Juneau what gives an aspiring blogger like me wonderful material?
Something more "like click" worthy than a photo of Jim's cornflakes on a balcony?
(I'm as jealous of that shot as I was when he photographed a flounder sandwich and it got a hundred likes--ninety-nine more than the blogs I pour my heart and soul into)
The answer to my opening question is Juneau, the capital city of The Last Frontier.
We were both pretty comatose last night(even missed the comedian) but hopefully I'll get some witty responses to this post to make up for it.
We left the ship and lined up to start our excursion to see glaciers and whales. There were several coach buses waiting for us, and unlike those trips to Europe, my slow walking did not hurt us..we were in the middle, if not further, of the line when a staffer assigned us our bus, where the only available seats were a squishy one in the rear and a free one next to a zombie.
It was Italy all over again, where we followed two nincompoops to a seaport(an excursion we didn't plan) and almost missed our coach as it pulled out of the lot.
We spoke no Italian, but the last thing Jim said to the excursions rep from Royal Caribbean Cruise Line was "I need to get on that bus..now!"
The bus returned, the fellow cruisers looked annoyed, and Jim had to cram into the back seat with the nincompoops while I shared a closer one with my seat mate from Kansas who, I swear, was named "Anita Bus!"
(Look her up on Facebook if you don't believe me..a Kansan who spelled it "Aneita Buss")
I digress..this time, it was NOT our fault, but a bus loaded with hilarious but cranky seniors looked at me and asked, "are you handicapped?"
I tell them I was not--not yet--and they looked at me intently as I evaluated my options..cramming in with five other in the back or sharing a seat with the zombie.
I pause, arms akimbo, and sneer at them for a good thirty seconds before asking all these strangers, " try to guess my name" and forty of the forty three passengers respond, in perfect unison, "Karen!!???"
(or variations, like "is it Karen?" or "I bet it's Karen" and I think I heard the zombie guess, "Rumplestiltskin?")
Our very cool guide/driver is a surfer dude transplant from Hawaii named Jack "Spicy" Spicer who was so cool that he pointed out his real house during the tour, and he allowed us to sit together behind him in reserved seats for the elderly.
A couple across the aisle quip: "You're a little young for those seats, aren't you?" and I answer, "Oh..come on..as my granddaughter, you should know how well the Botox worked. You KNOW I'm 104"
The woman named Michelle laughed, and said if I really wanted to convince the rest of the bus we were relatives, even though we were clearly different races, I would have claimed to be her "Auntie" which she pronounced "ON-tee"
Michelle is married to a big guy, Paris, who immediately "got me" and you know how much I like to be "gotten."
When Spicy asked us how we can identify a "bald eagle" I answer, "by seeing his green and white jersey and the most obnoxious fans in the NFL surrounding him, and then slapping Chris Rock for quipping about his bald pate"
This is a Paris joke.
This is what Spicy, in all his laid back demeanor, told us about Juneau, which is basically everything a first time visitor needed to know.
1) there are eighteen jewelry stores in a row in Juneau, whose capitol building is rated the "fiftieth most attractive in America"
2) Mt. Roberts is big.
3) Stores sell "speedos with a fur patch" and I answer, "isn't that just a naked man?"
4) The capitol(it is coyote ugly, Spicy is right..a bland brown building that looks like a library) was built while Juneau was still a territory.
5) You can purchase moose flavored ice cream in town. It is not mousse flavored ice cream nor is it Moose Tracks, with vanilla ice cream and those chocolate covered peanut butter things. Nope..this is moose..flavored with a touch of squirrel.
6) Our bus number was #225 and our departure time was 4:30 PM. (I am a thorough note taker)
7) Every state flag is displayed on the major thoroughfare we traveled on, but Florida's is last because Alaska is pissed at Florida. Some major sculpture screwed up and sent a statue of an Eagle to Florida and a statue of a Pelican to Alaska, where there are no pelicans but Florida was being a brat and didn't want to be reasonable and return the right statue, and this was way before Ron DeSantis became the governor.
8) Juneau gets 51 inches of snow and 91 inches of rain. I was busy taking notes, so I didn't catch if that was weekly or monthyly..I'm guessing yearly.
9) This list is already too long
10) Bears are everywhere. They are smart and lazy, which is how I know I've been reincarnated from one. Every Alaskan who owns a trash receptacle is ordered to purchase a sturdy lock, but the bears are so smart that they keep jumping and jumping on the lids until they break, offering what Spicy called a "buffet of garbage" which is what Jim and I had on the ship before we left. (I don't worry about bears getting covid from sumo wresters with tattoos, but we're not going back to the buffet. I don't care how tight we are)
11) The glaciers look like they're covered in Saran wrap. (my observation--not Spicys)
Enough of this folly--time to blog about things you are actually interested in.
The breath taking Mendenhall Glacier will be gone in about twenty eight years. Climate change is real. I wanted to cry. We saw an important film about conservation and took in some magnificent vistas before boarding the coach that would take us to the whale watching excursion.
Spicy asked us what we saw, and people shouted out things like "Birds!" and "glaciers!" and one guy yells, "dead fish!") (which coincidently is my porn name) and I yell, "Sarah Palin--looking for Russians from her rooftop!"
The entire crew of "Allen Marine Whale Watching and Wildlife Quest" were wonderful and made up entirely of females, including Juno(from Juneau)
We saw whale parts like tails and fins and water spouting from blowholes, but then we got a rare treat(that I personally missed because my view was obscured) of a breached whale, who leapt completely out of the water.
We were later told they do this to shake off all those nasty barnacles that cling to their bodies and make them itch. Their flippers are too short to use for scratching or applying cortizone cream.
There was a mother/son team named Barnacles(the exhausted Mom who make the trek from Cabos or Hawaii, just so her son, Bojangles, could feed on her blubber and protein rich milk, which Juno described as eating "ten thousand Big Macs at a single feeding.")
They were a little shy, and I had two thoughts:
Would YOU want to surface if someone named YOU Barnacles, after something nasty that makes you itch, and your son Bojangles, which..how the hell do they know it's a he? (Actually, I think they explained this)
And whales aren't dogs..they're not going to recognize their names and fetch your slippers for you.
Bojangles was having a blast, spouting water and playing in layers of krill, which I sometimes did when I was his age too.
I suggested they'd surface more if we sang the theme song from "Gilligan's Island" or maybe the first recognizable chords from "Jaws" but I was ignored until I said, "hey..let's find Dory..she apprently speaks WHALE!"
Whales use their teeth like collanders, like sieves, to eat their krill. The teeth are called "baling palates" and are made up of keratin, just like ours are.
(The facts m'amm..just the facts")
I loved the sea lions, who clung to that buoy like the first victim, Chrissy Watkins, of "Jaws" did.
I loved Juno and Juneau and the colors of the water in the Pacific Northwest.
We returned to the bus where Spicy gave us a pop quiz on whales(I had to phone a friend and ask the audience) and then he told us the story of how a humpback whale saved a woman from a shark and how fish guts wound up on the window of a plane that was already in the AIR but if you want details on this, ask google.
We're almost back when Spicy points to something large on the curb in front of a shopping mecca: "Look!"..he said.."it's a bear!"
The bus broke out into a chorus of "oohs!" and "ahs" like it had earlier when everyone yelled out my name, but the joke was on us, because it was just a bent over lady looking for a lost earring or contact lens.
Everyone laughed and I asked Spicy how much he paid his sister to pull this prank, because I am a buzzkill.
Okay readers..thank for for wasting the thirty minutes you couldn't spare to share my snarky adenture with me.
Next stop: Icy Point!
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