DAY FOUR
Not much to say about this day,
which consisted of sailing around
By the end of the day, we were too tired to do the formal dinner thing, so we went to the upper deck and had the buffet for dinner. No telling what this did to the seating arrangements at our assigned table, but the ship truant officer didn’t show up to escort me down to the main dining area, so I assume things were okay.
Back at the stateroom, the towel animal was an elephant. Obviously a crack about my weight; no tip tomorrow.
Today was an early
arrival at our next port of call,
This is where we had booked our one off-shore excursion: a train ride up to a summit on the White Pass and Yukon Railway, following the route that miners took to reach the Yukon from Skagway. Again, a lot of fantastic scenery that, of course, my wordsmithery could do justice to, but it’s too much work for a guy whose fingers can barely reach the laptop keyboard. The train ride was sort of interesting. You take one track all the way up to the summit. The train rides on a shelf up the mountain face, so basically all the folks on the left hand side of the train can look out their window and see gorgeous waterfalls, majestic mountain peaks, and impressive canyons. The people on the right hand side of the train can see a wall of rock. These people paid the same price for their ticket, so most of the time they’re politely asking the folks across the aisle if they can sit in their laps.
But the railway folks have
got it all figured out. When you get to the end of the line, there’s no
loop to head the train back down the mountain. So the train stops, the
engine disconnects and, via a siding, moves around and connects to the
rear of the train. So the rear of the train becomes the front of the
train as you head back down the mountain. But that’s not all. Because
people don’t want to ride backwards on a mountain train, the backs of
the train seats pivot so you can swing them to what used to be the front
of your seat, and now the seat faces the other way! It’s ingenious.
So all the people on the right hand side of
the car who had to look at a close-up of mountainside the whole trip are
now on the left side of the
car and heading a different direction, so they now look at their window
and see…. the same thing they saw on the trip up the mountain. No wait,
that can’t be right.
Oh yeah, I forgot the most important part.
The train operators make all the passengers switch seats with their
across-the-aisle counterparts, so everyone gets the opportunity to see
the same sights and sit on everybody’s lap. When you think about it,
it’s quite a lot of work to avoid a U-turn, which is illegal in
After the train ride, we strolled through the Skagway, which has kept its turn-of- the-century look and consists of a population of about 800 folks who basically make a living during the summer tourist months so they can get out or hole up the other nine months of the year. It was fun to stroll through, but before too long Sue and I headed back to the ship. No hassles with ship security this time… I had thrown the souvenir Smith & Wesson I had purchased onto the balcony of my stateroom from the dock.
We watched a special afternoon show with “Mr. Skagway”, a colorful local who sings songs and tells stories from the mining and whaling days. He was pretty good, but he opened with “North To Alaska”, a song recorded by Johnny Horton for the John Wayne movie of the same name, produced in the early sixties. With such loose criteria for relevant musical numbers, I expected him to launch into “There’s Got To Be A Morning After” from The Poseidon Adventure next. Instead he sang some songs that he had composed and some songs from the era, and told some stories, and was indeed colorful enough to make the show worthwhile. I left the show humming “North To Alaska”; but, of course, I’d been humming it when I arrived, and pretty much during the whole cruise up to this point anyway.
We skipped the evening show again. It dawned on me that American Idol (and before that, Star Search) pretty much exists to keep the cruise industry supplied with vocalists.
We had dinner in the dining room. Things worked out okay; Don and Linda didn’t show up, so the couple from the other table moved over and filled in, thus averting another “empty seat” catastrophe.
The stateroom towel animal for the evening was a lobster. I don’t like shellfish. They give me gout. I won’t leave a tip tomorrow.
All material copyright 2009 Chuck Thornton