Pappa Hardy's Musings on Life.

Bonnie and I now have made 4 cruises. 3 of these cruises were on the Golden Princess. Two of those were to the same destination and one of those was with her mother Shirley and a cruising companion. The interesting thing is that there are some really different things on this cruise and some that are the same. For the most part, the ship is the same. They have renovated some things, moving the casino from the 6th deck to the 7th, making it bigger and opening it up to outside windows on the Promenade deck. They have taken some space away that was accessible to all passengers and made it a limited access and you have to pay extra (that sucks). They have added a movie under the stars movie screen which is nice. You can sit up on deck under the stars, which a wonderful movie, have a blanket to cover you and keep you warm, and have some popcorn. That is great. The biggest negative change is the entertainment. The original entertainment to me was world class. This trip, it is much harder to get new and different entertainers in to perform in the evenings, and the ones that are here are uninspiring and we have them every night. I have been disappointed in that, but that does give us more time in the evening to do what we want like read and wander the ship. All together, not a bad new ship. I probably will always follow where the Golden Princess is traveling around the world.

I love flying. I love being able to look out the window and look for Miles and Miles. This is such a grand and wonderful country. I love looking out and seeing miles and miles of clouds, each and every one different, unique, and in its own way beautiful. I like looking at sunsets as you glide over the clouds, the dark shades becoming unique and different.

I like being able to see the Vehicle Assembly Building at the Kennedy Space Center standing out for miles and miles away. I like the shape of the mountains, the shading on the hills, the haze, the clarity, the beauty of it all.

I love to fly, and one reason I love to fly is that you can see for miles and miles.

My wife can be so predictable. In our cruise stop at Ketchikan at the Rainforest Wilderness Sanctuary, the guide started the tour off by telling us what to do if we came across a black bear during the tour. Given the scarcity of wildlife we had seen up to that point, I am sure that Bonnie was thinking that nothing was really going to happen.

Imagine my wife’s reaction when within 5 minutes of starting our tour, that someone spotted a black bear through the underbrush. Sure enough, there was a black bear. I looked at my wife, to find that her eyes were wide open, her shoulders hunched up, and her body wanted to let out that scream that the guide had warned us not to make. She wanted to run that you could tell that it was tormenting her. To her credit, she did what instructed to do, and we had no problem with the bear, which was no further than 30 feet from us. There was black bear terror for her, but she handled it admirably.

Today was one of those experiences in your life that you will never forget. At about 7am we entered what is called the Tracy Arm Fjord of the Inside Passage in Alaska, with the object of sailing up to and almost touching the Sawyer Glacier. We sailed up the Fjord seeing incredible cliffs and mountains, and what they call hanging glaciers. The site was not unlike Yosemite National Park. It was incredible. Toping it all off was sailing up within a mile of (it seemed much closer, like ¼ mile) the Sawyer Glacier. It was a site I shall never forget, a glacier, the mountains, the icebergs, and the natural high that we experienced.

Tonight my whale watching finally paid off, and very much by accident. Whale watching is a hard job. When they say it is a whale of a job, that means it is hard work. Whale watching hasn’t been much different. I spent a lot of time trying to see them, and up till now have only been rewarded by a fin here, a blowing of air there, but nothing more than just a little bit of flesh.

Tonight we were sitting waiting to go to dinner on Deck 5 in a bar (now don’t think anything bad, I was drinking a Diet Coke) when I noticed everyone looking out the window. I looked out and saw not only one, but several whales surfacing and moving around. I immediately notified Bonnie and we saw them, and a lot of fish. It was really quite a site. Then, that was finished off by seeing another even bigger animal surface and show its stuff. It was really cool. It has been a long hard week and finally it has paid off. I have seen my whales. It has been a whale of a time.

Today we docked early in Skagway, Alaska. Skagway in the northern most stop on the Inside Passage of the Northwest. However, it’s greater claim to fame is as the doorway to the Yukon Territory and the jumping off point for thousands of miners who were trying to strike it rich in 1898.

They discovered gold in them their hills in 1897, just as the nation was coming out of a big recession, and many people came to make it big. We visited the city of Skagway, current home to about 1,000 people, but in those days, home to up to 20,000.

We visited Liarsville, the home of newspaper reporters among others who because they didn’t want to go up the canyon and die, they wrote the news as they heard it from others. It was a fun time to visit with those people.

We then drove up to White Pass. In just 3,500 feet, we reached a point where the tree lines had come and gone and there was nothing but rock and lichen. It was really quite interesting to see the great northern wilderness. It is amazing at just how much variation there is in the world.

This morning I went up on deck to find that it was raining quite hard. It was interesting to see that the horizon melted into gray and that the end of the ocean couldn’t be seen. It is a little disheartening to see rain on this trip, but then, this is the great Alaskan wildnerness we are going to see and rain may be part of it. I hope not, but we shall see.

Here it is my 58th birthday, and I am experiencing it sitting in my stateroom on the Golden Princess. I have come to love the motion of the sea, that is except when it might make me sick. It is such a pleasure to see the waves go by, the unending expanse of water providing a place for a cruise liner to play. It has been such a wonderful vacation that I am experiencing.

When you voyage on the ocean, you realize just how much of this planet is water. You read that there is 70% water and 30% land. When you are on the ocean, looking around you in a 360 degree direction and see no land, then you begin to get a feeling for just how much of this planet is water, and just how big the dog gone planet is. It is just amazing to see all of that water and to contemplate the size of it all. I don’t why it is the case, but my mind keeps coming back to a stupid movie made several years ago by Kevin Costner called Water World. I can no begin to understand how crazy a man would go if the whole planet was water covered, and if he came to dry land, how crazy it would be to walk on land that doesn’t move.

I have come to Seattle so much now that I almost call the city my own. I lived and went to school at the University of Washington on beautiful Lake Washington in Seattle, for a total of 6 weeks spread over to 3 years.

I remember one of the most incredible sites of my life being a beautiful, clear, sunny day followed by a sunset in which I saw Mt. Rainer off in a distance, across Lake Washington, and watched the mountain as it changed to many different shades of a golden hue as the sun set. Following that was the rise of a full moon over the beautiful lake. It was a tremendous site.

This trip, I have been seeing the beautiful country side and greenery and thinking, you know, despite the rain and the clouds, I could live here. It is a real beautiful place.