Welcome aboard! We are Allen and Patricia Starnes of Tulsa, Oklahoma, Al and Pat to everybody. On Friday, May 21, 1999, I retired after thirty years as a school nurse, and Al, who retired from the refinery in 1997 after thirty-eight years, said it was time we went somewhere we couldn't drive to. So we went to Alaska on a ship. Neither one of us had ever been on a cruise. We may never get off another one.

Our son Jeff set up this page for us and scanned the pictures, and I am writing it, one day at a time. Our little camera prints the date in the corner of every picture, so that's what the orange numbers are. Click on any small picture to see it bigger, then use your Back button to come back here.

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Friday, June 11 & Saturday, June 12  •  Vancouver
We flew from Tulsa to Denver and on to Vancouver, British Columbia, and spent Friday night at a hotel near the pier, too excited to sleep. Saturday we got on the ship about noon. Our cabin was smaller than our bathroom at home, with a window, and the towels were folded into the shape of a swan. We had the lifeboat drill in our orange life jackets, and late that afternoon we sailed out of Vancouver harbor and right under the Lions Gate Bridge. Al went out on deck to see if the smokestack would clear it. It did.

Sunday, June 13  •  At Sea, Formal Night
All day sailing north up the Inside Passage, with islands and green mountains on both sides and hardly a house to be seen. That night was the captain's formal night. Al wore his church suit (he would not rent a tuxedo and I did not push it) and I wore my navy dress with the sequins that I bought for Jeff's wedding. Our waiter took this picture. Look at the windows behind us: it was after nine o'clock at night and still broad daylight. In June up there it hardly gets dark at all. Our tablemates for the whole week were Wes and Evelyn Erickson from Minnesota and Louis and Theresa Patton from Ohio, and by the third night we were passing pictures of the grandchildren around the table like old friends.

Monday, June 14  •  Juneau
Juneau is the capital of Alaska, and you can't drive there from anywhere. You come by boat or by plane. The mountains go straight up from the back of the town, so close it looks like the buildings are leaning against them. That's our ship at the dock. It was misty and cool, about 55 degrees, and there was a waterfall coming down out of the clouds.

After lunch we took a tour bus out to the Mendenhall Glacier, about twelve miles from town. It comes right down between the mountains to a lake, and there were little icebergs floating in the lake that had broken off of it. The ice is blue! Not white, BLUE, like a raspberry snow cone. That's Al with his binoculars, which he bought for the trip and wore around his neck for seven days straight. He looked at everything through them, including me.

Tuesday, June 15  •  Skagway
Skagway was the jumping-off place for the Klondike Gold Rush in 1898, and the main street still has the wooden sidewalks and false-front buildings. The railroad that was built for the gold rush still runs up into the mountains toward White Pass, on narrow tracks, in old-fashioned coaches. I took this from the open platform at the back of our car. The tracks are cut right into the side of the cliff, and the creek is a long, long way down on the right. Al spent the whole ride watching the fellow on the right leaning out with his camera, sure he was going to fall. He didn't. I didn't look down once.

Wednesday, June 16  •  Glacier Bay
This was the day. Two park rangers came aboard in the morning and talked to us over the loudspeakers all day about the glaciers and the animals. The ship sailed up the bay, through more and more floating ice, and stopped in front of a tidewater glacier, which means one that comes all the way down into the sea. The ship just sat there for an hour and turned around slowly so everybody got a look. Every so often a piece of the ice wall would crack off and fall into the water, and a second later you'd hear it, like thunder, and everybody on deck would go "ohhh." That's me in my new red parka, bundled up, hood up, and holding hot chocolate that a waiter was bringing around on a tray. It was 41 degrees on the deck, in June. I don't think I have ever been happier in my life.

Thursday, June 17  •  Ketchikan, in the Rain
Our tour guide in Ketchikan said they get thirteen feet of rain a year, and I believe every inch of it fell on us. We went to see the totem poles, which are carved out of big cedar logs by the native people of that part of Alaska, with animals and birds and faces stacked one on top of another, and each one tells a story about a family. Some of them are very old and gone silver-gray from the weather. The white specks in the picture are raindrops that the flash caught. We bought clear plastic rain ponchos from a man on the dock for three dollars each and they were the best three dollars we spent all week.

And look who was waiting for us back at the harbor: a bald eagle, sitting on top of an old piling like he owned the place, which I guess he does. It's in the middle of the picture, if you click to make it big. Our camera only zooms so far. In Alaska they are as common as crows are in Tulsa, and we saw at least a dozen that week, but this was the only one that held still for me. Al says it's the most American thing he ever took a picture of, and he didn't even take it. I did.

Friday, June 18  •  At Sea
A lazy day sailing back south. I went to a talk about the gold rush and Al went to a talk about the ship's engines and we met up at the pool deck for lunch. That night we said goodbye to our waiter and our cabin steward and our tablemates, and packed.

Saturday, June 19  •  Home
Back in Vancouver at seven in the morning, off the ship by nine, and home in Tulsa by eleven that night. The house was ninety-four degrees and the tomatoes needed water. I wore my parka to the grocery store the next week just because I could. (I took it off in the parking lot.)

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What to Pack for Alaska in June
From a school nurse who has packed a lot of field-trip bags:

• Layers. It can be 70 in Skagway and 40 on the deck in Glacier Bay on the same trip. A T-shirt, a sweater and a jacket over each other will do you better than one heavy coat.
• A real rain jacket with a hood. Not an umbrella. The wind takes umbrellas.
• Gloves and a knit hat for Glacier Bay. I laughed at the packing list. I did not laugh on the deck.
• Binoculars, one pair each. Ask Al how he knows. You will want them for whales, eagles and mountain goats, which look like little white dots on the cliffs without them.
• Comfortable walking shoes that can get wet.
• Twice as much film as you think. We took five rolls of 24 and wished we'd had seven.
• Something dressy for the formal nights. Nobody will mind if it isn't a tuxedo.
• A sleep mask. It's light out at eleven at night.

Al's Report on the Food
(Pat said I could have this part. —Al)

I'm a meat-and-potatoes man and I ate everything they put in front of me for seven days. Breakfast, lunch, afternoon tea, dinner, and the midnight buffet, and on the last night I went to all of them. The prime rib on formal night was as good as any I ever had in Oklahoma, and I don't say that lightly. They served Alaska salmon about four different ways and I tried all four. The midnight buffet had ice carvings of an eagle and a whale, and a table of desserts as long as my driveway. On the last night the waiters paraded through the dining room with baked Alaska, with the lights down and sparklers on top, and everybody waved their napkins. I gained six pounds. Pat says seven. Pat is a nurse and has a scale, so I guess it's seven.

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Friends who have sailed along with us:

If you're thinking of going, write us. We'll tell you everything.
[email protected]

Last updated Sunday, September 12, 1999