Thursday, August 25, 2016
Photos
We had to move the clocks forward another hour last night so
it made for a short night. I couldn’t stop the tremor, was too cold then too
hot and back, my throat felt scratchy which made me realize what I had fussed
over the big medicine cabinet/bathroom bag about when packing. We didn’t have
any throat numbing spray in the house and consequently we have none with us for
this trip. If I had realized earlier there were plenty of places in Alaska I
could have found such a thing, but now probably not before New England and the
end of the trip. We’ll just have to pray that we don’t need it! I can’t imagine
how it happened that we were without a bottle in the house as it is something I
always keep because when you need it, you need it. You don’t need to go out
shopping for it! I didn’t get to sleep until after 2am and I swear I could see
a thin line of blue sky at the horizon with I looked out the window. I don’t
think we’ll ever get a look at the aurora borealis this trip because at night
this ship is lit up like Las Vegas at night. The bridge might be the only dark
place aboard at night. One hopes that if they ever spot the aurora up there and
send out the e-notification that they will have some designed deck section
darkened for it. We can only hope.
A couple of more kudos for Crystal. Q-tips. I have never
been on any vessel where they keep a supply of Q-tips in the bathroom until
now. The other thing is this morning there was a letter on our mail hook. It
was from the shore excursion desk. It thanked us for our Nome Tundra Wildlife
Adventure feedback. Now neither of us provided them any feedback. I made my
thoughts known here, but I sincerely doubt any of the excursions desk’s people
are reading my blog, so that means that they didn’t ever get any feedback from
us. However, they must have gotten enough negative feedback that they felt the
need to make a global response to all participants including us. The letter
advised us to adjust our expectations when visiting remote, seldom visited
ports. True. But, this excursion did not come close to meeting its description
of a wildlife adventure. They only took us at $398 per couple back in the same
school buses to see the musk ox herd that we had all seen for free in the
morning. They did not point out any of the birds or the dead walrus we passed
as the morning’s free tour did. So, by any lowered expectation, it was still an
unacceptably priced and described excursion. To Crystal’s credit and due to the
evidently universal participant dissatisfaction, the letter says they will
credit back to our onboard accounts 25% of the $199pp charge. It seems in all
fairness that it should be more refund than $99.50 for the 2 of us, but that is
what they said they were able to negotiate with the vendor. So, the good news
is it is something and we didn’t have to go complain for it. Now if they would
just trouble to try to clean the windows, I be a pretty happy cruiser! This
ship keeps the dirtiest windows I have ever experienced. I can’t recall another
cruise where they didn’t have a team of full time window washers out at least
hosing and usually squeegeeing windows daily. Our cabin window has had a hose
sprayed on it once since we came aboard!
We had a normal breakfast upstairs at Lido. The day broke
sunny, blue skies and calm seas today. Reflections says sunrise was to be at
6:51am, but Clay woke me up at 6:50am and the sun was well up over the horizon.
The temps were a bit warmer today at above freezing all morning. The wind seems
to be from the east instead of the north so that and the sunshine would account
for it.
I went to gentle yoga again. Since it was so calm, she tried
to do a lot more standing and balance poses. With the Meniere’s Disease
progressing, I have learned to rely mostly on proprioception. I learned for
sure today, if there was any question before that the Parkinson’s Disease
affecting my right side has destroyed the proprioception from my right side. I
skipped chair yoga. I guess I plan to try out a sculpting class at 3pm and go
to the expedition briefing at 5pm They say they will have important info for
those of us planning to zodiac ashore on Saturday. The Crystal Plaza is
decorated as an ice palace today for a “mixer” this evening. We’ll probably go
to the 8pm movie “The Family Fang” as we haven’t seen it before. They haven’t
put today’s restaurant menus online yet, but I guess we’ll be in the main
dining room at 6pm anyway. There was a stuffed animal polar bear at yoga in
Palm Court. Word was that a shop girl is responsible for him and has been
moving him around. I hadn’t seen him before but it was funny. He is
juvenile-sized and has a pink tongue and no teeth, also he has four protective
booties on. One woman said she had ridden on the elevator with him.
Today’s Reflections gives the expedition blog address. When
I’ve been able to get it, it has been interesting and informative. I can see
what I’ve missed! http://blog.crystalcruises.com
This is one of the free things we are supposed to be able to get on wireless
devices but it seems that network is as intermittent as the Internet is and is
probably one of the reasons the Internet reception is so spotty. If the wifi is
down, then there is certainly no Internet. But if you’re at home and can get to
this map-based blog, I recommend it.
It is nearly noon and still today’s menus have not been
posted. Clay went down and photographed the lunch menu and came back and read
it to me. I think it is time for lunch at Trident Grill or Tastes. We’ll see how
cold it is out there today. Clay also
picked up a copy of our cruise statement and we have $11.50 remaining of our
initial $1000 shipboard credit. That’s not too bad.
The captain announced at noon that our ice pilots pointed
out when the day dawned clear that we are in the Canadian Beaufort Sea now! He
said he expected to enter the Franklin Bay and view the Smoking Hills at 8:30pm
and leave at 9pm. So, we won’t be going to the 8pm movie. Maybe we’ll see it at
2:30pm tomorrow. Clay has decided to go see “Money Monster” this afternoon
since he says he slept through it at the theater. We did have lunch at Trident
Grill which we quite enjoyed again. Clay did not find it in time, but found
that they do have yellow mustard. We were joining by Flip & Linda Nicklin.
They are both expedition naturalists and he is the National Geographic whale
photography guy.
It seems that no slack time for sightseeing or impromptu
adventures has been built into our schedule. We were 3 hours behind schedule at
Point Barrow. Originally the Smoking Hills was described by our expedition
leader as a possible Crystal Impromptu Adventure spot if visibility was good.
Today at noon the captain completely eliminated that possibility with only an
allowed 30-minute detour over there. We must still be running behind. Certainly
whenever anything of interest has been spotted this ship has not even slowed
down. This is a huge disadvantage of a non-expedition style cruise! The
advantage is the large number of berths available means we could sail at all
now! We are to be at Ulukhaktok tomorrow afternoon to meet up with the
Shackleton, our leased ice breaker escort ship and to clear Canadian Customs
and Immigration for our shore visits on Saturday. We are hoping we get a clear
sunny, smooth seas day like today on Saturday for our zodiac tendering and
community visit.
So it is 3:40pm and I am back from the 3pm art class. I
didn’t go for the past 2 days of acrylic painting on canvas bags because I
thought since I can’t draw that I wouldn’t be able to paint, but a lot of the
people there had their work or were finishing their work and when the people at
my table showed me their work and explained how they’d done it, I probably
could have done it too. Oh well. So today was carving and sculpting. We had
directions to carve a polar bear from a bar of Ivory. I mangled my bar pretty
well and it was clear I’d never get anything resembling a bear out of it so I
quit. I moved on to sculpting an Inukshuk. I was pretty sure I could do that as
the instructor called it idiotproof and had a nice diagram of how to shape each
piece in a couple of different patterns. You could keep your Ivory bear or
they’d commit it to soap recycling. I donated mine. She took my Inukshuk to dry
and said I should come again tomorrow to paint it in either stone colors or
vibrant colors. So, to be continued. I guess I’ll miss tomorrow afternoon’s
movie now. The 2 women at my table said they had been watching the Smoking
Hills from the starboard side before coming to class. When I left class I went
to see them. It looks like we should be alongside them ahead of schedule unless
we slow down. Maybe we’ll still go to the movie tonight if we see enough
earlier. I’ll keep you posted!
So, we were outside viewing the smoking hills and dozens of
bowhead whale blows between 3:30 and 4pm. The captain made his announcement that
we had arrived and about the whales at 3:45pm. By about 6:10pm during our
dinner the ship turned around and headed back out of Franklin Bay. What the expedition
leader had just described at the 5pm briefing and recap did not happen as far
as we could tell as we were at dinner. He had described that we would get close
to shore and their high definition cameras would search for land mammals etc and
that the ship would head out of the bay by 9pm. We had our photos taken by
Emily who posts the expedition blog. She said to check: https://my.yb.tl/CrystalSerenity
We went to the 5pm expedition briefing and learned that Ulukhaktok
has one hotel. They rent out beds, not rooms and the expedition leader and the captain
had once stayed in the same room when they were here arranging our visit. We
were asked to stay away from the hotel as it was booked up with the Canadian
Customs and Immigration officials that are meeting the ship tomorrow to clear the
vessel for our visit ashore on Saturday. Does Canada honestly believe that some
baddie is trying to enter North America through Ulukhaktok aboard a $30,000
dollar cruise? I guess they must think it is a likelihood since they are treating
our arrival as if it is a threat. So, the Smoking Hills. They have been smoking
for hundreds of years. The smoking is caused by a burning layer of lignite. It
is ignited by the exposure by erosion of pyrite to atmosphere. Both minerals
are deposited together and so they are always smoking somewhere along the
coastal ridge. Interesting.
So at 8pm we were in the theater watching “The Family Fang”
and about 8:45pm or so the captain makes a loud speaker announcement. He
explained that the further into Franklin Bay we went the less the hills were
smoking. They decided to turn around and cut back to where the smoke and whales
had been thickest about 4pm. He said we went reached that point he would drop a
small boat and send a camera crew to take close up photos and perhaps launch a
drone to take photos and they would broadcast the photos on the screens in Palm
Court and on cabin TVs. He didn’t say if any of this photography was going to
be livestreaming or broadcast at a later date or time. Clay left since he can
see the rest of the movie tomorrow. He took some photos and did not go up to
Palm Court or turn on the TV in the cabin. I finished watching the movie and got
out in time to see the small boat returning. We must be 3 to 5 miles off the
coast from the hills. I turned on the TV but all the footage was from the Cineflex
camera they have atop the ship. I didn’t see any from the small boat or from a
drone. Clay said he never saw a drone and he didn’t think they launched one. So
there was a beautiful sunset at about 10:45pm. Sorry we got no photos as Clay
was gone to bed and finished processing his photos for the day. We are sailing
away from Franklin Bay now. We expect to arrive in Ulukhaktok about 1:30pm tomorrow
to meet the Shackleton.
Photos
Photos
