Zip Lining Photos!

Finally.  I uploaded my Alaska pics.

We start with a series of Dad Zip-lining.  (Accompanying story here.)

The pics themselves are, y'know, fairly self-explanatory:

I was there, too, only the only picture of me without the zip-lady's hand totally blocking me is this one.  Note the brilliant zip-lining form.  Left hand steering the equipment, right hand poised to brake.  Head (at least, by NOW) not grinding against the zip line.

Next up -- I supply something few people include in their vacation photos.  A picture of a traffic jam.  But not any old traffic jam.  A traffic jam caused by an unfortunate incident with explosives.

Not a total loss, though.  That road ran along the coast.  Here's the view to the left:

And finally, we look ahead to photos from later in the trip.  Today was my first look at them, to see what I managed to get on the trip, photography-wise.  Here's one I'm incredibly proud of.  Mostly because nobody else took the same shot.  We were in Glacier Bay and everyone was standing around the bow of the boat, taking pictures of whatever was straight ahead.  (I can't remember what.  Glacier.  Waterfall.  Critter.  Anyway, everyone was snapping it.)  Photographically speaking, I preferred the view off to port:

The Big Question

I know, the one thing on everyone's mind...  The question for which you're dying to find out the answer...

Did my cat barf while I was away?

I won't keep you in suspense.  Of course she did.  What's really interesting about it is where.

She barfed on my bed.  The cat-sitters cleaned it up and the bed looked good as new.

However, nobody seemed to notice the small deposit that made it all the way to my clock-radio.  Specifically, the top of my clock-radio.  All neatly caked around the "Alarm Set" button.

Considering all the nooks and crannies in the top of my clock radio; the amount of time in which the barf must have set; the impossibility of getting the clock radio really clean; the fifteen or so good years I already got out of that clock radio; and the fact that I could get a new clock radio for about $11...

... I dumped it down the trash chute.  I've been using my travel alarm clock in the interim. (Why not? It did the job.)

Interesting additional feline fact:  She missed me so much she made an offering to get me back.  After I'd been gone for quite some time, she brought my bluetooth phone earpiece out from behind the washing machine, where she'd kept it hidden since February.

(Of course, I can't test it out to find out if it's any worse for the wear, as my phone is out of commission until Cruise West sends me the charger I'd left on the ship.  But still.  She missed me.)

Fairbanks and Home

The next morning, we had to have our luggage ready to go at 6:00 a.m. I'm not sure whether this was strictly necessary, or just a warm-up for the 5:15 call I'd get the next morning. In any event, luggage packed and ready for pick-up by 6:00, for at 7:00, we're on the bus to Fairbanks.

Sarah, our Exploration Leader, let us sleep on the bus. I vaguely remember hearing her say something about someplace, and the next thing I knew, it was "Welcome to Fairbanks!"

First stop: a riverboat cruise.

Well, no. First stop: a half hour in the gift shop owned by the riverboat cruise people.

Cruise West is not named Cruise West because it Cruises in the West. It is so named because it was started by Chuck West. The Wests were apparently good friends with a Fairbanks family called the Binkleys, and convinced the Binkleys to go into the Fairbanks tourism business. Which they did. And, it seems, the Wests guaranteed the Binkleys a reasonable amount of business by taking all their Fairbanks passengers on the Binkleys' riverboat. That the Cruise West busses make it to the Binkleys' boat in time to do nothing but spend a half hour in the Binkleys' gift shop for a half hour, well, that's just a bonus.

To be fair, Cruise West is way not the only business the Binkleys get, and we saw busses from all the major cruise lines piling up to take the Riverboat as well. Also, I should note that, as "crap that says Alaska on it" shops go, the Binkleys' was one of the prettiest and nicest ones. And, Cruise West customers apparently get extra special treatment on their Riverboat cruise (free coffee and donuts). But, still, the fact that we're here because the Wests are buddies with the Binkleys is, well, obvious.

The Riverboat Discovery cruise. You pile on a Riverboat. You go down the river in Fairbanks. Now, this isn't just a calm, peaceful, recenter-yourself-while-you're-going-down-the-river sort of affair. Instead, a guide (Mrs. Binkley) does a running commentary in which she points out the houses along the river (many belong to her family and friends), tries to sell you the Binkleys' own brand of canned salmon (the free sample was tasty, but it's like $10 for a single tuna-fish-can sized can), and, well...

... it's staged. It's staged and it's scripted. It's like a tour through an exhibit except the exhibits are all live people and animals rather than waxworks or audio-animatronics, but you're really there for the show -- the fact that you're on a riverboat is just a convenient way to pack the whole audience in. The show includes: a float plane pilot who takes off and lands near the riverboat; a home where sled dogs are trained (and a display of their skills takes place near the riverbank); a couple of caribou (who have been loaned to the Binkleys and are conveniently penned up right near the riverbank); a display of Yu'pik native salmon drying technique (at a fake native village built by the Binkleys near the river -- I'm told that folks on their longer cruise get off the boat here and spend time at the village); and so forth. And everywhere, the participants are wearing mics so they can converse with Mrs. Binkley and be heard over the boat's PA system, and they're very clearly following (and sometimes forgetting their lines in) a script that pretends all of these conversations are just chance encounters.

I don't mean to totally diss the Binkleys here. They've obviously put a lot of time and money into doing up a nice tour here. And a lot of people on the tour really enjoyed it. But I couldn't kick the feeling that it would've been way more entertaining if we'd done it at the beginning of our trip rather than at the end. I mean, why see a fake Native village after you've been to Metlakatla? Why see two captive caribou after seeing a whole herd of them wild in Denali? And, of course, seeing as we'd ridden in a float plane and a dogsled, watching other people doing it was kind of anti-climactic. All things considered, I would've preferred bailing on the riverboat trip and sleeping in that morning in Denali.

Next stop: The Museum of the North, located on the grounds of the University of Alaska in Fairbanks. We had lunch there and a private screening of a really interesting film on the Aurora Borealis. (Which, of course, we wouldn't get to see, what with it being summer and therefore too bright at night for any Northern Lights viewing.) We then had an hour or so to wander the museum.

The museum has an unusual display called "The Place Where You Go To Listen." It's in a room with speakers all over the walls. And the sounds you hear are sounds corresponding to the natural world in real time. (They suggest revisiting the room at different seasons and different times of day.) There's a bright hum for sunlight; something cooler at night; drum rumblings whenever there's seismic activity; and cheerful bells across the ceiling if the Aurora is active (even if it can't be seen). The museum is a little vague on the actual technology that went into this (exactly what natural conditions is this thing monitoring?) but the artist has done a good job translating regular earth activity into sounds -- and sounds that harmonize with each other rather than sounding discordant.

I totally dug this. I sat in there and really tried to listen. And it was the first time when I've ever questioned the veracity of my hearing. I mean, yeah, sure, I heard the hum (it was pretty loud), but I also thought I heard a repeating cycle in it. Was that real, or was my mind trying to find patterns where there weren't any? I put a lot of effort into trying to figure out what I was actually hearing, and to separate that from how I was processing the sound.

Another couple from the cruise entered the room. They listened with me.

After a minute or two, I heard the chiming of a watch alarm. I looked at my watch. 2:00. Aha! I had them! The mysterious owners of the annoying 2:00 watch alarm.

They did nothing, obviously not hearing it. I politely said, "One of your watch alarms is going off." The woman held her watch to her ear. It was silent. (It was. Just by walking over to them, I could tell it was his alarm that was ringing.) She yells to him to check his watch and see if the alarm was going off. He held it to his ear. He shakes his head. The wife turns to me and says, "It must be the exhibit." Sigh.

After the museum, we are dropped off at our hotel for a short rest before the Farewell Dinner. The Farewell Dinner is held in the Binkley Room of the hotel. (Not a coincidence. There's a portrait of Mr. & Mrs. Binkley on the wall. I start to wonder whether they own half of Fairbanks.) Dinner is tasty and we say our fond farewells to the rest of the gang.

My flight out is at 7:15 the next morning and I'm told to take a 5:15 a.m. shuttle, even though the airport is within spitting distance of the hotel. When we get to the airport at 5:30, the reason for this is abundantly clear. Cruise West isn't the only cruise line ending trips in Fairbanks. There's a line of Princess Cruise customers as far as the eye can see all waiting to check in for their flights. As usual, the Alaska Air check-in machines aren't working, so everyone has to check in at the desk. And once they get through that, there's Security to clear, and the Fairbanks airport only has two metaldetectors. For the thousands of people getting off cruise ships and catching flights home. It's wicked crowded and we need nearly all of the two hour lead time to get through it all and get to our gates in time for boarding.

(At the Security line, I am behind a dude who did not follow directions to have his liquids in 3 ounce bottles in a one-quart clear plastic baggy, even though TSA employees have been constantly reminding us of this requirement for our last half-hour in line. Dude eventually opens up two fabric pouches and dumps their entire contents into one of those plastic bins you stick on the conveyor belt. It's, like, 30 random prescription pill bottles, and a few everyday items (liquids, gels, toothpastes). He asks the screener if he can just go like this and forgo the plastic bag? The screener lets him. On the one hand, yay for not slowing the line while he jammed all this stuff in a bag. On the other, it does not thrill me that the TSA is willing to let people slide on this clear plastic baggie requirement, which is supposed to be necessary for national security.)

Ooops. Flight landing now. I shall restow the computer, head home, hug my cat like she's never been hugged before, and post all this stuff in due course.

Whitewater Rafting

White-water rafting. In Alaska. At 6:30. P.M. Well, it seemed to make sense at the time we booked it -- what with the midnight sun and all. It would definitely still be light for hours. Of course, that didn't mean it would be warm. The river (the name of which escapes me right now, but in a Native Alaskan dialect, it means something like "two rivers, good campsite") is fed from two glaciers, and keeps itself (year-round) at a brisk 35 degrees. We would be issued drysuits. Not wetsuits, like on rafting trips in other climates, but drysuits, which (in theory anyway) keep everything but your face and hands completely dry during the trip.

Let me say right now I really didn't think my parents would go for this one. Back in April, when we were booking the excursions, I looked at the list of Denali excursions and totally went for this one. My dad (in what I can only imagine was a desire for togetherness) then proceeded talk my mom into doing this. The river had class 3 and class 4 rapids, which aren't for the faint of heart, but Dad convinced Mom that they'd rafted on class 3 and class 4 rapids before (I was skeptical of this, but he was pretty sure of it) so she figured she could handle it and signed all three of us up. Now, there was an alternative excursion where you just float on down the river while a guide works the oars and you just sit there in your drysuit enjoying the sights -- we didn't want that. We signed up for "paddle rafting," where everyone in the raft has a paddle and you paddle your way through the rapids following the guide's commands.

So. We pile in the van at 6:20 and head on out to the rafting establishment. I've said before that few people on this cruise were actually adventurous, and this was the case again. It was just the three of us and one other couple. The other couple hadn't decided whether to paddle the raft or just to take the oar boat down, but we sorta talked them into joining us the paddle raft. When we arrived at the rafting place, we expected to meet a bunch of other people (from other cruises), but it was just the five of us.

We got in our drysuits. The rafting guy eyeballs your body frame and issues you a drysuit. I reckon these sizes have to do with your perceived girth, as they have nothing at all to do with your height. But, the beauty of a drysuit (as opposed to a wetsuit) is that it doesn't have to fit well, it just has to cover you -- over your clothes. So they just make the little buggers suitable for really tall people and figure the shorter among us will just deal.

I slip my legs into my drysuit and my legs stop but the drysuit keeps going. Eventually I discover rubber feet (like footie pajamas) at the bottom. I bunch the drysuit at my legs, put my size 5 feet into the size 16 rubber feet, wrap the excess wherever it will go, and jam the wrapped feet into rafting booties. After substantial bagging of material around my arms, my hands finally reach freedom through very tight rubber wrist openings. It's good that they're tight -- that's what keeps the water out. With the addition of "brain buckets" (my mom had never heard that name for helmets), we're good to go.

We drive out to the river put-in point, walk unsteadily over to the raft, and listen while Jason, our guide, gives us the standard safety lecture. Except, it isn't the safety lecture I'm used to getting. This is the long form of safety lectures, the 1040 of safety lectures with several Schedules attached. It goes on for, like, 20 minutes. If you fall out of the boat, don't put your feet down ever ever ever. There are lots of "foot entrapments" in this river (like submerged train cars) and if you get caught in one, you likely won't be able to get out. There will be an oar boat (with no passengers, just a guide) in front of our paddle boat -- in order to pick us up if we fall out of the paddle boat and can't get back to it. If you can't make the oar boat either, you're in what Jason calls an "AMF Yo-Yo" situation, standing for "Adios, My Friend, You're On Your Own." (Jason said that was the "clean" version of what it stood for. I smiled at what I assumed was a joke, but I was so caught up in the whole not dying thing, I didn't put it together until I was back at the hotel.) After Jason had scared us with directions on how to swim to the shore with all our might, crawl on up (no point in catching a foot entrapment right by the shore), and to ignore the pain of any potential injuries to stand up so we can be located ... well, I wasn't sure all the drysuits were still dry.

With trepidation, we all filed into the raft for what we were sure was going to be a rafting ride down the river Styx. My dad and the other dude took the front positions. Jason told them they needed to coordinate their paddling by looking at each other. They quickly decided that it worked better if one of them called out strokes, so my dad starting yelling, "Dig! ... Dig! ... Dig!" like we were all chained together in the galley of some prison ship. The good news -- the really good news -- was that Jason was outfitted with a set of long oars. So he did most of the steering, and only asked us to forward paddle in order to give the raft some momentum. I've only rafted with a guide who had a paddle like us; but this was a welcome change as this group felt like we needed all the help we could get after the safety talk.

The first rapid was apparently the scariest (isn't it always that way?) -- largely because a new rock had recently taken up residence in the middle of it, changing a perfectly good starter rapid into a "3 plus" that the guides didn't have a whole lot of experience with. It wasn't scary because of any big drops -- it was scary because of the small drop followed by the ten-foot wall of water we had to paddle right into. It hit my dad smack in the face ("a glacial facial!" Jason said, cheerfully) and managed to defeat the rubber wrist hole of my drysuit, sending a stream of icy cold water running down my sweater as far as my elbow.

Mom was fairly certain that she'd never rafted anything like this ever before.

The other couple, who had claimed rafting experience, admitted that they'd only been on a "family rafting trip" where forty adults and kids were all in the raft and didn't have to paddle all that much. It dawned on me that, next to the guide, I'd had the most rafting experience of anyone in the raft (i.e. two whole times). I was heartened by the fact that none of us had fallen out on that first rapid, and was also very thankful Jason was back there with a set of oars.

We continued down the (sometimes surprisingly narrow) river, with Jason expertly navigating us safely around rocks and through rapids. Sometimes, conditions were so wild that Dad was yelling a stroke but he was so far in the air that there was no water under his paddle. (Jason said that's called a "Scooby paddle" -- after when Scooby-Doo would run in place in the air.) We did skip one rapid by going around the side where the water was calmer. (He told us they didn't "raft that one commercially." At the time, I believed him, although, in retrospect, I guess we'll never know if he had just decided we weren't up to it.) We made it through with no raft-flips or people overboard. The other guy cut his finger on the rope around the raft, but otherwise, there was no bloodshed. (And the drysuits held, except formy one sleeve, which was good and wet.) I was grinning like an idiot during the whole thing. So was my mother, actually, although she denies it. Couldn't see Dad's face, but after getting the brunt of the water in his face, I can understand why he might have been less than thrilled with the experience. (And I could have sworn he had more white hairs when we got out than when we had started.)

They take a picture after you get through that first rapid -- it will either be an action shot of your raft flipping, or a picture of a raft full over very happy people. Either way, I bet it sells. Mom bought ours (which, as with all the other photos, I'll scan in later).

Got back to the hotel around 10. Still light outside. All the hotel's restaurants were closed, so we couldn't get a victory hot chocolate or anything. I went back to my room and had a victory hot shower instead.

Denali National Park

With limited exceptions (which require a permit), private cars are not allowed past a certain point into Denali. Instead, they take you in on tour busses.

Now, these aren't the nice tour busses with the big cushy seats we'd been on before. These are converted school busses. We are told that they use school busses because the road is not very wide (in a whole lot of places), and school busses are the only busses narrow enough to pass each other on the road in the park. So, they've torn out the school bus seats and put in relatively cushy tour bus seats, and sorta hope you won't notice.

Right now, I want you to think about your butt. Particularly, its width, when in a seated position. Now, ask yourself: is my butt wider now than it was when I was a kid riding a school bus?

This is, in fact, the problem. Although we're on individual seats instead of school bus benches, the space taken up by a pair of seats is equal to the space previously taken up by the school bus benches. In short, only a couple of anorexics could sit on these seats comfortably.

And there's no room for your stuff. You've probably got a camera and binoculars for wildlife spotting. You definitely have a half-liter bottle of water (supplied) and a cardboard box with a lunch in it (also supplied). For my part, I also brought along a sandwich and fruit snack I'd purchased earlier, because I had been warned that the box lunch was basically a make-your-own-reindeer-sausage-sandwich, and I'd thought Subway would be a healthier (and tastier) choice.

There are no seat-back pockets for you to store your stuff. Of course there isn't -- it was a school bus, and the pitch between seats is barely enough to get most adult knees in there, nothing more. You could put stuff on the overhead rack, but you're going to need immediate access to your camera, binoculars and water, at the very least.

What I'm saying here is: crammed in the bus. Now, my mom bailed on the bus trip (probably a wise move). My dad and I went together. Dad got on the bus first and selected seats. And he accidentally picked a row over one of the wheels. So we spent the trip not only crammed in seats too small for the adult human body and wedged in with our stuff balanced precariiously on our laps, we also kept switching off on the seat with no damn leg room.

Depending on who you ask, there are four or five things you hope to see in Denali: grizzly bears, Dall sheep, caribou, moose, and golden eagles. We saw them all, my friend. In addition, we saw baby ravens in a nest, snowshoe rabbits, squirrels, willow ptarmigans (Alaska's state bird, assuming I'm spelling that correctly), and, I'm certain, various other small critters I'm forgetting now. We done done Denali in our eight hour trip.

On the other hand, with the exception of a moose who was standing right by the edge of the road as we entered the park (and in the same place when we left, eight hours later), most of the stuff we saw could only be observed with binoculars. And even then, the animals only looked like large dots (or, in some cases, large dots with legs). Sure, we saw some grizzly bears, but in terms of actual closeness (and photographic opportunity) nothing could beat the bears at the salmon bake.

So, after eight hours on the bus spotting wildlife, stopping at rest stops with toilets ranging from hole-in-the-ground-with-seat to something-with-chemicals-you-actually-flush, being cooped up with some really annoying people (not everyone on the bus had been from our cruise -- although whoever it was with the mysterious 2:00 watch alarm was in attendance) dad and I were well and truly wiped.

But there was no time to rest. We had to grab mom, have a quick dinner, and meet in front of the building at 6:15 to be picked up for our optional excursion: white-water rafting.

Arriving in Denali

OK, so. Denali isn't exactly next door to Anchorage.

We woke up early and were piled into the bus for a two hour trip. Not to Denali. To Talkeetna.

In Talkeetna, we caught a train to Denali. That was about four hours long. (We could've taken the train all the way from Anchorage, but the bus is slower than the train, so the whole process would have taken eight hours, rather than six.)

In the train, we rode an old-fashioned train car. It was a double-decker car. Our group of about 30 people had it all to ourselves. We had comfy seats in the top level (and there were plenty of emply seats so we could move around) and there was a dining area below. (And bathrooms, although I declined to visit them.)

While in the rail car, I heard a repeated chiming, like from a watch alarm. I looked around but could not find the offending watch. I looked at my watch. It was 2:00 p.m. I mention this because this was the second time a watch had gone off in this group around 2:00, and just rang itself out, and I was getting a little peeved about it.

A moment about the ownership of the train car. The Alaska Railroad is mainly for freight. (Indeed, the passenger trains have to pull over and wait so that the freight trains can run on time.) Rather than putting boatloads (literally) of passengers on the train, the major cruise lines own their own train cars, which they then (for a fee) attach to the Alaska Railroad trains. Cruise West is a pretty small cruise line, so it hires a vacant car from one of the other lines. We were in a Holland America car.

When we got to Denali, we stayed at the Princess Wilderness Lodge. It wasn't Princess as is "daughter of the King" -- it was Princess as in Princess Cruises. The Princess Lodge, I was told, is the biggest hotel in Alaska, which gives you some idea of the amount of ships Princess operates in Alaska. Most folks in the Lodge were from Princess cruises. As with the train, Cruise West came along for the ride.

How to explain the Princess Wildreness Lodge. Imagine a Disney wilderness-themed hotel. Buildings are not actually made out of logs, but are faced with fake logs to look that way. Many gift shops. Many restaurants (all carrying on the Wilderness Lodge theme). One "dinner theatre" with a tacky musical production (requiring singing and clapping along.). The only difference between the Princess Lodge and a Disney Wilderness Lodge is that the Princess Lodge actually has real wilderness right outside the windows. Well, that and that Disney does it better. And that nobody wants to buy a t-shirt with the Princess logo on it. But, other than that, just the fact that it was set in real wildnerness. Photo from the front of my room to be attached, if I ever get internet access again.

(See, I was told there was free wi-fi in the hotel lobby. Brought my laptop into the lobby and easily connected to the "Netgear" network. Except the web page I kept getting was the front page of the internet service from the Anchorage Hotel which had wanted my $10. Apparently, once you hit that page, it sorta takes over your computer and diverts you there from any other webpage you might want to visit, even if you're on a free wireless network. Annoying. I deleted all old files (and cookies) from IE. I restarted. Now, it wouldn't go to the Anchorage page, but it wouldn't give me any websites either. It said I was connected to the network, but I was getting nothing. I messed around with this for about an hour, then did a whole system restore to sometime back in May. Now, when I restarted, it again hooked me up to the Netgear network, but this time it told me Netgear had "limited or no connectivity." Argh. I gave up, waited in line, and used the free-ten-minutes-to-check-email computers they had hooked up.)

So, where was I? Oh, Denali.

OK, this is a huge bit of advice for anyone using Cruise West to go to Denali. I'm talkin' super-mega-life-changing sort of huge. Cruise West gives you one full day in Denali. During this time, they give you a choice of two free bus tours of the Denali National Park. One is five hours long; the other is eight. Now, here's what they don't tell you: If you take the eight hour tour, you can do one optional excursion, but if you take the five your tour, you can do two. Cruise West will automatically book you on the eight-hour tour. And, by the time they tell you this extra-excursion-possible-if-you-take-the-five-hour-tour tidbit of information, it is too late to switch tours.

The fact that they don't share this with you until the morning you're actually travelling to Denali is made slightly less bad by the fact that you are also told (for the first time) that if you really, really want to, you can fit in a second excursion on the evening you arrive in Denali. But you'll miss the (included) talk by a Denali expert. And (most likely) the included dinner, too.

Mom and I were the only people who opted for a tour the night we arrived. There was a flight trip that circled the summit of Mt. McKinley (aka Denali). That's, like, 20,000 feet. Tallest peak from bottom to top in the world (i.e. other mountains are higher, but they start from a higher point). Tallest peak in North America with no qualifications. In big honking mountain range (the Alaska Range). So big in generates its own weather. What I'm trying to say here is: big mountain; we wanted to fly around it.

So, the train gets to Denali Station and everyone else gets on their busses to go to the Princess Lodge and me and my mom are whisked (really, a Cruise West guy came up the train and said he was there to "whisk us away") to another city where they have a small airstrip (and, y'know, planes).

We just barely get there in time. In fact, we're there so near take-off, they don't even have us sign waivers. We just hop right on the plane.

The pre-flight talk is a little different from most pre-flight talks. In that, since the cabin is not pressurized, and since we'll be going to, like, 20,000 feet, we will have to use oxygen. He has us all unwrap our shiny new oxygen masks and makes sure we all know where to plug them in and start the oxygen flowing when the time comes. We also are alotted little Capri Sun juice bags, to drink to help equalize the pressure on the descent.

OK, we're off. We're flying over lower mountains in the Alaska Range and shooting pictures like there's no tomorrow. Andre, our pilot, is pointing out sights. We can see Denali in the distance and look forward to circling the summit of that puppy.

Remember where I said Denali makes its own weather? It proceeded to do so -- bringing clouds in over the summit. Andre decides it isn't safe to come at it from the North, so we'll cruise around to the South side of the range and see if he can't find a way in that way. Meantime, we're over 11,000 feet. I know this because that series of little dots on the mountain is the 11,000-foot camp for hikers.

I don't exactly feel queasy enough to grab my barf bag (a plastic hefty bag, called "a Denali parachute" by Andre), but something is not right. If I'm looking out the window and decide to transfer my gaxe inside to plane, my eyes take too long to refocus on the point inside the plane. I keep breathing slowly and reminding myself thatI do not get motion-sickness, but I start really hoping that we'd get higher soon so that Andre will turn on the oxygen. I'm thinking some nice clean oxygen would be mighty tasty just now, as I randomly speculate that perhaps I'm someone a little more susceptible to altitude sickness than other people.

It does not dawn on me to push the little button on my headphones and actually mention this to Andre. He seemed like a nice guy; I'm sure he would've hooked me up.

But he's busy with things like flying the plane. And I'm busy taking pictures of deep dark mountains devoid of vegetation (we are way above the tree line, here) lightly dusted with snow. They remind me of a big chocolate dessert with powdered sugar on it. (When we landed, my mom would admit having the exact same thought.)

Bad news -- no getting to Denali from the South either. We'll continue "flight-seeing" over the Alaska range, but we won't go any higher so won't need our oxygen (damn). I make with the controlled slow, calm breathing, and keep snapping pictures. Pretty much until we land.

We are then not-quite whisked to our hotel, where we are met by the Cruise West rep and most-definitely whisked to the meeting room. We had missed the presentation, but not the dinner, so we chow down. Then, off to bed (after my vain struggle to get internet access) as we've got an eight-hour Denali National Park tour starting at 8:00 a.m. the next morning.

Ack!

I am slowly losing everything I brought with me on this trip.

You'll recall that I left the camera cable (to download photos) at home.

I then left the camera battery charger, its cable, the cable to charge my MP3 player, and my cell phone charger on the ship. They found them, but not until after the ship had sailed with the next bunch of tourists. They promised to mail them to me once they landed in Ketchikan. I hope they do. It would be a very nice thing if I had those cables back.

I chipped a nail on the trip, so my mom loaned me an emery board. Said I could keep it for the trip. I lost it in Juneau.

Not sure whether it was in Anchorage or Denali, but I can't find one of the TSA locks for my baggage.

I'm glad I'm going home tomoorow -- I don't think I can take any more losses.