Friday, July 10^th

Anchorage, AK

• Stubbs the cat was voted mayor of Talkeetna, Alaska (a small town at the base of Mt McKinley) in 1997.  With that kind of political pluck in the state, it explains a lot about their past choice for governor.
• While it is legal to shoot bears in Alaska, waking a sleeping bear for the purpose of taking a photograph is prohibited. Damn those legislators are sharp

For those of you who in the past have lived vicariously thru Travels with Mary & Andy, it’s 4:47am and I’m heading down to the hotel laundromat to do a load of clothes. Yep, that’s the swinging, swirling world of us international jetsetters.  On the positive side for all you living in drought-stricken California, the hotel shower is like standing in front of a fire hose turned on full. No more heading to the shower with a half-filled mason jar of leftover dishwater and a turkey baster to spritz yourself with, just to wash your hair! This is a real shower like in the old days. Hold on a sec’… I gotta’ go put the laundry in the drier so we have something clean and dry to wear on the plane.

Today we flew from Anchorage back to Juneau, a quick 1½-hour flight. Upon arrival at the airport, we cram 12 weary travelers with way too much luggage into a 10-passenger van, with everyone forced to get cozy, whether they wanted to or not. Tomorrow we board the boat for the next segment of our trip.

Saturday, July 11^th

Juneau, AK

• It is illegal to whisper in someone’s ear while they are moose hunting in Alaska. Uhhh… can I ask why???

Finally, a place to sleep with room darkening drapes (or are these curtains, Janet?). Now, instead of waking up at 4:10am as I have been all week because my body thinks it’s dawn, I slept to 6:40!! Unfortunately, the king size bed we had was more like a hammock than a mattress, at least on my side. The massive divot missing on my side had been hauled over to the middle of the mattress, causing a large lump and making cuddling kinda’ hard, but Mary’s side was just fine, naturally!

We started the day off by going for a walk up a long steep hill, only to come to what felt like an additional 14,291 sets of stairs to get us up even higher to where we wanted to go. As we huffed, puffed and panted just half way up the hill, some young whippersnapper came running past us and then continued jogging up the stairs without even breathing hard – damn showoff! The climb was well worth it though; at the top was a trailhead that continued climbing up into the mountains, or continued on the street. We decided to stay on the road and came to a bridge overlooking a gorge with a river running thru it, fed in part from a waterfall coming off the mountaintop. With an average of 12” of rain per month, there is a constant flow of water coming down, but everything is also very green. After the hike, we had lunch at the world famous Tracy’s Crab Shack, where our very friendly waitress was on a student exchange work program from Jamaica mon’ - just a bit out of her environment in the cold, damp, foggy conditions here in Alaska.

After boarding the boat and getting settled in, we had dinner and a talk about the areas we’re going to, as we got underway. The captain looks and talks just like Walter White from Breaking Bad.