Night of the Elk

Friday morning

Most travel bloggers talk about the sites they see and the people they meet but I am not them and I am going to describe my insane night in that comfortable bed.

I’m in the lounge next door now, two doors down from our cabin, staring at the concrete walls as we’re apparently going through locks. 

We’ve been sneaking in here to stream the last few nights of Kimmel because if any of our fellow passengers caught us watching Jimmy, we’d be tossed overboard.

I’m greeted by a chambermaid who asks, “were you in the middle of a shower?” 

Before even saying hello.

The rational me thought she asked because my hair was wet, the “karenoid” part wanted to say, “why?? What did you see?” 

Reality set in when she told me they had to  shut off the water  ship wide and my impulse was to ask, “oh yeah?? Where were you guys last night??”

I’ll explain more in a sec…

You see, after watching Kimmel on the qt last night, our goal was to enjoy some much deserved rest.

The night hadn’t exactly been going our way. 

We had a gorgeous view of the sun setting on the water but we also had a server who looked like she had just escaped from a Mormon cult.

“Oh no my dear”, she says, smiling ear to ear, “ you may have the soup or the salad but not both”

Um.. I had been doing exactly that all week??

“It is no problem!” She said in a tone that made you believe it was, indeed, a problem.

I get the soup and salad and then my entree, short ribs, which tasted like they were made from the meat of an elk.

Side note:

I’m buying an elk, a female, and I want her shipped to me in June.

I will call her Elke Sommer.

Boomer humor!!

So anyway, Jim tells me to send it , the elk ribs, back, while he attempts to swat the fly on my drink, knocking over a full glass that soaked my pants and shirt but the fly lived.

He apologized and the Mormon came over and sweetly murmured, “ no problem!” 

But it was, because we were the last people in the dining  room and got seated behind a pole for the show in the lounge, the same father/husband/ daughter team from Idaho, who will also be here tonight. They said we could make requests but they’d “ have to learn them and there are no guarantees.”

Geez, cruise line!! It’s bad enough you don’t provide bottled water or safes in the room, could you vary the night entertainment just a little??

Oh.. back to our nighttime adventure.

First we have Typhoid Mary hacking away for hours, then we get me, forgetting to close the bathroom door, which swung open on its own, flooding Jim with a blinding light that dying people supposedly see before  taking their final breaths.

Dresser drawers flew open on their own volition, but we could deal with all of this.

What we couldn’t deal with is that for the next three hours, it sounded like we were trying to sleep in a bowling alley.

Jim blamed me , I blamed him, and then he got mad because talking about the loud noise that was keeping us up was keeping us up.

He gave a rational explanation this morning when an alarm woke us up, one that neither of us set, at six in the morning.

(Which was that we were going through rough patches on the Columbia River that made every passenger feel like someone was trying to break into their cabin with very loud and very jangly keys.)

Welcome to Stevenson, Washington !

Today we’re seeing the largest waterfall in the state and an alpaca farm.

Sounds like a dream, doesn’t it?

I mean that literally.