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Wanderung 13

Any Which Way But Loose:

Meandering Many Miles in Multitudinous Mechanisms

September 2006

Friday, September 15th - Sailing the Inside Passage back to Vancouver, Canada.

Shortly before dawn Monika and I were in bed watching the pink (mauve? rose? I'm no good at colors.) horizon above the mountains to the east, and we finally decided to get up and take some pictures of the sunrise. We had a relaxed breakfast on the Lido deck while we tried to take some nice pictures of the sun rising above the horizon, and we were joined in due course by Phyllis, Bill, and Lois.

Since this was an "at sea" day with no stops, we had plenty of time to rest in the morning. Despite the ever-changing and consistently beautiful scenery sliding by the window of our cabin, my eyes closed of their own volition and I perforce took a nap, but for once I regretted every minute I spent asleep because I really knew I was "missing something". We had an early lunch on the Lido deck to give us plenty of time to get ready for the "Walk for the Cure" that started at 1:30 in the afternoon. We walked three miles or five kilometers by circling the promenade deck nine times and during the walk we saw a little sea otter floating by on its back and some humpback whales (I think!) spouting off in the distance. Tearing herself away from the bread pudding dessert served every day for lunch, Phyllis came out to cheer us on for our last laps, and after we finished we retired to our cabin to rest a bit.

The best place we found to rest during this trip was on the verandah of our stateroom. There I read a bit in my book of poetry by Robert Service, the "bard of the Yukon" and found it very evocative, particularly after having visited Skagway and seen at least part of the landscape he described. His poetry often described Alaska and the Yukon in winter and clearly that was a much more harsh and cold experience than our summertime tourist jaunt along the coast, but the ruggedness of the mountains and the vast expanse of deserted wilderness are constants regardless of the season. The focus of most of Service's poetry was people and how they responded to the extreme demands of the environment, and I found much of it both uplifting and humorous, which is rather rare in poetry (a good example is "The Cremation of Sam McGee"). His poetry was also so rhythmical and rhyming that it almost demanded to be read aloud, but out of consideration for the other passengers on the port side of the ship I resisted that temptation. I did, however, look up ever now and then to watch the scenery go by.

All too soon I had to call an end to my afternoon with the muse of poetry and begin the rather sad task of packing our bags in preparation for disembarkation. This process was simplified by the fact that most of our clothes were now dirty clothes and could be stuffed willy-nilly in any corner of any bag. But at the same time this process was made more difficult by our accumulation of four mugs, two fleece jackets from Vancouver, two "Walk for the Cure" T-shirts, a cribbage board, refrigerator magnets, and our particular curse, a steady accumulation of books.

I kept getting distracted from my packing by the absolutely fantastic scenery of the Inside Passage that I could clearly see outside our window. Every so often I paused to run outside and take pictures of it, and that slowed down my packing considerably. At one point we passed a school of killer whales or Orcas headed in the opposite direction, and Monika even managed to get a good picture of one of their dorsal fins with her 10x zoom camera.

After finally getting our bags zippered closed, we watched a final sunset before having dinner with Phyllis, Bill and Lois. After dinner we attended the last evening entertainment show. The show consisted of the Canadian magician followed by a Russian clown act, a male vocalist singing 50s tunes and a female vocalist singing show tunes and "Summertime" from Porgy and Bess. Back in the cabin I finished another Sudoku while Lois finished a crossword puzzle, and then we turned in for the night.

Copyright 2006 by R. W. Holt and E. M. Holt
Prolog
Map
September 2006
Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat
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3 4 5 6 7 8 9
10 11 12 13 14 15 16
17 18 19 20 21 22 23
24 25 26 27 28 29 30
Epilog

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