By Scott Gordon
Fourth in a five-part series.
Well, the mystery dinner theater was not as big a trainwreck as I expected, but did involve a “gypsy” fortune-teller and a cursed diamond whose previous owners included Richard Simmons, and some backhanded small-penis jokes, just to establish that it was an adult-oriented sort of deal. But did the staff keep the red wine coming? Did they ever. I was blasted before the main course even arrived. Often I’d wave off one server’s refill offer, saying, “Nope, I better slow down,” only to have another swoop in minutes later and crank me back up without even asking. The best part was everyone had a nice buzz on by the time we spotted a pod of whales spouting water from their blowholes off to the port side. Consequently, today I am hung over from the mystery dinner.
Luckily, it’s a pretty low-key day at sea, so I’ll recount our pre-Mystery Dinner journey to Hoonah, Alaska. The small town of local Tlingit natives also runs a fairly tasteful tourist outpost called Icy Strait Point, where we got on a bus for a nature walk of sorts. Our host and tour guide was a local woman with three kids. All around, the locals here manage an admirable balance. We didn’t even get the sugarcoated version of Hoonah: Our guide spoke frankly about the area’s history with logging and tourism on our way to the muskeg. After three straight days paved with hulking mountain views, this ecosystem feels like a mystical cove, a clearing in the forest where small scraggly northern hemlock trees coexist with muddy sinkholes and tall grass.
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After the tour, my mom and I walk back from Icy Strait Point into downtown Hoonah for some lunch at The Office, a local dive bar driving the cruise patrons nuts with its fresh crab offerings. Before we order, a fellow cruise-ship passenger beams at us, “You have to get the crab! It’s excellent!” Well, yeah, lady – it’s the only thing on the menu you can’t drink. In cruise-land, “crab,” “salmon,” and “seafood” are words to be sung, often, and always with the effect of throwing dozens of tourists into an awed hush. On some level, the stuff’s as coveted as a whale or bear sighting, but more plentiful. For those truly desperate to take home some of Alaska’s scaly bounty, gift shops around the state offer the ultimate portable food souvenir: salmon jerky.
On the way to The Office, we met a friendly, if unstable local drunk named Jimjam (“my street name”). His conversation slides from the best time to spot whales to how he recently buried his grandmother to how he’s blind in one eye to how somebody recently punched him in the side of the head but he blocked it because he was a veteran.
Day Four mostly consists of the ship steering up a narrow fjord to the face of a glacier. We watch chunks of compressed blue ice fall off the dirty, ancient mass, and the tremendous cracking sound reaches the ship with a moment’s delay. I wonder how the ship steers around all the ice chunks in the fjord, many of which act as lounge chairs for seals and sea lions.
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Skagway is one of those places where gift shops can get away with selling books about horrible things that happened right there. Just as national park gift shops hawk dozens of books of bear-attack stories, Skagway’s offer a biography of “Soapy” Smith, a confidence man who established a little criminal empire here as the town became a hub for the Yukon gold rush in 1898. Other titles include Rebel Women Of The Gold Rush and Oh No, We’re Gonna Die! Skagway still has its wood-plank sidewalks and century-old buildings, but they now host the highest concentration of jewelry shops and gift shops I’ve ever seen in one square mile. The local historical museum is a bit more low-key, showcasing the hardiness of Skagway’s settlers via such landmark creations as the “Duck Neck Quilt.” I don’t know what’s so special about ducks’ necks as opposed to the rest of the bird, but if I ever do a Captain Beefheart parody album, I’ve got my title.
The best part of Skagway is getting the hell out of Skagway on the historic White Pass railroad, which still traces its gold-rush route up into the mountains. This is easily the coolest part of the trip so far. You can’t really see the whole sweep of the steep-edged valley through the train’s windows, but you can ride on the platforms at the front and back of each car and get basted in fresh mountain wind and train exhaust. We speed up to an old, rusty trestle that workers somehow clawed into the gap between two sheer mountainsides, and are relieved when the train steers around it into a tunnel.
On the way back, my brother and I stand on the platform, and he starts screaming, just for fun. He won’t stop. With every scream comes a grin and taunting eye contact. Of course, it turns out everyone inside the train car can hear him. A mother and daughter join us on the platform for a second, but David’s screams drive them back in. “Everyone thinks there’s a dying baby out here,” the daughter says. David keeps shrieking for no reason, and I keep laughing.
As I said before, every public space back on the Serenade remains coated in a film of bland, uninvited music. In fact, someone managed to program different batches of tuneage for each area of the ship without actually picking out anything anyone would really want to hear. Elton John’s “Sorry Seems To Be The Hardest Word” looms over us during an otherwise festive dinner at the ship’s “Chops” steakhouse. The mini-golf course’s (yes, the Serenade boasts a mini-golf course, right next to the 30-foot rock-climbing wall) speakers play some sort of weird workout-disco music that’d probably appeal to you if you think grey paintsuits are unbearably sexy. As for the Well Of Cheese, I’ve heard the jazz band play that “when you’re smiling, the whole world smiles with you” song at least three times, and by night the lounge-country act is turned up way fucking loud. Even on Deck 12, probably some 80 feet above the Well’s bottom, I can’t find an indoor spot where they’re out of earshot. I hit the lounge chairs outside, the relatively low-key Safari Club, the Schooner Bar, the Windjammer dining room – music, music, music, a passive and numbing stream.
Spotted on the ship’s activities schedule one day: “Guess the price of the Picasso.”
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Comments welcome.
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Tomorrow: A Tribute To The Nations Of The World!
Posted on July 16, 2009