So Long Suckas. . . !

I'll be leaving for my Alaskan vacation early on Wednesday. I'll be gone for the next two weeks.

If I'm lucky, I'll have the next book read & ready to be reviewed by the time I get back.

If YOU'RE lucky, I'll have a gory firsthand account of an encounter with a grizzly to share.

Gonna miss all you Corner Cratures. Have fun (but not too much) in my absence. See ya when I get back!

I'm Baaaa-aaack! Let me just say, if you've never had the pleasure, Alaska is somewhere I'd recommend anyone go. Particularly if you're the outdoorsy type (which I kind of am). You'll have a blast.

I got to see 6 bald eagles, including 2 hatchlings. Numerous otters & seals playing alongside the ship. Several Whales of indeterminate species. Got to stand 6 feet from a 500 lb grizzly (there was, in all fairness, a flimsy looking electrified fence between us, but I think if he had taken in his mind to kill the tourists, he could've). Hiked thru a rain forest off the coast of Ketchikan, and along the Tony Knowles Coastal trail in Anchorage (including stops at Earthquake Park, showing off some of the subsidence damage form the 64 quake, still the largest in recorded history at 9.2 on the Richter scale, and Point Woronzof, from which you can see Downtown Anchorage and Mt. McKinley at the same time, whilst planes from the Anchoeage Airport take off over your head). Drank very good beer in Salt Lake City during a layover. Drank exceptionally good beer in Vancouver. Drank beer ranging from bad to exceptional in Anchorage. Discovered my new favorite Scotch (Cragganmore Single Malt) in the Ship's Cigar bar. Smoked many fine cigars on the balcony of my stateroom. Took a trip on the White Pass/Yukon Line railway, w/ some ruly breathtaking, vertigo inducing views as your train hugs the side of the mountain & goes over spindly looking wooden bridges. Got to eat glacial ice the tour guides and forest rangers passed around from the Portage Glacier while on a close in (i.e., 300 yards away; you don't want an iceberg falling ON you, do you?) boat tour (I'm not sure how impressive eating glacier ice is, but fuck it, I wanted to be able to say I did it). And, perhaps best of all, got to see Margerie glacier calve not once, not twice, but three times. The sound of the cracking ice, echoing across the fjord like thunder, followed by the splash as an iceberg the size of a small house falls into the water is awe inspiring in a way I don't have words for.

I didn't get to see any Orcas, the aurora borealis, or moose. I also didn't know until I got there that you can take a helicopter tour out of Juneau and walk on the Mendenhall glacier, and had already booked a shore excursion for that day, so I didn't get to do that. I also didn't finish that book for the review I promised you, and managed to avoid bear attacks, so I have no 1st person account for you.

So you know what that means? A year or so after he gets his divorce finalized & gets back on his feet financially, I'm gonna talk my brother (who's a geologist by trade, and already insanely jealous that I got to see all this stuff before he did) into a trip in the spring.

Thanks to all who wished me well. I would unreservedly recommend a trip here to anyone. It was, by far, the best vacation I've ever taken in my 36 years on this planet, and one of the few places I cared enough about, once I'd seen it, to return to. Absolutely beautiful, and truly amazing.

Thanks, all. My wife's whole family went on this thing (there were 13 of us), and everyone ook an insane amount of photos b/c my brother in law brought his laptop, and all memory sticks were instantly uploaded. There's tons to sort thru; my wife's over her sister's house as we speak working on that. Hopefully I'll have some representative pix in a few days. As for what it cost, I'll have to pull the stuff. It was a pretty penny though, since in addition to a flight to Vancouver, from Anchorage home, and the cruise itself, I took a bunch of cruise line sponsored shore excursions. And what my wife spent in souvenirs. . . I shudder to think. But if I'm gonna go into hock for anything, this'd be it. I'll get back to you on that.

Actually, they don't give you money just for showing up, but all Alaska permanent residents get a check for something like $1,600.00 every year from something called the Permanent Fund, which is money from oil revenues invested by the state Gov't. Nice, huh?

And one more thing I'd get to do in an ideal life is take a picture in front of the "Welcome to Barrow" sign, but Barrow's way, WAAAAAY north. opposite end of the state from where all the places I went to are. I saw a map somewhere that gave you the relative size of Alaska to the rest of the country; it comprised pretty much all of the Midwest, so flying up there is roughly the equivalent of flying from say, Houston to Detroit. I don't know if a side trip like that is doable just for a cool snapshot. But one never knows. . .