Week 27

This week was the cruise. The cruise was generally a sit down for a week holiday. A large amount of food was consumed and there was a lot of drinking while many cruise patrons volunteered their answers to the many trivia and 'game' shows available. Two of the days we spent entirely at sea scoffing at the many people running to the rare sightings of whales. The cruise ship had a circumference of half a kilometer and was packed with 2 golf driving cages, 3 shuffleboard courts, 2 ping pong tables, and lots of restaurants, bars, and buffets; and small rooms. As I said before, the best part about our room was that we had an awesome janitor. On one of the later days we went and explored some of the glaciers but was pretty uninteresting, 1 seal (says dad) and barely any (visible) ice. The first day after departing, was at sea. For that day I managed to win the ping pong competition. Unfortunately, on one of the later days, all the adults found out and there were platoons of people wanting to play. I got to the semis, but then a Chinese man who had his own ping-pong bat in a case destroyed me, while dad also got obliterated by his son. Throughout the cruise there were other events like trivia, shuffleboard tournament (which mum and I won), and lots of other things which earned you points. We collected 30 points and were given a t-shirt, water bottle and a deck of cards. That was basically the routine on-board the cruise ship; sleep, eat, play, eat, drink, eat, sleep... While on land we tried to do as much walking as we could. We travelled up two very steep mountains, shopped, and walked some more. The first town we went to was Ketchikan. There wasn't much there, not even shops. The only thing we could find to do was go for a hike up the Deer Mountain trail. It was wet and rained at the end, but once we walked a mile to the viewing platform we had a pretty good view of the town, the numerous cruise ships, and sea planes. The second village we went to was the capital of Alaska, Juneau. There we undertake another strenuous walk up the mountain. It seemed much harder, probably because of the stress (especially on the knees) from the last walk. At least once at the top there was a tram that took you back to the bottom. The third, and last place in Alaska, that we topped at was Skagway. Although we didn't do much that regular tourists would do, we went to some show called "Days of '98". I didn't like it very much, but they called on someone from the audience to help; he was the star of the show. Other than that we bought a couple of souvenirs from the shops. We got a hand crafted totem, mum bought an Ulu knife, and we got some dolls and a book. The only other place we stopped was Prince Rupert in Canada, where we bought some Canadian dollars and went to Safeway. Other than that the remainder of the cruise was eating, drinking, sleeping. The next day we spent at sea, doing just that. We also had a day in Seattle. We went to one of the museums which had an exhibit on fears. I did the falling, loud noises,& electricity displays but reaching my hand into the black box filled with cockroaches, scorpions and tarantulas was out of the question. From there we went to the airport and caught our plane back to Denver. Our first excursion of America. We got home and slept well, and rested on Sunday.
PICTURES ARE ON SEPARATE PAGE: "CRUISE"