ALASKA CRUISIN!

I'm often asked: "A cruise? I wouldn't have pegged you for a cruise guy Craig?"
And I respond: "Yes! It's super fun. It's a very different kind of traveling than strapping a backpack on your back and getting off the plane at 2am in Morocco and thinking: where am I? But it's fun none-the-less!"

I think there is room for all sorts of travel in this world. Sometimes solo. Sometimes with friends or family. Sometimes cheap and nitty gritty. Sometimes a bit more luxurious. And that's one of the fun things about a cruise, is there is an endless amount of food and activity to do... or you can just sit on the deck and watch the world go by. (Of course it helps when it's not 50 degrees outside with a howling wind flying past, which happened on a number of our days, but hey, what can you do?)

And the answer is a lot.

There's magic shows. The magician on this ship, Ben Siedman was really good. I definitely recommend you check out his positive show that genuninely made me say "how the heck did he do that?" about a dozen times.

There's movies under the stars. Teen clubs for the teens (Lily made a lot of new friends). There's comedy. Dancing. There's nature talks. Gambling. Swimming pools. Hot tubs (that inexplicably close at 9pm... um, hello, Hot tubbin on the late night is something that is distinctly missing). Jazz bands. Cover bands. Game shows. Food...

Lot's of food. Buffets, snack bars, ice cream. And 4 course dinners every night, should you want them. (And we did. My Dad was thinking the buffet was the best choice until I got him down there for the 4 course meal and he happily changed his mind. :).  Who wouldn't? The food was actually really good. And you can eat as much as you want. Lobster... sure, give me some of that. Filet... you bet.  I ate a lot. We all did. Though I tried not to get tooooo carried away. Which for me means 5 meals a day instead of 6!

There's karaoke! of course!  And the "Voice of the Ocean" contest. Which is really a karaoke contest. I didn't really know how it worked, but figured I'd give it a shot on the 2nd night of the cruise. Room full of people singing karaoke standards to the 50+ crowd. Okay, 60+, it's a cruise after all. And I sign up, the last of the night. My song:  "Ice Ice Baby". Now, when I do this at The Falls where I host karaoke, I stick the mic in peoples faces and have them sing the refrain, which conveniently goes: "Ice Ice Baby". I looked at that crowd and thought: This is not going to work here. I'll try something different. So I just asked everyone to sing it all together...
It was so much fun.  The whole room was hoppin!

For the rest of the cruise people would come up to me and say "you're the ice ice baby guy!".

I actually got into the finals! Where you perform on the last night of the cruise in the main theater with a full band back up, horns and all. Which is super fun... except there's no ice ice baby! Nooooo!  I ended up doing "I Love Rock And Roll". It was a lot of fun. They had the big Voice chairs, with differernt entertainers as the judges. I didn't win, but I had a great time and met some really cool people in the process of the rehearsals. (yep, this shit's for real!).

GLACIER TIME

One of the highlights of an Alaskan cruise is seeing these HUGE tidewater glaciers tumbling blocks of ice into the sea.
One of the reasons we took the smaller boat trip in Seward was because the big, 950 foot long Star Princess, isn't likely to get as close and personal to the glacier.

Well....

We came through the foggy fjord towards Hubbard Glacier. You couldn't see much. It was pretty cold and wet outside, but you could get out of the rain by being in the front of the promenade deck. I was a little disapointed... but then we started to run through ice in the water. Ice bergs in fact.

Woah woah woah, hold on Craig. You were on a cruise ship going through water filled with ICE BERGS?!?!?!?

I thought the same thing.
And at that point the naturalist came on and said "Some of you might be thinking that this is not a good idea. Well, these aren't the same kind of ice bergs that sank the Titanic. These are broken up pieces of a glacier that have fallen into the water. The ice berg that sank the Titanic broke off the greenland ice sheet that is 1,000 feet tall or more. So the ice was sticking over 100 feet out of the water."  Essentially they hit a mountain all those years ago.  These were at most 10 feet out of the water.

Still, very cool, and as it got colder outside, the fog lifted and there was the Hubbard Glacier. 6 1/2 miles wilde. 300 feet tall. I think it's the 2nd largest tidewater glacier in North America... And we got within 1 1/2 miles of it maybe. I mean, the ship kept getting closer and closer. And then the captain pivoted the thing around to one side, then back around to the other... It was surreal to see this big ship turning like that.

And the Glacier was calving pieces off into the fjord. Huge pieces falling off on the flanks, crashing into the water. It's really a site to see, and frankly no words really will do it justice.

The next day we hit Glacier National Park, and had a similar foggy approach to the Margerie Glacier and the Grand Pacific Glacier.  Margerie is the young, active glacier. She's still growing, unlike most glaciers. And she dumped pieces off into the water that were the entire height of the glacier... which is 200+ feet. Huge chunks just dropping off with pops of thunder and crashes of water. It was impressive. Now, don't think they do this every 10 seconds. You might wait a few minutes, hear a pop, and look over to see chunks of ice (probably the size of house, but the scale is hard to capture). And sometimes the whole face for a hundred feet or more drops off. Margerie is 2 1/2 miles wide, and we were close enough to it that you couldn't see the whole things without turning your head. The ship pivoted again, swinging the butt even CLOSER to the glacier. It couldn't have been more than 1/2-3/4 a mile away. And there was a little, 40 foot long fishing boat cruising around between us and the glacier. That was cool for seeing the scale of it.

PORTS OF CALL

Part of cruising is going to the ports. And there are always shore excursions offered from the ship:  ziplining, town tours, train trips etc. They are usually quite expensive, and a savvy traveler can get almost the same trip for cheaper if you book directly in town. However, in Alaska, all the big tours are so popular and filled up, the cruise ships can't really up charge much. It's Alaska, it's expensive.

We hit Skagway, Juneau, and Ketchikan.  All small towns, even the captial of Juneau.  Skagway is 800 people. That day there were nearly 10,000 cruisers that came to town because there were four ships. This doesn't lead to much of a natural experience of life in these towns... oh wait, yes it does, because in the summer it is all about the cruise ships. That's the season. That's the money. Good or bad, it is what it is. However, in Skagway, once you walk off the main drag, it's pretty quiet. I went on a hike up a ridge that overlooked the harbor with all the ships. It was pretty cool, and pretty quiet too.

Juneau was rained in, so much so that our plans pretty much fell apart. So instead, Dad and I sat in the Skywalker lounge (on the 18th floor of the ship. Yep. 18.) and played Caracassonne on my iPad. It's fun. Playing board games on a rainy day with Dad. Sounds like a good day to me!

Ketchikan was spent searching for a totem pole for Dad. He wanted something authentic and carved in Alaska. And I didn't know this before the trip, but this is the only area in the world where people carve totem poles!  We found him one he liked and Myque and I got it for him.  Dad and I also walked around town and saw Creek Street, which is the old red light district. The houses are all on stilts over the water, so the bootleggers during prohibition could get the booze in and out without being caught!

All 5 of us went to a Lumberjack show. It was good cheesy fun. Chainsaw cutting. Axe throwing. Tree climbing. It's actually a professional sport! Though this was a show for entertainment and laughs.

Ketchikan is one of the rainiest places in the United States. And you know what kind of weather we had... no rain! Yep, we had rain all over this trip, but not here. That, is pretty lucky I'd say!


THE INSIDE PASSAGE

Part of this trip is in the Inside Passage. Which is a channel that runs behind the islands of the Alaska and British Columbian coast. It's fascinating because for most of the trip, you could barely feel the ship moving. Granted, it's HUGE. However, in the open ocean, you could feel it rocking back and forth. And at the dance club a couple nights it was so wild you could hardly stand in one place while dancing. The ship was dancing I guess!
But a lot of the trip the ship wasn't rocking at all. It was super calm and smooth. Pretty surreal.
On top of that, the passage is narrow. Super narrow. You can see land on both sides, and honstely, if they spun the ship sideways, I bet it would run aground on both shores. It's pretty wild to be slipping past little villages on a moving skyscraper. Standing on the top deck is awesome in those situations. There were times where one side was sunny, and the other was foggy as we cruised along.

As we headed south the temperature got warmer and warmer. From the 50's to the 70's by the time we reached the end.

So on the last night, we could stand outside at sunset (an actual sunset! Usually it was cloudy or hidden). And watch a towns lights slide by on the coast. A nice place to be with my dad.


DOING OUR OWN THING, TOGETHER

One thing that cruises allow for, is travel with people, but where you aren't tied to everyone. Given the different needs and desires of all of us, it worked out well.  We would grab most breakfasts together. And every dinner. (The 2 hour dinners were a highlight). But during the days, we might hang out or we might not. I know my brother needed to rest and chillax, and he and Rachel enjoyed doing that. Lily ran around with her new friends, and would join us here and there for celebrations and activities. Dad would read overlooking the ocean. I'd run around doing stuff all day and dance until 2 in the morning every night, cause hey, being on a cruise ship is like being at a feet first party!  (That's the DJ/Teambuilding company I work for, for those of you who don't know). I actually led the Cupid Shuffle and the Wobble multiple times with all the fun folks dancing.

I always enjoyed the times I got to spend with everyone, and truthfully wish it would've worked out to spend a bit more time with them. Either checking out the glaciers or what not. We did catch the comedy and magic shows on various nights, and that was really fun. And as mentioned, 2 hour dinners. Like every dinner was that long!  We celebrated Dad's bday for one of them. And Myque and Rachel's 11th anniversary at another. Both those events happen in the summer, so it's close enough! :)


CRUISIN CONCLUSION

This was a trip long planned and long looked forward to.   It took a heck of a lot of logistics to get right.  And compared to most of my trips was more expensive.  And it was totally worth it.

To be able to travel is always wonderful.
To be able to travel with my family, people I love very much, is priceless.

So much of this trip was nice times with them, chatting about whatever. Seeing sites. Eating food. Taking pictures of stunning scenery. Perhaps it doesn't seem like as exciting a travel update as other ones from the past, but it's wonderful in it's own ways. And every time I saw how happy my Dad was when he was showing off his totem pole, or seeing the glaciers, or drivin the RV, or skipping rocks -- I captured it in my heart, because that doesn't show up in a photograph.

CraigO

PS:  One more to come…

I’M IN FRICKIN' ALASKA
Aug 21, 2016


Hi Team!

I'm in the great white north! (Actually more the great gray north, since there's lots of rain) but either way it's BEAUTIFUL!

(Okay, I'll be honest:  I'm actually back in Los Angeles after an amazing 3 week trip to Alaska and Vancouver. Due to the nature of this trip, there were only 2 internet cafe's I even saw. One of them was closed. And the other was on the last day. So I'm going to do my best to go back there as I write these to hopefully, give you a fun adventure read. :)

So Alaska.
The 49th state.
The largest state in the USA by a long shot. (Sorry Texas!)
Population: 740,000 (with 400,000 of that in Anchorage area).

All these goes to say that there is A LOT of open space in Alaska. I almost wrote "open road", and while there is a lot of that too, the roads don't cover much of the state by any means. The capital, Juneau, is only reachable by boat or plane. In fact there are a lot of places in Alaska only accessable by boat, plane or just plain walking.

So how did we see Alaska?
Behind the wheel of a 29 foot RV we dubbed the "Minnie Winnie" (Since it said Minnie Winnie in big letter on the side.)

That's right. This was a road trip extraordianire with my Dad for the first 5 days, and then with my Brother, Sister-in-Law and Niece joining us for the next five days. And then there was a 7 day cruise...

But lets start with the road trip.

My family grew up road tripping. My parents always took us on multi week road trips during the summer growing up. We'd head to the southwest USA, the east coast, the mountains of Colorado, to visit relatives in the midwest. The list goes on and on, and I thank them everyday for instilling in me the wunderlust I have to explore and travel. So, it seemed appropriate to do a 10 day roadtrip-cruise with my Dad for his 75th Birthday. It's been years in the coming, delayed for all the reason's one finds to delay a trip (money, schedules, etc etc). But we finally were able to put it all together and head to Alaska.

So, RV? You might ask. How was that?

The answer: Awesome.  It was so much fun! In Alaska you can literally park ANYWHERE that is not private property and doesn't have a sign expressly saying "no camping". Which means you can pull out at an overlook of Denali (as we did the first night) and just say "This is camp". Or pull off on a rocky edge of a wild glacier fed river and say "Now this is camp!".  Sure, you can stay at an RV park (good for pumping out the "black water" and "grey water" and refilling the fresh water), or an official campground. Or you can just park on the side of the road, wherever you feel like it.  It took a day or two to really understand this. To not feel strange or out of place just stopping and "camping" wherever we wanted. But once we did, it was great.

Was there enough space?
Our 29' RV was great for 2 people. Dad had the bed in the back. I had the loft over the drivers seat. It was like a fort! We had shower, microwave, stove, oven, fridge, freezer, table. Even a TV and DVD player (which we didn't turn on a single time!)

Gas Mileage? Cost?
Our RV cost about $240 / day after the extra collision waiver, some camp chairs and taxes.
To put it in perspective: A mini-van cost $200/day.
Hotels in Alaska are very hard to come by in the summer and quite expensive. So we would have had to plan every step ahead of time, and book early. And each room would be $150-$250 or more. And that's the cheap room. My brother had to search long and hard to find an apartment when we were in Seward because the only hotel room left in the city was $600!  What?!?!
So the RV was actually a pretty big money saver on top of being fun. Sure it only got 10mpg. And had a 55 gallon tank. But we lucked out that gas was in the $2.40-$2.90 range most of the time. (In previous years it could easily top $4.00/gal).
Anyway, you get it. RV = fun and money saver!  Both good things.


How is it to drive?
Not hard at all. We got it from "Great Alaskan Holidays", and they have a very thorough video showing you how to drive it, where to watch when turning etc. It took me about 2 hours before I felt really confident and was zipping up the road. It's big, but it's fun. If you need to get a snack just hop up and go to the fridge while you're cruising down the road.

LET'S HIT THE ROAD!

After a breakfast of eggs and Reindeer sausage in Anchorage, we picked up the Minnie, stocked up on food and headed north through Anchorage Rush Hour. Which consisted of a few multicatch stop lights and about a 2 mile back up with some construction.  Other than that 10-15 minute delay on the first day, and some construction stops on the 2-lane highways, we never sat in any traffic at all for 10 days. In fact, there were times we would drive 200 miles or more without a stoplight or stopsign.  In the lower 48, one of my favorite road signs is in Utah and it says "Next Services on I-70, 112 miles".  In Alaska, it is COMMON to have 125 miles between gas stations.

There's a lot of space up there.

And a lot of it is GORGEOUS.  7,000 foot mountains shooting straight up out of the ocean. Ridges and ridges of hills and mountains stretching to forever. 17 - 20,000 foot mountains towering over everything around them. In some ways there is so much amazing scenery that it feels like overload... in the best possible way.

And there is also some monotonous tree-lined highways too. I mean, there's a LOT of space. And some of it is a 2 lane road with trees on both sides. It felt a lot like North Carolina, only the trees were different. Hey, in a place that big not everything can be off the charts.

Some of my fondest memories of the trip are just driving through beautiful scenery with my dad, some tunes on the radio, talking about his "rebel" days of youth. (I'll leave those stories for us, but it was really fun to hear about a time when my dad was.... well, still a good kid, but doing some silly goofy stuff that kids do. )  Or sitting by a camp fire, next to the glacial river as the twilight faded from the sky (at 11:30pm or later). The two of us tending the fire, listening to the river rush past and looking up at that big Alaska sky. Skipping and collecting rocks on riverbanks, or glacier sides. Bringing a little bit of Alaska back home with us. Laughing about whatever caught our funny bone.

There are adventures to be told, and they will be, but for now I'll leave you with the simple pleasures and joys of spending time with loved ones in amazing places. I'm grateful every minute that we are able to share these times together.

Alaska...

I’M IN FRICKIN' ALASKA

Hi Team!

I'm in the great white north! (Actually more the great gray north, since there's lots of rain) but either way it's BEAUTIFUL!

(Okay, I'll be honest:  I'm actually back in Los Angeles after an amazing 3 week trip to Alaska and Vancouver. Due to the nature of this trip, there were only 2 internet cafe's I even saw. One of them was closed. And the other was on the last day. So I'm going to do my best to go back there as I write these to hopefully, give you a fun adventure read. :)

So Alaska.
The 49th state.
The largest state in the USA by a long shot. (Sorry Texas!)
Population: 740,000 (with 400,000 of that in Anchorage area).

All these goes to say that there is A LOT of open space in Alaska. I almost wrote "open road", and while there is a lot of that too, the roads don't cover much of the state by any means. The capital, Juneau, is only reachable by boat or plane. In fact there are a lot of places in Alaska only accessable by boat, plane or just plain walking.

So how did we see Alaska?
Behind the wheel of a 29 foot RV we dubbed the "Minnie Winnie" (Since it said Minnie Winnie in big letter on the side.)

That's right. This was a road trip extraordianire with my Dad for the first 5 days, and then with my Brother, Sister-in-Law and Niece joining us for the next five days. And then there was a 7 day cruise...

But lets start with the road trip.

My family grew up road tripping. My parents always took us on multi week road trips during the summer growing up. We'd head to the southwest USA, the east coast, the mountains of Colorado, to visit relatives in the midwest. The list goes on and on, and I thank them everyday for instilling in me the wunderlust I have to explore and travel. So, it seemed appropriate to do a 10 day roadtrip-cruise with my Dad for his 75th Birthday. It's been years in the coming, delayed for all the reason's one finds to delay a trip (money, schedules, etc etc). But we finally were able to put it all together and head to Alaska.

So, RV? You might ask. How was that?

The answer: Awesome.  It was so much fun! In Alaska you can literally park ANYWHERE that is not private property and doesn't have a sign expressly saying "no camping". Which means you can pull out at an overlook of Denali (as we did the first night) and just say "This is camp". Or pull off on a rocky edge of a wild glacier fed river and say "Now this is camp!".  Sure, you can stay at an RV park (good for pumping out the "black water" and "grey water" and refilling the fresh water), or an official campground. Or you can just park on the side of the road, wherever you feel like it.  It took a day or two to really understand this. To not feel strange or out of place just stopping and "camping" wherever we wanted. But once we did, it was great.

Was there enough space?
Our 29' RV was great for 2 people. Dad had the bed in the back. I had the loft over the drivers seat. It was like a fort! We had shower, microwave, stove, oven, fridge, freezer, table. Even a TV and DVD player (which we didn't turn on a single time!)

Gas Mileage? Cost?
Our RV cost about $240 / day after the extra collision waiver, some camp chairs and taxes.
To put it in perspective: A mini-van cost $200/day.
Hotels in Alaska are very hard to come by in the summer and quite expensive. So we would have had to plan every step ahead of time, and book early. And each room would be $150-$250 or more. And that's the cheap room. My brother had to search long and hard to find an apartment when we were in Seward because the only hotel room left in the city was $600!  What?!?!
So the RV was actually a pretty big money saver on top of being fun. Sure it only got 10mpg. And had a 55 gallon tank. But we lucked out that gas was in the $2.40-$2.90 range most of the time. (In previous years it could easily top $4.00/gal).
Anyway, you get it. RV = fun and money saver!  Both good things.


How is it to drive?
Not hard at all. We got it from "Great Alaskan Holidays", and they have a very thorough video showing you how to drive it, where to watch when turning etc. It took me about 2 hours before I felt really confident and was zipping up the road. It's big, but it's fun. If you need to get a snack just hop up and go to the fridge while you're cruising down the road.

LET'S HIT THE ROAD!

After a breakfast of eggs and Reindeer sausage in Anchorage, we picked up the Minnie, stocked up on food and headed north through Anchorage Rush Hour. Which consisted of a few multicatch stop lights and about a 2 mile back up with some construction.  Other than that 10-15 minute delay on the first day, and some construction stops on the 2-lane highways, we never sat in any traffic at all for 10 days. In fact, there were times we would drive 200 miles or more without a stoplight or stopsign.  In the lower 48, one of my favorite road signs is in Utah and it says "Next Services on I-70, 112 miles".  In Alaska, it is COMMON to have 125 miles between gas stations.

There's a lot of space up there.

And a lot of it is GORGEOUS.  7,000 foot mountains shooting straight up out of the ocean. Ridges and ridges of hills and mountains stretching to forever. 17 - 20,000 foot mountains towering over everything around them. In some ways there is so much amazing scenery that it feels like overload... in the best possible way.

And there is also some monotonous tree-lined highways too. I mean, there's a LOT of space. And some of it is a 2 lane road with trees on both sides. It felt a lot like North Carolina, only the trees were different. Hey, in a place that big not everything can be off the charts.

Some of my fondest memories of the trip are just driving through beautiful scenery with my dad, some tunes on the radio, talking about his "rebel" days of youth. (I'll leave those stories for us, but it was really fun to hear about a time when my dad was.... well, still a good kid, but doing some silly goofy stuff that kids do. )  Or sitting by a camp fire, next to the glacial river as the twilight faded from the sky (at 11:30pm or later). The two of us tending the fire, listening to the river rush past and looking up at that big Alaska sky. Skipping and collecting rocks on riverbanks, or glacier sides. Bringing a little bit of Alaska back home with us. Laughing about whatever caught our funny bone.

There are adventures to be told, and they will be, but for now I'll leave you with the simple pleasures and joys of spending time with loved ones in amazing places. I'm grateful every minute that we are able to share these times together.

Alaska...

Flat Lily's Adventures with Uncle Craig

Yep, my niece, Flat Lily came to visit,

This is my 7 1/2 year old niece's school project. They're reading "Flat Stanley". She visited me here in LA, and me being me, couldn't just keep her in LA, so we took a trip.

First, we headed up for a hike in Griffith Park here in LA. Great views, great hikes. Always nice to see the city from above. Lily climbed a tree, and I got a good picture of her with the mountains in the background.


Then we headed to a Superbowl Party to watch the New Orleans Saints at my friend's Todd and Rina's house. (There's a sentence of possessives). Todd's from Louisiana, so it was a blast to hang with him, Josh and others as the Saints pulled off a victory of epic proportions. Lily got so excited, she ran out onto the field to cheer them on. Flat Lily was lots of fun to have around. Made me wish real Lily was here.




Next...it was time to goto MIAMI!!!!

I mean, flat Lily had already ran the field, so why not go there for real. So I packed her up and we headed to Miami to hang out with my friend Tom as he did a concert for his family in a high school. It was a fun night and Lily danced a lot.

Next it was... CRUISE TIME!

Again, it's me, I like to travel, so dear flat Lily had to jump on board the ship and share a room with me, Tom, David and Olga as we sailed to the Bahamas. First stop, Hot tub! We all enjoyed a sunset while sitting on the back deck of the cruise ship as it headed out to sea. The weather was pretty chilly for Florida and the Bahamas (45 at night), but Lily's sweater kept her warm.



We had a blast on the cruise. We went to the beach, went swimming, played putt-putt on the top of the ship. Lily was an expert at ordering food in the dining room by the end of it. Her favorite was the liquid chocolate cake and ice cream. It made her hyper, but that let her dance away on the dance floor. Nobody slept much, but we all had fun.

While in Nassau, I took Lily scuba diving with Sharks! Well, actually since she isn't certified, she was a little young to go on the dive, still she enjoyed the pictures after the fact. She said she wouldn't have been scared. Flat Lily's full of adventure after all.

Once back in Florida, we stopped by the Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral. There we took a shuttle launch simulation ride together. Lily loved it! She was cheering the whole time. And since we'd already taken off into space, we took a quick space walk amongst the stars. And we thought "well shoot, we're all the way up here" so Flat Lily suited up in her space gear and enjoyed a walk on the moon and we jetted over to Mars for a walk on the red planet. I'd love to say Flat Lily discovered Alien life forms on Mars, but come on, that would be taking this story a little beyond the realm of reality, don't you think?



Back in Los Angeles, Flat Lily and I took a hike up to Griffith Park observatory, and saw the Hollywood Sign on her last day here.

It's sad to see Flat Lily go, but I know she had a great time and I enjoyed her being here as well. I wish she could stay longer, but hopefully her memories and pictures from her trip will bring her happiness for years to come.

Love you Flat Lily (and the real one too).
Next visit: Disneyland!

Uncle Craig