Friday, June 30, 1995
Ate a lazy breakfast, attended a slide show and shopping lecture. Then off to the casino (sans tux) to return some of the ship's money. We had another dismal showing at team trivia (but if they divided the scores by the sum of the ages of the team members...). We ate lunch and took a quick tour of the bridge.By now the ship was docked in Wrangell. If we took the northbound leg of this cruise we would have stopped in Sitka instead. Sitka is a marvelous old Russian town and is supposed to be a wonderful place to visit. Wrangell is nice too... if you like hardware stores. In a way, Wrangell is authentic Alaska. The cruise ship doubles the town's population when it docks, but the locals don't show any pretensions. The first store you reach when walking off the pier is an auto parts store. We saw at least four hardware stores; the town is supposed to have six. There were lots of dogs out and about which bodes well for the town as far as I am concerned. We walked a mile or two out of town to a beach with old petroglyphs -- and plenty of Bald Eagles. Back to town, then a half mile in the other direction we found a park with several totem poles. The totem poles were replicas of the originals found at that site. Real totem poles only last about 75 years in nature, so the originals were taken down in 1981 and preserved.
Returning to the ship we listened to what was nominally big band music for a while. Then changed into our 50's and 60's clothes (well, I did, even if not a single other passenger on the ship was game). Table 19 achieved an impressive gastronomic feat -- and probably some permanent injuries -- at dinner. The four of us ate an entire basket of bread, seven appetizers, three soups, two salads, five entrees and nine desserts. We then waddled off to the night's show, and not surprisingly skipped the midnight buffet.
Animals seen:
- Bald Eagles
Grateful for:
- Sunscreen
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