneau.  Juneau is only accessible by air or sea.  There are roads within Juneau, and out to Mendenhall Glacier.  And a bridge across to another small town, or maybe West Juneau.  But it really is a very small town, and it’s very easy to wander around without getting lost.

 

I’m going to stay aboard the ship this afternoon.  I’ve either walked too much, or maybe it’s just having reached that 70^th birthday at the beginning of the month, but I did something to one hip joint and it is unhappy and complaining loudly.  Rather than limping around Juneau and exacerbating whatever is going on, I’m going to be smart about it (for a change) and try to rest things so I can enjoy the other ports on our trip.  I might try a gentle walk to get some photos, but it will be minimal.  I had a great time wandering through Juneau on our cruise here three years ago, so I’m okay giving it a pass if it means I can continue port wandering in our other docking locations.

 

But really, what’s the point of a blog without photos, right?