Day Twenty One – June 26, 2008
We’re at sea all day today. So, we took the opportunity to sleep in for a change. The first half of the day was spent under overcast skies on a generally southern serpentine course among the hundreds of tree covered islands and rock outcroppings that comprise the deep-channel Inside Passage carved out by glaciers so many eons ago.
About noon, we left the protected waters of the Inside Passage and entered the open ocean of Queen Charlotte Sound. The overcast lowered to create a light fog with about five miles visibility. The “Columbia" is making a slow but steady 17.5 knots, and the sea is calm making for a very pleasant ride.
We’re at sea all day today. So, we took the opportunity to sleep in for a change. The first half of the day was spent under overcast skies on a generally southern serpentine course among the hundreds of tree covered islands and rock outcroppings that comprise the deep-channel Inside Passage carved out by glaciers so many eons ago.
About noon, we left the protected waters of the Inside Passage and entered the open ocean of Queen Charlotte Sound. The overcast lowered to create a light fog with about five miles visibility. The “Columbia" is making a slow but steady 17.5 knots, and the sea is calm making for a very pleasant ride.
About two and half hours after entering the open ocean, we crossed the Alaska/Canada territorial waters boundary and re-entered the Inside Passage through Queen Charlotte Straights. Vancouver Island is on our starboard (right) side and the Canadian mainland is on the port side (left),”Eh.”
Naturalist “Brett” made a short presentation on glaciers. I won’t bore you with the details, but here’s the Reader’s Digest version: Their big; they’re old; they’re made of compacted snow and ice; they trap air from when they were formed dating back thousands of years to the Pleistocene Age; they create round-floor valleys and cast off debris as they scrape the mountain sides bare; they can move boulders the size of houses, and they can move from a few centimeters a day to several hundred yards a day. As the glaciers break off at their terminus, the process is called “calving.” Only the blue spectrum of color refracts through them, and they are receding as the Earth warms. There, now you know as much about glaciers as I do. Go impress you friends.
We took in a short film on Tlingit native culture in the afternoon and enjoyed an all-you-can–eat buffet dinner in the evening consisting of baron of beef, ham, lasagna, Swedish meatballs, baked Salmon, roasted chicken, two soups, eight salads and a dozen different deserts. I think I tried them all. Has anybody seen the Zantac?
We met a nice couple on the ship, Garry McCrary and his wife Gail. Garry is a lieutenant with the Sitka Police Department, and his lovely wife Gail is a recently retired school teacher. We vowed to exchange police shoulder patches when we get home.
Naturalist “Brett” made a short presentation on glaciers. I won’t bore you with the details, but here’s the Reader’s Digest version: Their big; they’re old; they’re made of compacted snow and ice; they trap air from when they were formed dating back thousands of years to the Pleistocene Age; they create round-floor valleys and cast off debris as they scrape the mountain sides bare; they can move boulders the size of houses, and they can move from a few centimeters a day to several hundred yards a day. As the glaciers break off at their terminus, the process is called “calving.” Only the blue spectrum of color refracts through them, and they are receding as the Earth warms. There, now you know as much about glaciers as I do. Go impress you friends.
We took in a short film on Tlingit native culture in the afternoon and enjoyed an all-you-can–eat buffet dinner in the evening consisting of baron of beef, ham, lasagna, Swedish meatballs, baked Salmon, roasted chicken, two soups, eight salads and a dozen different deserts. I think I tried them all. Has anybody seen the Zantac?
We met a nice couple on the ship, Garry McCrary and his wife Gail. Garry is a lieutenant with the Sitka Police Department, and his lovely wife Gail is a recently retired school teacher. We vowed to exchange police shoulder patches when we get home.
There is another interesting difference between the ferry and a cruise ship. On the ferry, people are allowed to sleep just about everywhere, including pitching their tents on the aft deck, secured with duct tape. They sleep in the movie room, in the forward lounge, and just about anywhere there is a room for a sleeping bag. They even have lounge chairs under a heated solarium overhead. Not exactly first-class, but well attended by the back-pack and saltine cracker crowd. We roughed it in our cabins.
Some of us got a lot of reading done on this leg of the journey. We concluded the evening in the lounge, what a surprise. Well, what did you expect? It’s not like they have a night club, disco, bowling alley, rock climbing wall or shopping mall on the ferry. This isn’t exactly the “Columbia Princess,” you know.
Here's the Jack Daniels update: We’ve managed to kill our fourth bottle of Jack Daniels this afternoon. It’s a good thing we have another one.
Some of us got a lot of reading done on this leg of the journey. We concluded the evening in the lounge, what a surprise. Well, what did you expect? It’s not like they have a night club, disco, bowling alley, rock climbing wall or shopping mall on the ferry. This isn’t exactly the “Columbia Princess,” you know.
Here's the Jack Daniels update: We’ve managed to kill our fourth bottle of Jack Daniels this afternoon. It’s a good thing we have another one.
1 comment:
Hi Dad! What a colorful picture you are painting for all of us. I really think you should look up a publisher when you get home and sell this stuff! We love you and very much look forward to you coming home and sharing all of the pictures you have to match the story. Keep up the safe riding and have a shot of Jack for me! We look forward to seeing you soon. :))
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