I guess the idea is that a temporary Jewish settlement in Sitka, Alaska, as Roosevelt actually proposed in the early days of World War II, actually happened. The idea of Israel in Palestine never gained ground, and now in the present day, over a million Jews live in a sort of New York-in-Alaska (except, as my Mom points out, with much higher earthquake risk). However, the original had a 60 year lease (think Hong Kong), and soon the Yiddish-speaking defacto Jewish homeland will return to the control of the United States.
Somewhere in there a murder mystery unfolds :).
Anyway, it sounds kind of cool.
Also, this Yuki-reading-a-book icon is one of my favorites!
I've been adding more pictures to my Flickr page - specifically today I put in a couple more days from the Alaska cruise and also my trip to New York City with Carrie. There are alot there, but here's a little preview:
Remember if you want to see pictures with friends and family in them you'll need to make a Flickr account and add me as a friend!
current weather: 85, Mostly Cloudy, Wind: NW 5; Severe thunderstorm watch
Tags:alaska, flickr, new york, photos Current Location:41.197N 81.433W Current Mood: accomplished Current Music: Caroline Dale - Allegro Non Molto - Such Sweetthunder Concerto In G Minor (Vivaldi)
I'm not exactly a professional videographer, but I do take video sometimes, and now in theory I can put up on here. So here's a test, this is from the glacier helicopter tour I went on while I was in Juneau. Just click it to view:
current weather: Partly Cloudy, 81, Wind: calm; actually it's either cloudy or mostly clear, depending on how you define it - just a hazy cloud across the whole sky
This was one of the glaciers in the Juneau icefield - either the Tuka or Mendenhall Glacier, I think, which we saw on our helicopter tour (in this case from within the helicopter). What really struck me about it was how much it resembled the surface of Europa, one of the moons of Jupiter.
Not too much to report today. I finished "Rise of Endymion" this morning, so hopefully my DS can keep me occupied tomorrow, which will be a full day at sea.
We're in harbor at Ketchikan - but the ship didn't get there until 2:00 this afternoon. The weather has turned incredibly better - it's in the mid 60s, windy, but completely clear. Which is surprising, since Ketchikan is one of the rainiest towns in the United States (over 150 inches of rain a year!)
We didn't have any excursions scheduled or anything, so we just walked around town a bit, Mom and Dad did some shopping.
After a full day at sea tomorrow, we'll arrive in Vancouver Sunday morning. I'm not 100% sure off the top of my head what the plan is at that point.
I think we're going to get a rental car in Vancouver and then drive to Seattle, where we'll be for a couple days. Last I heard we were going to do a tour of the Boeing factory and try to see a Seattle Mariners game. The rest of the details are fuzzy to me - but I know we'll be landing in Cleveland at around 6 am on Wednesday morning (the 5th).
To anyone at home that reads this - I WILL be back in town at that point, but I need to dogsit Jake up in Brecksville until that weekend (the 10th). I'll be picking him up from the kennel and taking over for the rest of the week, but I will be around.
Today we're in Juneau, it's a pretty awesome place.
I wanted to see the Alaska state capitol building, only to discover that Alaska doesn't really have one. Well, it does, but I guess what happened is that when Alaska became a state, they just took over the old Federal building, which is just a pretty non-descript 4-story office building. I took pictures, but it's nothing really amazing. I guess there is currently a design contest underway to design a true state capitol building.
Juneau's not really that large, but it's full of activity. There are at least four cruise ships docked here right now, and there's a lot of transportation activity. Floatplanes are constantly landing and taking off in the harbor, and helicopters buzzing all over (I'll get to that in a second). There's also a highway/boulevard that runs through town, but it doesn't really go anywhere, it ends six miles out from town in one direction and 40 miles in the other.
We walked around town a bit, there are lots of shops, some government buildings and a Russian Orthodox church. The weather was still pretty bad, it's been raining off and on, but it's let up some the last few hours. There's a saloon called the Red Dog Saloon, which has a big sign saying that they sell "garters, condoms, and panties," among other more traditional gifts like t-shirts. I decided that no one I knew would probably particularly enjoy a garter, condom or panties though so I didn't buy any.
I found a bookstore, which I was hoping might have some of David Brin's "Uplift" books (since I'm very close to finishing "Rise of Endymion" and then won't have anything to read), but they didn't have them. I picked up some postcards and sent them out.
The real highlight of the day, however, was a helicopter tour, in which we landed on one glacier and flew over three others. It was AWESOME. One of the coolest things I've ever done. I'd never been up in a helicopter before, and now I can't wait till I get to go back up in one again. Landing on a glacier was just plain amazing. I have a lot of great pictures, but it's hard to find words to describe JUST how awesome it was. One thing that was especially cool was that this particular helicopter company operates nine helicopters, and they all go out on the tour. So one moment we're sitting there waiting, and then in the next, nine helicopters come down and land. Once we were finished seeing the glaciers, they all formed up and fly back into town along the Lynn Channel in one line. It was like something out of "Apocalypse Now" or something - the first time I've ever been in a flying formation :).
Anyway, I'm back on the ship now. Tomorrow we will be in Kethcikan. The next day is I believe a full day at sea, and then the next day we'll arrive in Vancouver, where we'll get off the cruise ship, and at that point we'll be on our own.
Tonight is another dreaded "formal dinner." Ugh. Everyone goes on about how great cruise food is, but... I don't know, it all reminds me too much of dorm food. Which wasn't bad, just not... what I wanted, I guess. I'm looking forward to frosted shredded wheat, oranges, easy mac, and Swenson's again. I miss home in general - but I always do :).
current weather: Cloudy/Light Rain, 59, Wind: E 5, Rain today: 0.05"
Today our cruise ship docked in Haines, Alaska. Haines is a town of about 2500 people (quite large for this area), and it's something of a transportation hub, as cruise ships can dock there, it has an airport, has a ferry which travels to Skagway (about 14 miles up the channel), and actually has road access to the mainland, which is very rare around here, only three cities in southeast Alaska actually have road access to the mainland (Haines, Skagway, and I want to say Heney but I'm not sure). Juneau, the state capitol, is only accessible by air and sea.
We disembarked early this morning (6:45) and then took the ferry to Skagway, where we boarded the White Pass & Yukon Route scenic railway, or as they like to say, "THE scenic railway of the world."
I can say, it's quite possible that it lives up to that name. Unfortunately the weather hasn't been cooperating. It was cold, windy, and rainy all day today. It's been raining all day, sometimes pretty hard, and the temperatures were around 40 degrees in Skagway. The railroad itself starts in Skagway, and then goes up into the mountains, traveling all the way to Whitehorse and Dawson in the Yukon Territory. Our particular train went 28 miles into the mountains up to White Pass, about 3000 feet up or so, crossed the border into Canada, then they moved the engine cars to the back and we went back down.
Because of the rain and cold, the windows were all fogged and it was hard to see anything, but what I did see was pretty amazing. So on the ride down I stood outside of the railcar, where I could get really good pictures but where I got really wet and REALLY cold. I think it messed me up, I've been recovering from it all day.
Skagway was a gold rush town, and while it's a big tourist area (there were five cruise ships docked there), the town itself is really tiny, maybe 800 people or so. We didn't spend much time there, we had to catch our ferry back to Haines - the tour guide on the ferry was a local girl from Haines who pretty much told us her life story, although I have to admit it was pretty entertaining.
I found it interesting to see a road sign in Skagway pointing to Whitehorse. Whitehorse and Yellowknife are two of those random exotic places I think it would be interesting to see someday.
I ended up kind of crashing this afternoon - I read by the pool for a bit, started to fall asleep, then took a nap, and we just had dinner. I'm still tired - after I write this I think I may just read some more and go to bed for good.
I like the cruise ship, but I have to admit that the cruise method of traveling is maybe not my favorite. As I've mentioned the median age of my fellow shipmates is a good deal older than me. As it if it matters anyway - I think it's pretty well known that I'm not much of a "talk to and meet a bunch of new people" kind of person. People like Lisa and Emily I think are perfectly comfortable just sitting down and having conversations with random people, but I'm never really that comfortable with it.
I don't really like the "guided tour" method of traveling - a bunch of people in one group that swarm on a destination all at one time. A cruise ship kind of magnifies that effect in the extreme. When a cruise ship like this disembarks in a place like Skagway it doubles the size of the town just like that. Cruise ships also force me into all sorts of weird forced community. For example, if we eat at the Rotterdam room (the "nice" dinner), we share our table with four other people, and it's kinda awkward, at least to me. It's hard to find time to yourself - but I don't like to just go to my cabin, that seems too antisocial even for me :). I spend time here in the Explorations Lounge (the library area), and also in the Crow's Nest, which is basically the "trendy bar" section of the ship, which tends to be pretty empty in the daytime, has comfortable seats, and great views outside.
Well, I think that's enough for now, I'm getting a little wordy! I hope things are good at home! I turned off my cell phone while it was charging the other day (had no signal at open sea anyway), and now that I'm in a signal area I've turned it back on, but it's analog so it's not updating the clock (i.e. I can't use it as an alarm clock).
Tomorrow we're going to Juneau - I'm pumped for a few reasons, 1) I think I may buy some more books to read if I can find a bookstore, 2) the state capital is there, 3) it's actually a city (admittedly the size of Stow), and 4) we're going on a helicopter ride, which I think will be really awesome. Supposedly we will be landing on a glacier.
Today we've been cruising in Glacier Bay National Park. Last night we were out in pretty open water, in fact, probably the farthest out in the ocean I've been outside of an airplane.
We saw two glaciers today, Margerie Glacier and Johns Hopkins Glacier. Really beautiful, though I have to admit, anyone that looks at the pictures I'm taking will probably get pretty bored seeing as it's "ice, mountains, water, ice, mountains, water, etc." But it's really remarkable in person. The glaciers that reach down to the ocean are continuously fracturing and breaking off pieces (calving), and it's pretty amazing to watch. It's hard to get a sense of scale of the glaciers - they're huge, but the boats only get so close, so it can be hard to tell. Fortunately today a ship passed in front of us so I was able to get some pictures of a ship close to the glacier which gives a good sense of scale.
The weather is still pretty chilly but improving. It's still in the high 50s or low 60s, but the sun has been out a lot more than the last couple of days, and since the ship is moving pretty slowly the wind isn't too bad. They open up a section of the roof over the indoor pool, but it's still kind of cool in there.
I've been spending the vast majority of my time reading. I finished Endymion yesterday and I'm on to Rise of Endymion today. I regret not finding/bringing more books but I have my DS too. It feels so great to spend so much time reading. On one hand I feel a little guilty, like I ought to be doing other things, but I can sit out in the Crow's Nest (bar at the top of the ship) and watch the glaciers and mountains all day while reading. It feels GREAT. And I'm not alone too, I see a lot of other people reading.
I skew the median age quite a bit - I'm something of a statistical outlier here. The vast majority of the other cruisers are retirees, probably 90% or more. There are a few families, some teenagers, but pretty much no one my age except for crewmembers. Admittedly, it's not like I would be talking to people that much anyway, this is me we're talking about here :).
After these last two days at sea, tomorrow we're arriving in Haines. Mom and Dad and I will be taking a ferry from Haines to Skagway, and from there we're going to be going on some sort of Yukon rail tour that goes up into the mountains. Should be pretty cool. At some point in the next couple days we'll be taking a helicopter tour onto a glacier (I'm REALLY looking forward to that), and we'll be spending some time in Juneau, where I hope to a) see the state capital building and b) pick up and mail some postcards.
I think that's it for now, time for me to do my "internet round trip:" post LiveJournal, check e-mail, respond to LiveJournal, check news, check Myspace, logout :).
Yesterday, when I was sitting here writing an entry, I noticed someone across the room surfing the World of Warcraft forums. Glad to know I'm not the only person in WoW withdrawal, haha.
It's been a pretty busy last couple days, fortunately things have calmed down somewhat today so I can be a little lazier and also have the chance to sit down and right this.
We flew out of Cleveland on Saturday at 5:45 pm (Eastern time), to Seattle. We then caught another flight from Seattle to Anchorage, which left Seattle at a little after 9:30 pm (Pacific time). The weather was great in Seattle, totally clear and in the mid 80s - I'm hoping it stays like that when we're there later this week. Our flight to Anchorage landed at about 12:20 am (Alaska time), which is 4:20 am back at home, so needless to say we were pretty tired. The sun doesn't set in Anchorage this time of year until after 11:30 pm, and it rises again around 3:30 am, but what I didn't really realize was that this time of year it never actually gets completely dark. So when we arrived at the hotel at about 1:00 am, it looked as if the sun had been down for about half an hour, but it wouldn't get any darker than that. There were no stars.
I took pictures, but I'm not going to be posting pictures while I'm actually here. Internet access is really expensive (at least, I assume it is, I haven't attempted it yet) and besides that, I don't really want to spend vacation time actually going through and selecting pictures to post. But I'll put some up after I get back. I'm kind of behind in picture posting as it is anyway.
I don't mind taking the time to write though, it's much easier when it's fresh in my mind and I like to keep this thing up to date.
Anyway, we only had about 5 hours of sleep available before we got up at 6:30 am Saturday morning. I was really dragging - keep in mind Thursday I drove over 700 miles, then only got 3 hours of sleep, then drove another 400 miles at 3 in the morning, went into a 3 hour panic mode, and then flew home from Houston, so I've been burning the candle at both ends for the last four days or so.
We had breakfast and then caught a bus to Seward, which is where our cruise would be disembarking from. It's a little disappointing that I didn't get to see much more of Anchorage. I've always wanted to see Anchorage, it's a pretty unique place. It's the largest city in Alaska, and one of the only large cities in Alaska really. It has an incredibly wide tidal zone - the tides in Anchorage vary by something like 40 feet - when we flew in the tide was at a low point. The surface of the ground in that area is glacial silt, which is basically a gray-colored quicksand with a lot of similarities to wet concrete - and can be quite fatal.
Seward and Anchorage were both devastated by an earthquake in 1964, one of the largest earthquakes of modern times, which was a 9.2 on the Richter scale. Parts of downtown Anchorage shifted as much as 20 feet. Seward was almost completely destroyed, but the town is very small.
The bus drive was very scenic, at least... as much of it as I managed to stay awake for. Anchorage to Seward was a three hour drive.
Once we got to Seward, we went on a six hour boat tour of Kenai Fjords National Park. A lot of people this tour is the highlight of their trips here, and now I can see why. The landscapes were absolutely beautiful - some of the most amazing I've ever seen. But the real highlights of the tour were Aialik Glacier and the wildlife.
The glaciers that are visible from the ocean are basically rivers or tongues of ice from the Harding Ice Shelf (which sits up about 3000 to 4000 feet in the mountains), which then very slowly creep down through valleys to the ocean. The ice is much denser than "regular" ice and takes on a characteristic blue color. The scale is amazing.
As for wildlife, over the course of the tour we saw two humpback whales, a full pod of orcas (pod "AK" according to the ship's captain), and a whole lot of sea otters, sea lions, puffins, gulls and cormorants. Really amazing stuff.
Parts of the tour were out on the open ocean - and our ship was moving at about 30 miles per hour, really crashing over waves, it was a lot of fun :). But not for everyone on the ship, haha.
Eventually we got onto the cruise ship, the MS Ryndam, found our cabin, had a lifeboat drill we had to attend, had dinner, and then I fell very asleep.
Mom and Dad got up early this morning (around 6:00 am) to see the College Fjord. I decided to sleep in.
At the moment we're out in open sea. I've spent most of today continuing to read "Endymion" by Dan Simmons (I plowed through over half of it on the flights alone!), and eating. Here I am, wanting to lose weight, but the availability of free food 24 hours a day isn't really helping that much.
I guess that's all... it's been really awesome so far. I'm going through a bit of information withdrawal (no TV stations, and I haven't been on the internet yet), but having a good time.
current weather: Partly Cloudy, 54; I don't really have access to good weather info besides temperature and sky, which I can just look at :). It's pretty cold, and pretty windy.
Well, I'm in Alaska. It's 1:43 am here local time, 5:43 am at home. It's not actually "dark" out per se. The sun will be up again in a little over an hour and a half. But in the meantime, I need to sleep. BAD.
current weather: Mostly Clear, 52, Wind: N 4; Clouds around the rim of the horizon - the bay looks really muddy, it has one of the most extreme tides in the world (38 feet!) and at the moment must be at the low end
I'm leaving this afternoon for an Alaskan cruise with my parents. We'll be flying to Anchorage, then be on a cruise ship down to Vancouver, British Columbia, and then fly home from Seattle. I'll be gone until (the very early morning of) July 5th.
I'm not sure what kind of internet access I'll have - I'm assuming very little, but it might be possible for me to type up entries on my laptop and send them in little bursts (sans pictures).
Once I get back, I need to dogsit Jake until July... um, whatever the date is for that weekend.
I'm never home.
current weather: Clear, 68, Wind: NW 2; Aaahhh... once more in a temperate climate zone
Tags:alaska, canada, travel Current Location:41.197N 81.433W Current Mood: busy Current Music: Battlestar Galactica - Bear McCreary - Colonial Anthem
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