Monday, June 26, 1995
Loaded up the Ford one last time for the three hour drive to Seward. This
is one of the most beautiful drives
I have ever taken. For the first hour
or so the road winds along the Turnagain Arm (named for all the explorers
who thought it was a river and had to turn around when they discovered it
wasn't). The inlet experiences 33 foot tides, one of the largest in the
world. The tide often rushes back in as a wall of water up to 10 feet
high. This phenomena is known as a bore tide. People venturing out on the
mud flats during low tide can perish when caught unaware. According to one
of our favorite signs, "Even strong swimmers such as moose have been known
to perish in a bore tide."
Spotted some Dall sheep
on the cliffs above the road. Two youngsters were
right next to the road and we were able to get some good pictures.
Unfortunately, most of the wildlife we saw during the trip was fairly close
(and larger than life in the binoculars), but too far away for our 35mm
instant cameras with their anemic zoom capability.
By 3:00pm we reached Seward, a small port town. I returned the Ford. I spent some time writing a lengthy letter complaining about the temperature gauge -- it occasionally showed the car was overheating. Slamming the dash until my knuckles were raw would usually fix the problem. Still it was a bit disconcerting the first time it happened since we were 100 miles from nowhere (and about 50 miles from Anchorage) on the George Parks Highway. Hertz gave me $52 off the total rental bill. Not bad for a few scraped knuckles.
Soon we were all on the beautiful
Cunard Crown Dynasty.
We unpacked and
explored the ship. The ship was virtually empty since most passengers fly
to Anchorage that day and are bussed to Seward. They don't begin to arrive
until 7:00pm. In fact, our ship was late departing and didn't get underway
until after 10:00pm. It turned out that a Princess Cruise Line ship in
Alaska had struck a rock. At the last minute our ship became host to 300
displaced Taiwanese tourists. This made for a very full ship, but it
wasn't boring. The Taiwanese were wonderfully nice people on an individual
basis. Most didn't speak English, but communication was possible through
the universal method of gestures and misunderstanding. However, en masse
the Taiwanese were... well, culturally very different from Americans. It
was interesting.
We ate dinner (which was open seating because of the late arrivals) then attended the "Welcome Aboard" briefing and show. The midnight buffet usually was held at 11:45pm on the Crown Dynasty. We attended anyhow. The early time was probably to accommodate the elderly crowd. We were easily the youngest people on the ship who weren't accompanied by their parents (or grandparents). We retired to our cabins after playing a quick game of spades.
Animals seen:
- Dall Sheep
- Amazed us by revealing that he only goes to the bathroom twice a day. Where does a skinny guy like that keep such a large bladder?
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