Day Seven - Skaguay

So many of the cruisers are itching to get back on dry land. I love the water and could stay here forever. I could so work on a cruise ship. Karen said I could do the rail coach tour guide job except that I would spend too much time talking to individual passengers and never get to all of them. I could do it if my job depended on it, though.

We woke up this morning and opened the curtains to a wall of trees. It was very surreal. It must be a cliff face or something, but there seem to be ads painted at the bottom. I just turned on the cruise channel on the tv and the cruise director said that it’s a mountain and the paintings are the logos for cruise lines that come/have come to Skaguay. I don’t understand the purpose, but that’s fine.

Skaguay is very tiny. The temps don’t seem to be going below 50 degrees anywhere, which is great. Perfect walking weather for me, although the southerners are sporting everything from sweaters to earmuffs. There is one main street named Broadway, which is funny because we went to “the biggest little theater on Broadway”. It was a little show about “Soapy Smith” a con artist who was instrumental in establishing Skaguay and then was found out and shot. The actor who played Soapy, Jonathan Baldwin, graduated from my high school. Small world. I took a picture of practically the entire town from the end of the street, where there is a Centennial Park and a statue commemorating the snow fleet and the establishment of Skaguay in 1897. They also have a little airport as many towns here do, but this one is an international airport because they fly in and out of nearby Canada. They are also the only international airport without a control tower, which may or may not be a good thing. The tour really had nowhere to take us except to a lookout point, which was beautiful. There was a historic cemetery tour, which got surprisingly good reviews from people I spoke to. I will say it again – everywhere you look is a picture.

Had a flashback to that I Love Lucy episode where she got left behind on their cruise. So far, so good. Our cruise cards are our IDs, credit cards and boarding passes. We have to pop them into a machine on our way out and then show them at three different checkpoints on our way in, including the machine and a baggage x-ray. My guess is that the machine logs us in and out like a time clock.

Karen wanted to see the Motown show and asked only that I sit through one song with her. Assuming it was the same group we saw on Tuesday (I can only tell what day it is by the destination), I was leery and rightly so. These guys are so white they almost define the expression. Almost completely "soul"less. There’s one guy who is always just a touch behind the beat and he annoyed me. They came bouncing onto the stage and I was ready to bounce out of the seat right then. I dutifully sat through the song and when they started the second, I left for less scary destinations and more photo ops.

I invited Karen to read the blog today and she wondered why I wasn’t talking about the food. I suppose it’s because it’s not all that important to me in the scheme of things and it’s my blog. I will say that I like the buffet because of the choices and portion control, and if I don’t like something, I don’t feel obligated to tell anyone and can just leave it on my plate. Not so with the dry duck a l’orange we ordered from the assigned restaurant last night. Karen wanted to eat there at least a few times as long as we were here, so I had escargot last night for the second time in my life. They were excellent. I offered one to Karen and she not only enjoyed it, but took the dish from me so that she could put some bread in the garlicky sauce. She wanted me to say that she had cold cucumber soup last night (thumbs down) and iced pineapple/banana soup tonight (thumbs slightly up). She had some trouble saying beluga and it came out “bugela”. She didn’t ask me to add that, though. Our busboy was Raj and he was adorable.