Blog Troubles

 The blog entries I posted while on the just completed Alaska cruise show as posted on my owner's page, but no emails were sent out by Blogger. Also there have been no views.

I'll try this text-only post and see if it is announced via email, as they all are supposed to be. If it works, I'll go back and revert the missing posts to draft status and repost, hoping that works.

Sunshine on Hubbard & Turner Glaciers

 I don't know what's going on with my blog service. I posted on 8/29 and again on 8/30. Both show as "published" on my blog-owner's access site, but so far I've not received an email announcing the posts and I think none of you have either. My views are 1 and 0 for those two posts. 

Hopefully, they will catch up. The WiFi is particularly slow this afternoon and evening so that might have something to do with it, but just don't know. 

This day started with some sun (below the horizon) at 0536. But you never know in glacier country, where the weather can change in minutes.

Looks promising. This was taken at 0617. 

0622 and a good sunrise in the making.

Off to the left of the sunrise you can see why tourists like to come to Alaska. 

The sun is up but screened from my view by the clouds. You can see the sun's rays illuminating the upper part of the mountain on the right.

Today we are scheduled to cruise into Yakutat Bay and view Hubbard Glacier. Here's hoping for some good weather today.

At this point we are sailing into the bay. There was the occasional piece of ice but mostly ice free silty water. The terrain here is only recently (geologically speaking) free of ice and snow. All along the shore we could see evidence of washouts as melting snow and ice, combined with rainstorms, washes away loose soil deposited by retreating glaciers. Another product of retreating glaciers is the increasing height of the land. Some areas near here are still rebounding at the rate of 1-3 inches per year due to reduced weight of ice as the glaciers melt.

Some glaciers aren't melting, at least consistently, and Hubbard is one of them. It's sometimes called the "galloping glacier" because it can move quickly or stall unexpectedly. 

In 2002 it advanced far enough to block Russell Fjord, off out of sight to the right in this photo. When we visited in 2009, it was quiet and covered with dark debris. The main attraction for cruise ships then was the Turner Glacier, out of sight to the left in this photo. 

Now the Turner Glacier is quiet and this one is actively calving and showing its strength.

This is the Celebrity Eclipse sitting in front of the glacier. You can see it reaches only about halfway to the top of the face.

View of the right side of Hubbard Glacier. This is the largest tidewater glacier in North America and is an amazing sight. The face is over 600 feet high with 250 feet underwater and the other 350 feet above the waterline. It is over seven miles wide. The opening on the right leads to Russell Fjord.

This is the view to the left. As stated above, when we were here before, this was all a dirty brown with only a few areas of bright ice. 

Directly opposite the ship, about in the center of the face of the glacier, I saw this brown water gushing out. I wasn't able to catch a photo at the right time, but sometimes a large volume of muddy water would burst up, splashing against the face and sending waves toward us. Near as I can tell, the river of muddy water comes down the glacier base and is released as the face of the glacier hits a submerged hill of rock, causing the geyser-like eruption. Since the base of the glacier is 250 feet below the surface, the rocky mount must be pretty large to channel this flow. Just my guess, but I found it interesting to consider.

This is the Turner Glacier as it looked today. It looks pretty quiet, with brown sediment covering most of the arms and even parts of the main flow. The cruise ships don't even go close to look at this one since there is so much more action on the Hubbard now.

After we left Yakutat and Disenchantment Bays heading for Sitka, Iko and I were sitting in the dining room and saw this amazing rainbow. I've never seen one that terminated so close to our observation location. The view through the ship's windows obscured part of the beauty, but it was a enchanting end to a great day. 

Juneau

The ship's horn sounded all night long last night. Not so loud in our cabin (stateroom, as the cruise lines like to call them), it wasn't enough to keep me awake but I could hear it whenever I was awake. 

Sometime around 0300, I noticed the ship's motion had smoothed out. The stabilizers cancel out a lot of the rolling motion, but the pitching (up and down motion of the bow and stern) can't be helped. When we entered waters sheltered by the many islands around here, the rocking and rolling ceased. About the same time I noticed the horn was silenced.

The ship's clock was moved back one hour at 0200 this morning as we entered a new time zone. About 0530 I stepped outside to check the weather and saw what passed for early morning sun.

The respite was short and we soon reentered the fog and rain.

Around 1030 we broke out of the fog again and could watch the passing shore. As we entered the passageway to Juneau, we could see bank fishermen trying their luck for salmon in the flood tide.

In the Juneau harbor we joined four other cruise ships. There were two Norwegian, one Princess and one Carnival ship already tied up or anchored. Our assigned spot was just behind the Monarch of the Seas, on the right, below. The two that were anchored were using lighters to ferry pax back and forth on the short trip to the dock.

As you can see by the wet windows, the rain continued. If you take a cruise to Alaska, I advise bringing raingear and umbrellas no matter that it's summer.

I'm always amazed at how the crew can maneuver such a large ship without assistance from tugboats. At this point we were moving at dead slow and easing sideways into our berth.

Our sternline will be secured to the bollard atop the pilings in the center. In the background you can see the two Eagle Trams passing as they carry tourists to the lookout (and more shopping opportunities) on top. Many of the workers in the souvenir shops work Alaska in the summer and the Caribbean cruise ports in the winter. 

Dock workers pulling the sternline up to the bollard.

We watched the passengers, and some crew, getting wet as they made their way up the dock and into the many shopping areas ashore.

I thought we would be dry and cozy aboard but Iko had other ideas. She needed to find some hair spray so off we went into the rain. Fortunately, I had stashed a couple of collapsible umbrellas in my backpack so we stayed relatively dry. Some of the other pax had umbrellas and many had rain gear, but there also were many who were soaked by the continuing rain. 

Rain has to make its way back to the ocean, so some of Juneau's rain results in the scenic streams that tumble down the hills behind the Capital of Alaska.

Well, it's almost time for dinner so I'll close this post out and join you again tomorrow.

North to Alaska, Again

It seemed like the summer was slipping away, politics were heating up, and we needed a break, so I booked an Alaska cruise on short notice with my favorite line, Holland America. 

In the Covid era several countries (and companies) have developed digital methods to track visitors and control for disease transmission. When we went to Greece last year, we had to fill out forms (on line) attesting to our negative Covid tests. Not just for Greece but also for England which was a short stopover. Then we needed to have a negative test just before boarding the ship. 

For this trip we needed to download and complete the form on the ArriveCAN app. We have a short stop in Victoria to satisfy the requirements of the PVSA. Probably no one will get off the ship during that brief stop, but we all needed to fill out the form in order to board in Seattle.

The PVSA (Passenger Vessel Services Act) was passed in 1886 (yes, you read that right) to protect the US maritime industry of those days against foreign competition by requiring foreign flagged vessels to stop in a foreign port if transporting passengers between US ports. As with many government programs, the intent was good at the time, but the situation has changed dramatically over the intervening 136 years. Now it ends up costing cruise companies and their customers plenty of unnecessary bucks while protecting a nonexistent industry.

But, back to our cruise. We needed a negative Covid test taken no more than 72 hours before boarding. I checked around and nobody provides travel Covid tests free anymore. The best price I could find was $128 (plus tax?), but in the fine print on the Holland America check in papers was a note that, if you didn't have a negative test, you could get one at the dock for $60. That was a no brainer, so booked reservations.

We got packed up and headed down to Pier 91 in Seattle Sunday morning. I made the testing appointments well in advance of our boarding time because I didn't know how long the results would take. 

I must say the process is well organized. We parked the car, took the shuttle from the parking area to the dock, went to the testing tent, got our results in 15 minutes or so and entered the terminal building to go through the boarding drill. All together that took about 45 minutes. 

Our line to enter the boarding building was short. The other line, for the Discovery Princess, stretched back under the awning. Both lines advanced quickly (as lines go) with well-organized steps along the way. We checked our bags first, went through passport and boarding pass checks, through the metal detectors, had mug shots taken and were crossing the boarding platform in short order.  

This shot is looking NE across Pier 91 with the Magnolia bridge (one of three to Magnolia) and Queen Anne hill in the background.

Below is the boarding platform with Harbor Island in the background, across Elliott Bay. The aft end of the Discovery Princess takes up a good part of the scene. The green crane is supporting a work deck with a couple of painters working on the upper decks of the Westerdam. Baggage is being loaded farther down the dock. The ramp in the lower near foreground is for returning employees.

We settled into our stateroom, wished ourselves Bon Voyage and watched the sunset over Vancouver Island and then went to dinner in the dining room. 

Incidentally, that sun was the last we have seen. During the night Sunday night, the ship's horn began sounding to warn smaller boats in the fog of our approach. We've heard the horn all day today. It began raining during the night and that has stuck around also. I walked three miles on deck today then another mile with Iko, all in the rain. A lot of the deck is protected but it was wet everywhere from the blowing rain.

I've seen several nice flower arrangements. These were in the Explorers' Lounge. The stems are encased in larger replicas of test tubes filled with water.

I had good company for our dinner.

Here's a flower arrangement in the Lido, the buffet dining area. Quite lovely it was.

That's it for now. More anon.

Maui in May 2

Back home in Edmonds on my friendly laptop, I've updated the last post to include a couple photos that were referenced but didn't make it into publication. More internet gremlins at work. You can check the earlier post if you are interested.

In this post I'll concentrate on son's gardening efforts. When we were here two years ago, this fig tree was bedraggled and not bearing fruit. A little TLC has made a difference. A couple of the figs ripened during our stay so Iko had a treat.

There were a two papaya trees on the property when they bought it. He has planted several more papayas of three different flavors. I didn't know that papayas come in sexes. This one is a male. The one below is obviously a female. Son says that one male in the area is enough to fertilize many females.

Deer can be a problem for gardeners in the Maui Upcountry area. They come out of the nearby forested areas and into yards, especially during dry spells, looking for greenery. This garden is protected by a six-foot fence to keep hungry deer out. 

This shot looks SE with corn foreground right, lemongrass on the left. Tomatoes in the raised beds were about five feet high and bearing loads of tasty cherry tomatoes when we were here last June. They bear for about six months at a time.

Outside the fence you can see a couple papaya trees and bananas on the left. The big tree in the background is the Macadamia nut tree.

Looking NW, we see several new papaya trees, one old one (blending with the palm), bananas and Plumeria in the pots.

Pineapples in the early stage of growth. The photo below shows some others with young pineapples on them. Son says they will be ready to harvest in a year or less.

This is Lilikoi (passion fruit) growing on the inside of the garden fence. Deer especially like the leaves so fruits are sparse on the outside but you can see a couple here on the inside.

Three Dragonfruit trees (bushes, cacti?) growing in large pots. They are less than a year old but will be having fruits sometime soon.

It turns out that the deer also like citrus leaves. This lemon is protected by the fencing you see. Son also has a mandarin tree and orange tree. 

Mango trees normally grow into quite large trees. This is a semi-dwarf variety that is supposed to have the same quality fruit as the large ones. It also bears fruit at a younger age. I'll have to arrange a trip during mango season in the future.

This view looks pretty much south. Beyond the mango is the orange. On the right are the Dragonfruit cacti. The tree in the distance is the avocado. It now has small fruits that will ripen in November and December.

On the fenced in patio, there are succulents and these water gardens. As you may know, the water lilies go to bed when the sun sets and don't open again until the sun hits them in the daytime.

On one of my walking routes, I've admired the walls of this old building. It has been vacant for the last two years that we've been visiting Pukulani. The roof must leak and the wooden parts are sagging, but those walls are great.

We were scheduled to catch a redeye flight home Wednesday evening so we went to a late lunch in Kula, a town another thousand feet or so upslope from Pukalani. Kula Lodge Restaurant features a wood-fired pizza oven and good fresh food, much of which is locally sourced from the surrounding farms. The pizza wasn't all that good but the fresh greens and veggies were excellent.

In the valley below, Kahului is on the right, Kihei is off to the left and the West Maui mountains are in the background.

Our flight took off about 2230 and arrived in SeaTac about six hours later at 0700 local. Not much sleep was had by the weary travelers, but we're caught up now and looking forward to our next travels.

Maui in May

Last time we were in Maui was last June so we decided to go a little earlier this year. Last Thursday (5/12) we headed for the airport. 

As we boarded our plane at SeaTac, we bid adieu to Seattle's rain and cold. 

Maui greeted us with blue skies, warm temps and no rain! The kids picked us up at OGG and we headed to upcountry Maui. 

In their microclimate, the Macadamia tree starts dropping nuts in late September and continues through the winter. They saved a box for us to crack. 

The cracker works good once the operator learns the right amount of force to apply to the nut. It takes about 300 psi to crack the shell and the trick is to strike hard enough to crack the nut but not so hard as to smash the nut. 

After cracking the box full, we picked up another half box from the bounty remaining under the tree.

 In two sessions, Iko and I cracked over five pounds. As you can see there are many whole nuts but there's a good percentage of those ready to use in baked goods too. 

Saturday I walked up to the local Farmer's Market. Along the way I came across this fire hydrant that has been on Island time.

Some street art caught my eye. Near as I could tell, they were all used masks. Guess it's a comment on the times. 

My Sweetie sporting a freshly picked Plumeria flower.

Left my laptop home this time thinking that I'd post blog entries from my phone thereby saving the extra steps of transferring photos from phone to laptop. After writing most of the best post ever, somehow it disappeared into the never never land of computer gremlins. Now I'm going to break the observations up into shorter sections.