Fun family time at home

 

Stylin'

 

Once we're back out in the world and can show off our style, we're definitely starting a new extra-high-waist trend.
 

Victoria

Our final port of call was Victoria, British Columbia. This photo overlooking the city has everyone in our group: Sally, Charlotte, Mark, Aaron, Ellen, Juniper, Janet, Rebecca, Hazel, and Luke.

Victoria was lovely, in the way that wealthy coastal cities often are. (And, no, there is nothing outside the frame of this photo to explain the piano. It's just a piano overlooking the ocean.)

Also tacky, in the way that tourist cities often are. No lack of maple in this Canadian city!

There is a pier where you can buy frozen chunks of raw fish and feed sea lions. The sea lions obviously know the routine and enthusiastically showed up to claim their fish.

It's fun to get close enough to a wild animal that you can notice normally unseen details, like a sea lion's nails.

Or the backside of a peacock.

We spent about 10 minutes watching this very angry peacock try to intimidate some crows away from a pile of birdseed. His tail was on full display the entire time. We also learned that in addition to displaying their impressive tail feathers, peacocks also rattle their feathers to make a clattering sound.



It sure seemed like the peacock was rattling his feathers to intimidate the crows, but science suggests the rattling may have been more about impressing the nearby pea hens. The crows never did leave the seeds, but this is one fine looking peacock, so maybe he had some luck with the ladies.

We wound up getting hot dogs from a shop on the busiest corner of the main tourist street because it was quick, convenient, and kid friendly. To our somewhat pleasant surprise, they were also delicious.

My mom took the kids back to the boat, and Aaron and I wound up with some time to wander by ourselves. We saw charming residential neighborhoods and stunning ocean views, and somewhat inexplicably, these steps into the ocean. No beach, no docks, just the barnacles and other sea life claiming the bottom few steps. Presumably there was some reason for these steps when they were built in the mid-twentieth century (our guess based on style and appearance), but these days there is no apparent reason for them. Just the pleasure of sitting, watching the ocean, and feeling like you've discovered a tiny private mystery.

Back on the boat, Hazel and Luke show off their matching Victoria T-shirts.

And attack Sally with icy hands. (They were also using ice water as hair styling product.) We had previously declared that Hazel and Luke couldn't sit next to each other at dinner because they would be so focused on playing that they wouldn't eat. We lifted the ban for our last dinner on the boat, and the kids were happy to get up to their silly shenanigans.

Aaron at work

Beam me to Las Vegas, Scotty. 
Gale Force 9's latest game is Star Trek Ascendancy, and Aaron went to the annual Star Trek convention to demo it. Rebecca came down from Chicago to help out with the show, see Vegas, and enjoy the con.

Teaching Khan how to play the game. I hear he's a pretty poor sport -- beware his wrath if he loses.

Activities on board

The top deck of the ship had a sports area, with basketball courts, a climbing wall, ping pong tables. And mini-golf.

It was pretty surreal to be playing mini-golf on a boat with Alaskan mountains in the background.

The FlowRider was another attraction on the sports deck. It creates a continuous wave for body boarding or surfing.

Rebecca, the most athletic in our crowd, was the first to try it out.

Aaron later joined in on the fun.

Juniper just met the height requirement and gave it a try.

She quickly wiped out and was a little scared and overwhelmed by the experience.

But she tried again, with more success the second time. She had a blast and was proud of her accomplishment.

It's possible that having a room service breakfast one morning caused almost as much excitement as anything on the sports deck. It was crowded, and there was nowhere to put anything, and the kids absolutely loved it.

Skagway

Skagway is a tiny bit of town tucked in between the shore and the mountains. It was a big gold rush town, and today the entire main drag is part of the Klondike Gold Rush National Park. All these tourist shops are renting space from the National Park Service.

Over a decade ago, Aaron heard the fun fact that Alaskans eat more ice cream per capita than any other state. Ever since then, eating ice cream in Alaska has been on his personal bucket list.

Quite a difference between the restored main street and this street just one block away.

 

And here's what we found just behind that street.

I wasn't kidding when I said that Skagway is tiny--wildflowers less than a 5 minute walk from the main tourist street.

This chimney is all that remains of a once-prominent boarding house that helped to establish Skagway as a tourist destination decades ago.

"What is that -- some kind of drill?"

"No, it's a 27-ton rotary snow plow." Skagway is also a historic railroad town, and I guess they couldn't mess around with snow on the tracks. This snowplow was built in the late 1800's and retired in the 1960's. Always read the plaque.

These last two photos are actually from Juneau, but I accidentally put them with the Skagway photos. The Red Dog Saloon was founded during the gold rush days and definitely plays up its old timey feel. There's sawdust on the floor, rough wood, and lots of taxidermy on the walls.

Also Wyatt Earp's gun.

Chilkoot Trail

More than 100 years ago Klondike gold rush miners followed the Chilkoot trail to get from the Alaskan coast to the headwaters of the Yukon river, in British Columbia. Today, the 33-mile trail is maintained by the US and Canadian National Parks Services. We hiked about 2 miles of the trail from it's start in Dyea (an abandoned gold rush town near Skagway).

The forest was beautiful and unbelievably mossy.

Berry season was just starting when we were there. Our guide told us that two of these baneberries on the devil's club bush can kill an adult.

But these watermelon berries are perfectly safe and do in fact taste slightly of watermelon. We definitely checked with the guide before eating any unknown berries!

In addition to letting us know which berries were safe to eat, the guide had all sorts of interesting information about the history and ecology of the area. This tree was the most interesting single fact we heard. When a brown bear wants to mark his territory, he'll rub all over the tree to get his scent on it, and then stretch as high as possible to scratch the tree with the two claws of his longest fingers. Another bear entering the territory can reach up and compare how high his own claws reach. If higher, then the new bear can move in and start encroaching on the territory. If lower, then the new bear knows he needs to keep moving and find somewhere else.

We ended our hike at the Taiya river and took a raft back to our starting point.

Everyone in our group for this particular adventure: Rebecca (Aaron's sister), Sally, Janet (Aaron's mother), Aaron, Juniper, and Hazel.

Hazel was slightly disgruntled about having to wear pink kiddie galoshes instead of the grown-up river boots everyone else got, but she didn't let that diminish her excitement about stomping in the water's edge.

Even through the boots, you could feel how cold the water was. No surprise, given that it's glacier run-off, but still very cold. Also clean, clear, and drinkable.

Kudos to the girls for being great companions on the hike and the float. They were engaged, excited, asked lots of questions, and followed all the safety guidelines. Juniper in particular spent most of the hike away from her family and attached to Mr. Brian, the guide, talking about the forest and her love of nature.

Aaron came equipped with two cameras -- the one around his neck and the one someone else was using to take this photo. (In case my teasing sounds unkind, let the record state that I deeply appreciate the fact that we have all these fantastic photos without any effort on my part.)

It was a relaxing and peaceful float, with stunning views in every direction: snow-capped mountains, forest-covered mountains, glaciers in the distance, trees close up.

No bird in this picture, but this is a bald eagle's nest. We saw lots of them-- in forests, on streetlights, above the garbage dump...

Rebecca's big smile pretty much sums up how we were all feeling on the raft. The 40 minute float was over way too quickly.