(Sorry about the timestamp at the upper right corner... it was an accident, when I was fooling around with the settings of the camera. It doesn’t even show the right time!) IM000741.JPG Me and my beautiful windswept girlfriend Lisa... IM000742.JPG Great comedy-of-errors shot, eh? An attempt at the first formal wear shot for the first formal dinner. IM000743.JPG Us with our friends and tablemates—from left to right, Nancy, her husband Don, me, and Lisa. IM000744.JPG Finally, a successful formal wear shot of us! IM000745.JPG Self-portrait of us taken by Lisa IM000747.JPG Us next to the elevators (this is a 10-story ship after all!) IM000748.JPG Us looking all cute... IM000749.JPG Little islands at the north end of Vancouver Island IM000750.JPG The last lighthouse of this little archipelago, there on the right! IM000751.JPG Little islands at the north end of Vancouver Island IM000752.JPG Looking back at the little islands at the north end of Vancouver Island IM000753.JPG Little islands that mark the last protected water before venturing into the wave-tossed, stumble-inducing open ocean for several hours... IM000754.JPG Approaching Juneau! IM000755.JPG Approaching Juneau, only to find that another cruise liner has taken the last of the few cruise-liner-sized docks on the waterfront—so instead of just walking a gangway to shore, we have to anchor out in the harbor and ride these little tender boats to shore! IM000756.JPG And another mega-cruise-liner docked at Juneau—the Radiance of the Seas IM000757.JPG Juneau and surrounding forested mountainside IM000758.JPG Juneau and surrounding forested mountainside IM000759.JPG Looking northward, the Douglas bridge in the background IM000760.JPG No room for downtown Juneau to grow, obviously... IM000761.JPG 19th century brass band instruments on display—a Sarussophone on the left IM000762.JPG Me and Lisa at Mendenhall Glacier IM000763.JPG Mendenhall Glacier, Mendenhall Lake, and me IM000764.JPG Lisa at Mendenhall Glacier IM000765.JPG Another self-portrait of both of us by Lisa, at Mendenhall Glacier IM000766.JPG Us at Mendenhall Glacier IM000768.JPG A poster in Juneau. Those of us who have been all the way to Tok (especially if you’re Skip or Sparky!) would presumably find this book or this magic show amusing... IM000770.JPG The valley that Skagway’s in is one big wind funnel, as locals know, and as Lisa’s finding out... IM000771.JPG Finally, an almost-full-length shot of our ship! In Skagway. IM000772.JPG Me at the dock at Skagway IM000773.JPG Our ship—its entire length captured in one photo—docked at Skagway IM000774.JPG The train station, to catch the train to the Yukon! IM000775.JPG Near the Skagway waterfront IM000776.JPG Near the Skagway waterfront, a sculpture commemorating the mostly ill-fated miners IM000777.JPG Broadway in Skagway, AK—with the storefronts restored to their gold rush glory! IM000779.JPG Skagway’s Broadway, on the (typically) grey day we were there IM000781.JPG A living relic not of the days of ’98, but of the mid-20th-century golden age of electric signs! IM000782.JPG Lisa explores Skagway’s overgrown backstreets IM000783.JPG In the days of the 1898 Gold Rush, these tiny buildings were “cribs”—squalid little one-room, one-prostitute shacks IM000784.JPG More Gold Rush storefronts in Skagway, now housing gift shops and jewelry stores for cruise ship passengers! IM000785.JPG That’s our ship, the Zaandam, at the end of the street—it’s bigger than anything in Skagway! Holds more people too—1400 passengers, compared to 800 year-round residents of the town IM000786.JPG See the salmon in that little creek? IM000787.JPG The narrow-guage railroad about to take us from Skagway up to the gold fields! Actually, only to the Canadian border, at Chilkoot Pass IM000788.JPG Me on the tracks! IM000791.JPG Yes, it’s a narrow-guage railway—some three feet (don’t quote me on that!) between the rails IM000792.JPG Looking down at Skagway and the cruise ships! IM000793.JPG The rapids of the Skagway river IM000795.JPG The US customs station, on the Skagway highway on the other side of the canyon (a few miles from the border) IM000796.JPG The glacier-scoured mountaintop, and a reflection in the train window... IM000798.JPG Mountains near Chilkoot Pass IM000799.JPG Looking back at the train crossing a tributary of the Skagway river IM000800.JPG Looking back at the train as it keeps on climbing... IM000801.JPG Mountains near Chilkoot Pass IM000803.JPG The tunnel just before Chilkoot Pass... IM000804.JPG Where the railroad cuts through, way back on the other side of the gorge... IM000805.JPG Me at Chilkoot Lake, at Chilkoot Pass! (The lake flows into the Skagway river on one end, and also into a trubutary of the Yukon River on the other end! Perched on the continental divide as it is, you spit in this lake, you don’t know whether it’s gonna end up into the Pacific or the Bering Sea!) IM000806.JPG Lisa snaps another self-portrait, in the train! I don't care what she or her co-workers think, I think she looks cute in braids! IM000807.JPG But when the cruise ships leave (or are about to, as when I took this picture), the little town of Skagway rolls up its sidewalks... IM000808.JPG Count ’em—four cruise ships in Skagway’s little harbor! IM000809.JPG Entering Glacier Bay! The weather suddenly got BEAUTIFUL that morning, just in time for the most scenic part of the cruise! IM000810.JPG Ahhh! Those mountains in the distance! And check out the tiny-looking cruise ship... IM000811.JPG Closer up, though a little crooked... IM000812.JPG Glacier Bay! I’m afraid I wasn’t listening to the guy on the intercom telling us the names of these glaciers, or of the mountains... IM000813.JPG Glacier Bay! Understandably, it was considerably colder here than it was fifty miles away in Skagway... IM000814.JPG Some freshly glacier-scoured rock faces in Glacier Bay IM000815.JPG Our last port of call before the end of the cruise: Ketchikan! IM000816.JPG See all the salmon in the harbor? You’ll see more later... IM000817.JPG The houses on the left side of the creek here are on Creek Street, in downtown Ketchikan. The “street” is just a boardwalk alongside the houses—all of which are built on pilings on the creek and/or hillside, and all of which were brothels back in the day! Im000818.jpg Okay, NOW you can see the salmon... swimming up Ketchikan Creek in Ketchikan, the “Salmon Capitol of the World”! IM000819.JPG Couple-self-portait with Creek Street and the creek in the background IM000820.JPG Trying for a cuter self portrait... IM000821.JPG More salmon (the dark long shapes, see?) swimming up the Ketchikan Creek.
Okay, I gotta tell the punchline... back in the early days of Ketchikan, Creek Steet was know as “where men and salmon go upsteam to spawn”... IM000823.JPG Me with the “madam”/tour guide of Dolly’s House, a former brothel, now tourist attraction—well, museum, really—on Creek Street. This house was the home and workplace of Dolly Arthur, a “sporting girl”, entrepeneur, and beloved chum of fishermen and miners that frequented Creek Street. IM000824.JPG Lisa with the same “painted lady” who told us the tales of Dolly... IM000825.JPG So, we were walking down the street in Ketchikan, and Lisa sees a sign in a store window saying “meet an Iditerod sled dog” or some such, and we walk in, and the fellow in the picture—who turns out to be Ray Redington Jr., grandson of Iditerod founder Joe Redington—introduces us to this fair-haired pooch Tommy, who’s been Rays lead dog in no less than 3 Iditerods! Tommy’s 5 years old and still at the top of his game! IM000826.JPG Ray’s trying to get sponsors for the upcoming Iditerod, and what better way to attract potential donors than with this leetle sled dog puppy! Isn’t he just the cutest little muttski ever?!? IM000827.JPG As usual, our ship’s just about bigger than the little Alaskan town it’s docked in... or at least, it’s as high as this bluff just north of downtown Ketchikan. IM000828.JPG I took a walk on that bluff just north of downtown—evidently it’s one of the early rich neighborhoods of Ketchikan. IM000829.JPG From the bluff, I looked northward to the hillside Ketchikan’s built right up against. IM000830.JPG Yes, as you can see, the stack of our ship the m.s. Zaandam is just higher than eye level when seen from the top of that rich-neighborhood bluff... IM000831.JPG This old house is built on such a steep hillside that what looks like a single-story home from the front lawn, is actually three (or four?) stories, all of which you can see from the left side... IM000832.JPG And so on the last night of our cruise, I decided to get documentary pics of some of the notable sights on board the ship itself. First off, this enormous, ornate organ-pipe sculpture thingy, taking up three of the ten stories of the ship, in the Atrium. IM000833.JPG One of the several bands on board, in one of the several bars on board, playing everything from the Charleston to funk. IM000834.JPG The stage and lower level seats of the Mondrian Lounge, where Vegas-style floor shows were shown IM000835.JPG And—what would a luxury cruise liner be without a casino?? IM000836.JPG And what would an on-board casino be without slot machines?? IM000837.JPG I still don’t understand the connection between ocean travel and buying jewelry. But in addition to the many jewelry stores at each little Alaskan hamlet we docked at, passengers could just buy jewelry aboard the ship! IM000839.JPG And here’s the Internet cafe, where I kept current on my job search... IM000840.JPG Uh, excuse me, Skipper, but... the decor is confusing! Are we supposed to be in the South Seas or the Far North? The totem pole looks almost Polynesian, but the snowshoes... IM000845.JPG I wish the bands had a real horn section and/or string section instead of a MIDI synthesizer module (Roland SC88) to imitate horns and strings, but the band members probably wish the same thing... IM000843.JPG Here’s our cabin—with Lisa trying not to be in the picture, but in the picture anyway... IM000844.JPG Landfall, and conclusion of cruise, at Vancouver!