It's a Zoo Out There!

There are just a couple things to say about our sea day yesterday…room service, movies (The Proposal and Arthur) and sleep. The entire ship I believe was sick last night and most of the day yesterday.  The seas were certainly not the worst I have seen or experienced but they looked like the Bering Sea on an episode of the Deadliest Catch with the rolling then the pitching. Neither of us were feeling very well but Kay insists we are NOT SEASICK, so therefore we were not. Neither of us was really sick but just not well either.

 She got up this morning with a terrible cold and proudly announced with a very nasal tone “see I told you we weren’t seasick, I have a cold”! We were glad that we did not have a tour planned here because it was raining and chilly. We actually went to breakfast for the first time since we got on instead of having room service breakfast. BUT before we went to breakfast we looked out off our balcony to see a person dressed as a moose in a tuxedo with top hat and cane taking photos on the gangway. Since I find moose to be amusing creatures, it was imperative that I have my photo taken with the moose so we got off and got our picture taken (he poked Kay in the eye with one of his antlers and this girl’s voice says “oh, I’m so sorry ma’am”) so I guess it was a girl moose, then we promptly turned around and went right back up the gangway and up to Lido deck for breakfast! We head off on the ship’s shuttle to downtown Anchorage and realize that where we are docked is known as “Ship’s Creek” and Kay and I both said at about the same time that it would be “tough to be up ship’s creek without a shuttle” (we passed a small bus known as the Ship’s Creek Shuttle) then of course we laughed and laughed although others do not find us near as funny as we find ourselves. We get dropped off near the visitors center downtown which has grass growing on the roof. We decide to walk around for awhile and we stopped and bought a few things then had some lunch in a deli that had the best clam chowder I (and Kay agreed) have ever eaten then I had a bowl of caribou stew described as the local favorite and it was quite good,. Kay photographed our lunch so you can check her blog for those photos and we then decided to take the one hour trolley tour. This turned out to be the bomb of the day. The lady driving told us about her arrival in Alaska and her husband’s family is a prominent family in Anchorage. She is a school teacher and we are told that ours (the Holland America Lines, Amsterdam) is the first ship to dock in Anchorage in 27 years! Everyone it seems is happy to have a ship back here again. Princess and Holland both run their land tours to Anchorage but we are the only ship. We actually saw the train and I got a picture of it today. While on the tour, Mrs. McCarey gave us a full account of the devastation of the 1964 earthquake that was a 9.1 (later I read it was 8.2 I think) and centered in Valdez but had the most damage here being the most populated.  It went on for 3 ½ minutes which is a long time for something like that to be happening. All the downtown Anchorage buildings were leveled and a whole neighborhood of homes disappeared into the large crevices formed when the plates were moving. While we were leaving earthquake park as it is known, we saw two moose grazing in the field across the street. We took some pictures and then she told us a story of her own experience with a moose. She said everyone here has a moose story to tell. They can be very mean and she said a female generally weighs about 1200 lbs and a full grown male will be upwards of 1800 lbs so they are not something you want to rub the wrong way for sure because they a very quick and will use the hooves and antlers to attack you if they are threatened or they don’t find your jokes funny…anyway, she was very enjoyable and showed us and told us a lot about the area. The Firebush is known here to tell about the snowfall each year She said she has lived here for 34 years and as class projects has measured them and then the snowfall and she said that is has been true. Where we stopped to look at some growing in a nearby field, they were already blooming and she said that means an early snowfall and they are already measuring 75 inches tall. She said generally they average 72 inches of snow per year. She also took us past an area that has the most small planes both regular and float planes I have ever seen. She said per capita that more Alaskan’s own planes than any other state. She said kids will have their pilot license here before their driver’s license. It also seems to be born out of necessity if you see how remote almost all of this state is. They definitely like Teddy and Ike here and are happy to be part of the USA. . Mrs. McCarey said there is a pod of Beluga whales that hangs out in the Cook Inlet too. We also went to the Ulu Knife Factory which everyone seems to have heard of except me, then went to the Iditarod Dog Sledding Show which was interesting to hear about how that race is done with the dogs each year. It begins in downtown Anchorage and is an 1100 mile trip…oh yes, definitely something I would want to do. These people are serious mushers and the dogs are not the beautiful malamutes they show in the movies but Alaskan Huskies that are not all fluffy with hair and are rather lean and scruffy looking. We did get to take a picture of the dog that was in the Disney movie Snow Buddies and he was a gorgeous dog with the most beautiful blue eyes. We also went to look in the river behind the factory because the salmon were supposed to be starting to some upstream this week but apparently they didn’t like the rain or they were arguing over who would be the first to go because we didn’t see any. That’s ok though because we saw a lot of them in Ketchikan. After that we headed back to catch the shuttle back to the ship and went to dinner. I went and got change and I’m doing laundry and Kay stopped to listen to Diane in the piano bar for awhile. We are here until 11 PM tonight and tomorrow is our fishing excursion in Homer. I am hoping that I don’t get Kay’s cold tomorrow morning since it took her half the day before she really felt like she would survive today. I felt bad for her. Oh and Carol, we have not seen one dolphin so far this trip anywhere…which is odd because we have seen just about everything else. We are trying to read the comments but uploading the photos for you is eating up our internet package and we are already on our second one. Just wanted you to know that we are reading them even if we don’t respond right away. Ok, gotta go get he clothes out of the dryer and then get ready for tomorrow. Stay tuned.