After the incredible experience cruising Glacier Bay National Park, the following day was spent at sea, sailing westward across the Gulf of Alaska towards Seward. It was a lazy day for me and mom. It was cold and misting, so definitely not balcony weather. The ship experienced a bit choppier conditions that what we experienced in the Inside Passage but nothing quite as dramatic as what we had at the beginning of the cruise. I still badgered my mom into taking prophylactic Dramamine, just in case. I definitely did not want a repeat of that first day at sea!
At breakfast, as soon as my mom left the table to go find food, I spotted a pod of whales spouting in the distance. Although with my mom’s bad eyesight, she wouldn’t have been able to see them anyway. We camped out at our table for a bit. It was hypnotic, sitting there and watching the featureless grey seas.
The rest of the day, we just wandered around the ship. Neither one of us was in the mood to make a commitment to do a spa treatment or play in the casino. I’m not a casino person anyway but seriously, how bad are those odds at sea? If someone really wanted to fling fistful of dollars around, they could have just made it rain in the main dining room, right? Speaking of the main dining room, I finally had to ask my mom why she seemed so ambivalent about eating there. I mean, the main dining room has people that bring you stuff rather than you trying to balance a plate from the buffet as you maneuver around hordes of people who seem to stand in the middle of the aisle just to trip you; and you usually have an assigned table so you’re not stalking that one group that refuses to vacate the table by the window even though they’ve been sitting there since the sun came up. Her answer surprised me. She said she didn’t understand that we didn’t have to pay to eat there. I looked at her for probably a beat too long. What? She explained that she thought that despite me telling her that we could eat anywhere she wanted (even the places that I would have gladly paid the supplement for) that she thought that we were only “allowed” to eat in the buffet. I wish she would have mentioned that at the beginning of the trip so I could have disabused her of that falsehood; but now that I think about it, I wonder if that was her weird convoluted way of saying that the main dining room intimidated her or something. Did we dress up for gala night? Yeah, but there were people wandering around in jeans and sweaters too.
So I told her that to celebrate our last night of the cruise, we were going to eat dinner in the main dining room. Our delightful server took great care of us, even trying to give us two desserts each “because it’s the end of the cruise” (we declined because at that point, we were struggling to tackle one dessert apiece). After dinner, we decided to turn in early-ish because the ship was docking in Seward at 4:30am and we had a disembarkation time of 7:30am. And if you’ve read much of this blog, you already know I am not an early riser. We packed our suitcases earlier in the day; so it was just a matter of making sure we had everything we needed in the morning before tagging them and rolling them out into the hallway. My paranoid mother was worried about someone stealing her suitcase so I pointed out all of the other, much nicer looking suitcases already in the hall. Mom, no one is going to steal your Skyways Kohl’s clearance suitcase when there are Tumi bags sitting in the hallway. She had no idea what I was talking about but she felt better when I offered her some suitcase locks (I came prepared! Do I know her neuroses or what?).
The next morning at 6:00am, the ship’s cruise director made the announcement of the first wave getting their 15 minute warning before they needed to disembark. I obviously did not need my alarm clock. Mom and I got up, got showers, got dressed in clothes that we remembered to leave out of the suitcases, and did our final check around the cabin to make sure we weren’t leaving anything behind. At 7:20am, they announced that our wave was ready to disembark. We took the elevator down to the gangway and got our keycards scanned for the last time.
We walked outside to make our way into the Seward Terminal. I was really glad it wasn’t pouring because we were exposed to the elements. The morning was glorious, blue skies punctuated with puffy white clouds. And holy moly is Seward scenic as hell! Snowcapped mountains ring the town, reflecting into the sea. I instantly regretted not spending a night in Seward. We wandered into the terminal, hunted down our suitcases, and then waited for our shuttle bus driver to arrive. I purchased an independent transfer from Seward to Anchorage International Airport. I originally was going to make my mom hang out in Seward all day taking a Misty Fjords sightseeing cruise and then catch the train up to Anchorage. But after my hubby backed out of this trip, it threw my calibrated logistical planning out the window. You see, the train doesn’t even depart Seward until 6p, not arriving in Anchorage until almost 10p. While may work if you’re transferring to a standard hotel, we were heading to a B&B next. And I had expected the hubster to pick up the rental car from the airport whenever the hell he landed and check into the lodgings way earlier in the day. Suddenly, I was thrust into either taking a taxi from the train depot to the B&B and hope the proprietor wasn’t sleeping by the time we arrived and then taking a taxi to the airport the next day to get the car; or try to get to the airport from the train station, grab the car, and then drive while exhausted on unfamiliar roads to get to the B&B and hope the lady with our keys wasn’t sleeping and we had to camp out in the car instead.
Neither of those options appealed to me. So I booked us on the Big Bus directly to Anchorage International with a stop at the Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center. We got settled into the very comfy bus seats and at 8:30am, we began our transfer with tour commentary along the way. I have to say, the idiots who fell asleep during the drive up missed out on some spectacular scenery. The Seward Highway, in clear weather, has to be one of the most amazing road trips ever. Mom and I were gawking the entire time.
About halfway through the journey, the bus stopped at the Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center. I wasn’t exactly sure what to expect but the center exceeded my expectations. It contains animals that for one reason or another can’t survive in the wild (orphaned or injured). It was started by one guy who had some bison and elk. But it has quickly grown into a facility that houses moose, caribou, and brown bears in addition to a bunch of other animals. I have a love-hate relationships with zoos but the center felt like the best idea of a zoo. Mom and I checked out the two brown bears, the lone black bear cub that played hide-and-seek with us, a couple of wolves, and the foxes (who were not nearly as smelly as we were warned). The setting for the center has some beautiful surroundings as well. I worried that this was a tourist trap stop, and maybe it is, but I enjoyed it far more than I anticipated. My mom bemoaned the fact that we didn’t have enough time to see everything.
Back on the bus, it was another hour or so until we hit the outskirts of Anchorage. The bus dropped us at the ticketing level. It was a short walk to the rental car center. I made my mom stop along the way so we could weigh her suitcase, 51 pounds… a pound over the limit. I told her she wasn’t allowed to shop for anything else. As we were getting into the elevator to take us down a level to the rental car center, some woman cut in front of us and pushed the door closed button right in our faces! I was livid and wanted nothing more to abandon my suitcase, sprint down the stairs, and publicly and loudly shame her when she got out of the elevator. Shit, I still want to do that. What the hell is wrong with people? Plus, she had no bags, so why her dumb ass couldn’t take the escalator is beyond me but I’m telling you, if I ever see that woman again…
At the rental car center, I parked my mom at a seat with our bags while I stood in an excruciatingly slow line. Finally with keys in hand, we made our way to a 2016 Kia Optima complete with jacked upholstery. I wasn’t expecting the fabulous fabled orange Mustang GT convertible of my Canadian Maritimes adventure, but I was kind of hoping for a car that wasn’t going to give me stains from just sitting on the seats either. The only good thing is that I noticed the chip in the windshield before we left the rental lot. At least the car got really good gas mileage because the price of gas is shockingly high for saying a lot of freaking oil comes from the damn state. For the environmental risks Alaskans take in order for the rest of us in the U.S. to have cheap gas, they should be rewarded with pre-Chavez-meltdown Venezuela prices. I think Alaska is on par with California in terms of gasoline pricing.
Mom and I were ready to start the second phase of our trip – the overland portion. We were mobile, in Anchorage, and about to experience what the interior of this incredible state had in store for us.
Pingback: Mom and Me Adventure – Anchorage | Pink Melanoma