Holiday album

The Lady Friend took this shot of the Alaska Range in Denali National Park at Polychrome Pass, about 20 miles from the mountains across the Plains of Murie. Click on the photo for a large and detailed version.

And now for the best photos of our Alaska trip. If you, like me, cannot stand looking at other people's vacation snapshots, you may now mouse elsewhere. (The most striking pictures will be on the Other Blog.)

One of the best days of the journey brought a "Tundra Wilderness Tour" in a bucketing school bus for 60 miles and eight hours through Denali National Park.

These guided bus tours, uncomfortable as they may be, are just about the only way you can travel deep into the six million acres of the park, unless you are hale of health or young of years and can hike and hike and hike. Private vehicles are not allowed into the park much past the entry so that wildlife will not be disturbed, and though they will stop so tourists can see the animals, bus drivers will let passengers off only at designated viewing points and pee stops.

The tours can be wonderful, but they are a crapshoot. One might run into bad weather, clouds preventing a view of 20,320-foot Mount McKinley (only 30 per cent of tourists to Alaska ever see it), or the wildlife might choose to lie low and out of sight. At least Holland-America Cruises doesn't make one pay extra for the bus ride.

All tours for three days preceding ours were skunked, but our group was lucky. Not only did the clouds part, allowing us to spot McKinley, we also saw moose, caribou, grizzlies, golden eagles, Dall sheep and ptarmigan, and I managed to capture some of them with a long lens through lowered bus windows. Here they are:


Grizzly sow and cub, perhaps two years old. Grizzly young stay with their mothers for three years, our guide said, before being kicked out of the house to make their own livings.


This solitary grizzly is probably a male.


Moose graze unconcernedly by the road as vehicles pass in clouds of dust.


Alaska's state bird is not Sarah Palin, but the willow ptarmigan. Note the feathered "leggings."


Gulls are everywhere, even in deepest Alaska, and this herring gull perched atop a rest stop building hoping for a handout.


Low clouds parted to reveal the lordly south (and higher) peak of Mount McKinley.

Towelgami

Observations of a formerly virgin cruise-line passenger:

“What the hell is that?” I said to my dinner companion as we sneaked into my stateroom late in the evening. On the bed sat a frog made out of a towel. I had never heard of towel sculpture, also called towelgami, but it seems that it's been a big thing in the cruise industry for many years. As part of the evening bed turndown, stateroom attendants all over the ship fold washcloths and hand towels into all sorts of amusing critters. We had a turkey, a lobster, an elephant, a rabbit and I can't remember what else.

Maybe the purpose is to demonstrate the exalted level of service to which the cruise line is devoted, or maybe it's just an elaborate Filipino joke.

I can't speak for other cruise lines, but the thin and fit Holland-America passenger seems to prefer the formal dining rooms to the cafeteria-style eatery, called the “Lido” aboard HAL ships. The dining rooms (at no added cost) feature white napery, attentive service and sensibly sized portions of excellent cuisine, while the Lido offers ass-to-elbow jostling and unlimited self-shoveling of much less tasty fare for the wide of body and prone to coronary.

The dining rooms offer open seating, but the au courant passenger makes reservations to minimize waiting for a table. With reservations I was always seated immediately, either alone or with others according to my preference.

The waiters will always suggest a bottle of wine, but those who prefer single glasses are politely accommodated. The prices are reasonable, too – my party had Alice White chardonnay and shiraz from Australia, a good deal better than bargain plonk, for $6 a glass plus a 15 per cent service charge. Everything else in Alaska and aboard cruise ships is expensive, but not wine.

My table companion, a champion long-distance eavesdropper, overheard quite a few fellow diners complain that “Holland America isn't what it once was.” Whether they were talking about HAL in general or the Statendam in particular I don't know, but this ship is 17 years old, quite mature for a cruise liner, and perhaps small mechanical glitches occur with more frequency. For three days my room was way too cold, and a nice lady from the hotel staff took its temperature with a fever thermometer several times a day until a technician arrived, screwed and unscrewed several hatches, and put things right. By way of polite apology the staff sent a platter of chocolates, which I didn't need but appreciated anyway.

Computers being what they are, mistakes get made and tickets go missing, but upon being shown a printed itinerary brought from home, the shore excursion agent quickly reissued the ducats. At least for me, HAL always fixed its errors.

I for one am not terribly sociable, so the shipboard events and classes held no attraction. But those who need to be entertained all the time will find plenty to accommodate them: travel classes, ranger lectures, culinary instruction (even for children), computers with “Techspert Hana,” tai chi, fitness classes, shopping previews, tennis, volleyball, bridge, trivia games, AA meetings, movies, musical shows, dancing – and, yes, towel sculpture.

At sea the Internet is hugely expensive – 50 to 75 cents a minute, depending on the plan you buy. Part of the problem is that the marine satellite Internet is so slow, and the meter ticks while you impatiently wait for pages to load. I learned quickly to read only important-seeming e-mail and compose my answers offline, pasting them online. Several times the ship lost the satellite signal in mid-post, wasting expensive minutes. But reading the New York Times web site is free.

Speaking of the Times, each day an eight-page digest of that newspaper is printed and distributed at breakfast in the restaurants and to the rooms. You may not know what day of the week it is (although the elevator floor mats will always tell you) but you will not be unaware of what is happening in the rest of the world. On a cruise to get away from it all that is not necessarily a good thing.

The cruise lines, it seems, make their money not in the stateroom sales but in the ancillaries. We wondered why the Statendam's shopping "director" kept pushing the jewelry stores onshore (“Diamond necklaces by the yard!”) – what's so special about Alaska gems? Not until we were in a Native American museum at Ketchikan did we find out: "The cruise lines own the jewelry stores,” said a guide. Oh.

Would I do it again? Sure, but in a different way. If I were returning to Alaska, I'd skip the cruise liners and go from town to town by state Alaska ferry, making my own independent bookings. No regrets, though, about taking this inaugural cruise tour; for my first visit to Alaska, it was better to use the expert hands of Holland America to book the entire trip. It clearly knows what it's doing.

Those with suspicious minds might wonder what I was doing with a dinner companion in the stateroom. None of your business.

But she indeed is the familiar Lady Friend with whom I live; it just seemed wise not to let the world know our house was empty while we took a cruise. Even the most trigger-fingered burglar alarms can't prevent everything.

Eagle . . . finally!

Those who frequent this blog know of my repeated efforts to get a good shot of a bald eagle in Upper Michigan. Finally I nailed one, but in Alaska. Not that that was such an accomplishment -- this state is hip-deep in eagles, both the bald and the golden variety. This one was taken near Juneau on a guided photo safari. All by itself this picture makes the expensive trip worth the effort, so far as I am concerned.

Rails, whales and eagles

JUNEAU, Alaska – Up here at the roof of North America it rains. And rains. And rains some more. One can almost feel one's joints corroding.

But the infamous summer weather of the Alaskan coast can be dealt with simply by donning raincoats, over one's camera as well as one's torso, and forging on into the wet. The sights are just as spectacular in fog as they are in sunlight.

Aboard Holland-America Lines's Statendam on the way south the last couple of days from Seward through College Fjord and Glacier Bay, we saw glaciers from up so close we could almost reach out and touch them. (A watched glacier never calves, don't you know?) At the dinner hour emerging from Glacier Bay the ship passed close aboard a school of whales playfully lifting and slapping their tails.

The next day in Haines a high-speed catamaran ferried some of us from the ship's mooring 40 minutes to Skagway, the world's capital of tourist schlock, a place so shameless that it's amusing. The town's most popular bar features pretend hookers with real bosoms bursting out of camisoles. Cheap gift shops (Polar Fleece! $9.99! T-shirts! $1.99!) choke the main drag.

Even the storied White Pass & Yukon narrow-gauge railroad resorts to artifice – most of its scores of little open-platform coaches are steel replicas, not restored wooden carriages. But its distinctive diesel locomotives are the real thing, and so is the twisting 67-mile-long line up the Skagway River to Carcross, Yukon Territory, over gorges and high trestles and past willowy waterfalls hanging from the clouds.

For the rail buff with a camera, riding on the open platform of the last car of the 15-car train (evidently a Holland-America perk) is heavenly. Only the locomotive cab could afford a better view.

My group detrained at Fraser, B.C., Mile 27.7) after a Canadian customs agent cursorily glanced at our passports. (“Do not photograph the agents. Your camera will be confiscated.”) Others returned to Skagway on the train, but we chose to make the trip back to the ferry dock on a bus. (A U.S. Customs agent made a similar cursory passport check at the border.)

The WP&Y, like much else in Alaska, is devoted to the tourist trade. A few freight cars molder in the yards, but they're not used to haul cargo into the hinterlands. Rather, the road hauls passengers, and it's fun to watch the trains come in, some of them heading directly for sidings across from cruise ships. Incoming locomotives are uncoupled from one end of their trains, then are run around and coupled to the other end for the journey into the mountains. It's a quick, slick operation that made up for the kitsch of the town and the four glitzy floating Las Vegas cruise palaces in Skagway harbor.

There are no railroads in Juneau, today's destination, but this town is as elegant as Skagway is skaggy. The weather at this time of year is just as wet but the visit just as charming. I took a “photo safari” to Mendenhall Glacier, one of Alaska's most impressive ice fields, and a boat across the bay to watch bus-sized humpback whales broach and crash in clouds of spray. On the way back we did a close-in drive-by shooting of several bald eagles perched on a rocky outcrop.

The day wound up with a tram ride 1,800 feet up Mount Roberts overlooking Juneau Harbor and a visit to a raptor rescue center there, where I snared a frame-filling head shot of a one-eyed eagle.

Tonight, on to Ketchikan, the ship's last port before entering the Inside Passage.

Shipboard life

AT SEA IN THE GULF OF ALASKA – Cruising is a singular experience for a traveler whose preferred mode of conveyance is flanged wheel on steel rail. When the Statendam, one of the Holland-America Line vessels, is at sea, there is a whole lot of nothing for the rail buff to do. And I mean that in the best possible way.

Lectures, origami demonstrations, yoga classes, cooking instruction, shopping-till-you-drop, extreme dining and other such crowd-pleasing shipboard activities have no appeal for the longtime introvert. Rather, I've found it much more congenial to sit in the Statendam's library and watch fellow passengers, speculating on their personalities and stations in life – just as I do in the lounge car of the California Zephyr or Empire Builder.

That must be Marv and Madge from Oklahoma, farmers who have pinched pennies for decades to take this two-week trip of a lifetime. Or Bertil and Hannelore, well-to-do Swedes checking items off their international bucket list. Mr. and Mrs. Teabagger, corpulent Arizonans who smoke endlessly, bitch endlessly about Mexicans, and support the ship's economy with endless hours in the casino.

There also are Evie and Edna, elderly sisters from Cincinnati, taking a rare vacation from their husbands and letting an unanticipated world blossom before them. Bill, a leathery Wyoming rancher, is inseparable from his Stetson, even at meals, but cleans up well in suit and tie for formal dinner nights. He may even have gone to college.

The glowering fellow who never seems to change out of his warm-up suit might be a stowaway, a killer on the lam hoping to drop out of sight ashore if he can get past the watchful eyes of security.

There is one splendid similarity between ship and train: Watching the people who ride them is good for the creative juices of the mystery novelist.

And oh yes, there's a lot else to see. Yesterday we cruised College Fjord, taking in the spectacular views of ice-strewn waters and distant glaciers, and today we will enter Glacier Bay National Park, hoping to see noisy calving of icebergs as well as marine life such as whales, orcas and seals.

I do have one bit of useful information to offer you today: If you take a cruise tour, aboard Holland-America or any other line, be sure to bring along printed documentation of everything you've paid for.

Several times there have been minor glitches in the proceedings, usually involving computers. I wasn't on the manifest for the Cruise Train from Anchorage to Seward, but a printout of my official schedule persuaded the conductor to let me aboard. The cruise line upgraded my stateroom from an obstructed to a full ocean view, but my shore excursion tickets went to the original room, not the new one, and disappeared. The excursion guy checked my bona fides and issued new tickets.

Tomorrow will bring a train ride – aboard the storied narrow-gauge White Pass & Yukon from Skagway into British Columbia. With, of course, new opportunities for people-watching.

One more thing: I won't upload any photos until returning home next week. Using the Internet at sea is slow and expensive, and pictures just take up too much bandwidth.

Cruising on the train

SEWARD, Alaska – “Black bears at three o'clock!” the engineer called, and a hundred heads swiveled as the Alaska Railroad's Cruise Train ground its way along a rocky outcrop deep in the Chugash National Forest.

This 114-mile journey from Ted Stevens Airport outside Anchorage to the quay at Seward where cruise ships dock seemingly is one of the better-kept tourist secrets of the Far North. The Holland-America factotum running our land tour from Fairbanks said his charges almost never took the twisting 4 1/2-hour trip, preferring to save money by taking a bus from downtown Anchorage to their ship in two hours. Too bad for them.

They could have spotted bear, moose and eagles from the train, which follows the coast eastward along the Turnagain Arm of the Cook Inlet, then southward deep through the wild interior bush below glacier-strewn coastal peaks to the Bay of Alaska. The mountains loom close over the twisting line, affording sights you can't see from the highway.

Except for its start at the brand-new Alaska Railroad terminal at the airport, the Cruise Train follows the route of the Coastal Classic (which begins at the downtown depot in Anchorage). Each day it carries a different load of passengers for whichever liner – Holland-America, Princess, Celebrity and so on – has docked at the lone cruise liner quay at Seward. You get off the plane, hop on the train, and debark right at your ship. That couldn't be more convenient.

Two of the five cars are full-dome cafe lounges with tables for passengers willing to pay a little extra. An attendant serves a decent light lunch and drinks all along the route. There's a locomotive at either end of the train so that it doesn't have to be turned at each terminal – and I'm not sure it can be anyway.

The ride is a slow one, with a lot of 30-m.p.h. running – the best kind for sightseeing. What's more, the vestibule windows are kept open for. photography, something you'll never see aboard super-safety-conscious Amtrak in the Lower 48. (The engineers of the Cruise Train will yell at you if they catch you with your head or camera out the window. They had to do that dozens of times throughout the trip. Of course I was not one of the guilty, was I now?)

I do think the smart cruise passenger will opt for the Cruise Train, which costs a first-class supplement of $48 per person over the bus. It's one of the least costly items on the Alaskan shore-excursion menu, and in my opinion one of the best.

Aboard the Denali Star

ANCHORAGE, Alaska – Now let us compare Amtrak and the Alaska Railroad.

Both are government entities that own and operate passenger trains. There the resemblance ends.

Much-maligned Amtrak tries to serve everybody, from commuters to vacationers, folks afraid to fly and those too obese to fit in an airline seat. Except in the Northeast Corridor, it is at the mercy of the freight railroads that own the tracks. Its on-board crews can be surly and lazy (although that seems to be changing).

But the Alaska Railroad's much-praised passenger operations are of the tourist, by the tourist and for the tourist – especially cruise ship passengers. Local trains do carry ordinary Alaskans to flag stops in and out of the otherwise inaccessible bush, but that is a tiny part of the ARR's business. Its cheerful conductors and attendants are mostly well trained in serving the public.

Most travelers on the Alaska Railroad ride 456 miles in 12 hours between Anchorage on the coast and Fairbanks in the interior, more than half of them stopping at Denali National Park on the way.

And they ride in style. Sure, the budget-minded can rough it in coach aboard the train called the Denali Star, but most tourists choose to go first class, either in dome cars painted in Alaska Railroad colors or in huge, gaily decorated luxury conveyances owned by cruise lines and towed behind the regular train.

I rode the cars Holland America calls the McKinley Explorer from Fairbanks to the national park, then two days later from the park to Anchorage. Oh, it was lovely, passenger railroading as it should be but too often is not.

These two-story cars – reputedly the largest rail passenger carriages in the world – feature a full-length Lexan dome unmatched for rubbernecking, with extraordinarily comfortable seats. The lower level is devoted to dining. Best of all, each car features an open vestibule platform for wind-in-the-face photography. (Leave your hat inside. The breeze carried away my favorite ball cap.)

Lunch and dinner were only OK, a cut above Amtrak cuisine but somewhat short of four-star. The young waitstaff, evidently college students in summer jobs, needed a bit more seasoning, as did the soup. (The berry pie a la mode was fresh and fine.)

The car crews could also use training in dealing with the aged and infirm; they allowed a shaky nonagenarian to descend the potentially treacherous spiral stairway from upper level to lower unescorted. One of the crew should have gone ahead to catch her if she fell.

It was the scenery that was the real attraction. We dashed down river plains, rode over high trestles spanning deep valleys and chugged slowly through high, weaving rock cuts. We spooked moose, caribou and trumpeter swans. We arrived in Anchorage well satisfied with our journey.

Tomorrow, another rail ride: a four-hour journey aboard the Cruise Train from Ted Stevens Airport to Seward and the Holland-America liner Statendam.