After a fitful and shorter than necessary night ( I have to keep an eye on the time or I won’t get fed) I was up and raring to hit the gym….
Oh ok…… not so much raring as feeling the guilt of the day before indulgences!) but when I got there all the treadmills were taken by the elderly so after a short weights session, I decided to run around the sports deck again today ( yep - chilly in the gym gear) then walk around Deck 3’s wrap around deck that apparently 3 ½ laps equates to 1 mile. I would have done that easily before I figured I better have breakfast before it wasn’t available anymore.
I wasn’t in any kind of hurry though because we were only due to dock at Juneau at 11 am. I had put my clock back the hour necessary to be on the Alaskan time in the 49th state’s capital - which still felt like a short night.
Turns out after the photo op of the docking and the disembarkation procedures - just ‘bonging’ my room card with the barcode reader for verification that it is actually me - I’m home free and let loose on the unsuspecting Juneau public.
After walking off the ship conveniently literally in the centre of town, I decided to chase up my helicopter flight booking and see if it still stood seeing as I had neglected to contact them again prior to departure from Australia.
After realising that I had actually been apparently functioning two hours ahead of time - yep, in my slightly inebriated/ sleep deprived state the night before - I’d put my clock forward an hour rather than back. Which while not good for the sleep, meant that I had two hours up my sleeve to fill in.
So I changed a $5 bill into dimes, quarters, one cents and one dollar bills, and phoned the helicopter company and finalised my booking for later in the day - or so I thought.
Steve and Sherri departed for their hiking excursion in the mountains and I hit the shops while I waited for the flight. I’m sure I didn’t see all of the shops by any stretch. The jewellery stores are plentiful, the local handicrafts superb and the fudge shop to die for.
I bought some gorgeous handcrafted items for myself and gifts and fudge of course. Still no fridge magnet.
I went into the legendary Red Dog Saloon for a look and bought the obligatory garter that I then wore ( over my jeans) for the remainder of the day.
At the appointed time, I was waiting for my pickup from Juneau for Coastal Heli tours. And I waited. And I waited. And I waited. And I waited. And no shuttle arrived. By ½ past when they were supposed to have been there, I rang them again because I was getting a little worried and decided to see if they had forgotten me.
Sure enough there’d been a mix up and they’d be there presently.
Yeah right.
I waited in another designated spot for another ½ hour by which time I had cooled down and was almost frozen by the time they got there.
All irritation at being made to wait in two cold locations for over an hour dissipated on the drive to the helipad.
In the office I was fitted with weird but warm and grippy over-the-boots boots and an arctic parka.
Do they think its going to be cold or something?
It doesn’t do to be too concerned about vanity in those two garment choices that’s for sure. UUUUUGLY… barely covers it.
BUT LORDY - I’d have frozen solid in moments and needed to be reconstituted later like Walt had I not had them on.
Now I know how a frozen choock feels.
And the worst bit was that I had left my gloves in the chopper when we went glacier walking, compounding my frozen digits plight.
We were weighed prior to take off and then placed in the chopper according to their calculations about the weight balance. Unfortunately for me, I was the littlest of the bunch and placed in the centre of the back seat with barely ½ a seat to squeeze my cheeks onto thanks to ( warning : politically incorrect stuff follows) the seriously humungous women on either side of me….I felt like a slice of cheese. I thought there was supposed to be a weight cut off. Take off and any banking saw us listing seriously to the side of the largest woman and our poor pilot Erik having to compensate constantly with his little switches and dials to keep us level.
And as Murphy’s law dictates, my video camera went for a sum total of 15 seconds - I’d charged the batteries alright… just hadn’t checked to see if there were enough room on the disk… that would be a nope.
DUH!
Thankfully I was well equipped in the photo stakes and just brought the little point and shoot to the fore and the canon intermittently.
What an amazing thing Heli flight is.
I LOVED it from the second I put on that headset and mike and took photos till my camera’s almost smoked. I especially loved it when the pilot banked … that was wicked.
The Glacier was just phenomenally huge and just as cold. Only one major crevasse to look at due to the melt being underway and we weren’t allowed to go near any patches of snow lest there be a hidden endless drop underneath. There were some gorgeous melt pools to see also and the pilot pointed out a goat that just looked like a dirty cream lump - even with the telephoto lens.
All too soon the walk was over ( but was probably at least 20 minutes) and anyway, the cold was bone chilling. The views of the other glaciers and the Mendenhall river ( don’t quote me on that - will have to check that when I get home) were just breathtaking. Because the glaciers are melting and moving, there is a lot of dirt mixed in with ice so it makes some interesting dirty stripes in the mountains of frozen water. When the ice pushes against itself, in its quest forward, it splits and becomes chunky like a pile of giant misshapen ice cubes that then fall off ( or calve) from the main chunk of the glacier. Although the one I saw was mostly over land.
After being dropped back in downtown Juneau I shopped a while longer before hearing a hearty American accented ‘G’day’ across the street. Steve and Sherri were back from their excursion and so we headed for a nearby bar that had all the flavour of the Alaskan wilderness and then some. Neon Budweiser lights, stuff hanging from the roof, plasma screen for the sports fans and packed to the rafters with punters.
We were all starving having missed lunch because of our trips. First came Steves huge bowl of ( sorry Steve… J ) stinky clams… Sherri had prawns I think and I had what I thought was going to be chicken steak ( which is obviously code for something else - still don’t know what it actually was, but it was WICKED. ) enough garlic mashed potatoes to feed three, to simply enormous ‘chicken steaks’ and a mystery vege that turned out to be apple in a glutenous yellow sauce. The whole thing was absolutely delicious. I was so full I didn’t have dinner.
After sitting perhaps an hour or so and then hitting the ATM, shopping just a little more, we too photos of huge animals.
Now… I noticed that throughout all of the ports we called at they had a penchant for these totally huge and possibly life sized bears, moose, whales and animatronic miner types. There were some in every town and they were an absolute hoot. All I might add, made of real fur.
They made for some pretty funny photos.
It was about then that Steve mentioned that they had eaten spruce tips on their hike. Naturally I was dubious that they’d been eating pine needles so I challenged him on it. Unfortunately for me (for the second time that day) I just happened to be standing right next to a spruce with those ‘lovely’ new green tips on it. That was it…. I was put on the spot and I had no choice but to eat my words literally along with a newly plucked spruce tip.
Are you wondering what it tasted like?
TREE!
Bleuuugggh! Never spat anything out so fast in my life.
And all I could taste till that nights first DOD back onboard was the nasty flavour of pine needles…. Not unlike sucking on a toilet freshener.
A DOD or two later, and the taste dissipated along with the tiredness of my legs from walking almost non stop all day.
We sat in the Ocean bar like most nights and watched out of the huge windows, the beautiful port of Juneau slipping behind us, despite the fact that it was 11pm and still like it was 5 in the afternoon. It stays light till almost midnight.
Lots of laughs later and we all called it a day- the dirty stop outs of the Ocean bar we were…. Nearly always the last to leave. We’ve tried most of the bars but this is our favourite.
Just a fabulous day all round.
There were also several other things on my ‘if I had time’ list but nothing beats the conversation and brilliant fun with friends.
I’m loving this cruise.
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