Alaska!

That's right, we're back, as if the updated Free Stuff! post didn't give it away.

Here's two weeks in a nutshell:

• June 1: B-Day (that's Boards Day). It was definitely a stamina type of day. I was pretty good with timing, making sure to take each of my breaks in between each section, even if they weren't for the full amount of time. Kept a steady stream of caffeine and energy bars going, and I never really felt the post-prandial slump. I felt pretty good after I was done. Of course, most people apparently feel like they failed but turn out to have done fine, so by feeling fine, I probably failed. Oh well, nothing to do but wait until July 18 for my score. Picked up Eric at BWI, met Duc in Annapolis for dinner, and headed to Rock Hall, MD, where we picked crabs and drank beer.
  
• June 2: Aaron and Melanie's wedding. Pictures here and here (I got a lot of the reception; Duc got the night before at the crab shack). Highlights of the wedding: good bar, good fun, and someone else wearing the same dress I did. How embarrassing!
  
• June 3: Woke up at 5 am to hit the road and drive back to BWI. Got on a flight to Seattle, scored a 3-seater row all to ourselves on the first leg and the coveted two-person exit row on the second (love you, Southwest!). The only disappointment was forgetting my Southwest drink vouchers back in Louisville. Not that there was going to be any drinking on that flight, not after the previous night. But you know, a cocktail on our way home wouldn't have been bad. Made it to the ship. Pictures of the Alaska trip are here (although the captioning process hasn't been finished yet).
• Ziplining in Ketchikan was awesome. Did you know that Ketchikan is the third rainiest place on Earth after Kuaui and the Amazon? Luckily for us, it was a beautiful day!
• In Juneau (rainier day) we went to the Mendenhall Glacier, and then took an "unofficial trail" that led much closer to it and a waterfall. We scrambled over a rockslide and got right up to the waterfall -- it was awesome. There's nothing like breaking the rules and risking a broken neck for an adrenaline rush.
• In Skagway we took the White Pass and Yukon Railroad into Fraser, BC. The railroad ride was really gorgeous, and it was amazing to see the landscape change so dramatically between Alaska and Canada. The mountains got craggier and there was much less low-lying brush and trees. It made us wonder if the geography shift was how they decided where to put the border in the first place. Oh yeah, and the dandelions in Skagway were gi-normous (apparently the bears eat them after waking up from hibernation, because they serve as a natural laxative).
  
• Victoria was an absolutely gorgeous city -- flowers EVERYWHERE. And I saw multiple gardens growing calla lilies, which I've never seen growing in real life before. There were also these funny little blue flowers that grew in bunches on a bush -- does anyone know what they are? I've never seen them before.
  
• Wildlife count: whales (gray or humpback, not really sure), a bear, eagles, mountain goats, and assorted birds. We were too early for the salmon run, it was the wrong part of Alaska for moose, and we did see two reindeer, but they were penned so I don't think that counts.
• The weather was really nice. It was only rainy on the first part of the first day at sea, and in Juneau. The other days were sunny, mostly clear, and mostly not-cold.
• It's kind of bittersweet that most of those port towns are only still in existence because of the cruise lines. Ketchikan's claim to fame, other than being rainy, is to be home to the largest collection of native totem poles in the country. Or something similarly boring. Oh yeah, and it has a former bordello. Skagway is similarly tied to the gold rush, and also proudly boasts a former bordello, but has only about 300 year-round residents. The towns have otherwise no industry, nothing to do. The cruise ships come in, drop off 3,000 people who all flock into the same souvenir shops or cruise line-owned diamond and tanzanite stores, and sustain the few hundred locals. All of our tour guides were seasonal transplant workers as well. Most people book a shore excursion that takes more advantage of the wildnerness -- either ziplining (which is pretty fake, when you think about it), or riding the railroad, or taking a charter boat out for whale watching or sport fishing, or taking a seaplane or helicopter ride. And those trips are EXPENSIVE! So on the one hand, I'm really happy I got to see Alaska and do what we did, but it's definitely also weird to think that so much of it is either falsely extending the gold rush era or completely manufactured.
  
• Princess isn't a bad cruise line. The food was good but not outstanding. I think the next cruise line up is only about $100 more per person; next time I would be willing to spend that to see if the experience is significantly better. We had the cheapest room (bottom deck, forward), and you could definitely feel the boat moving and the motors running, but we didn't stay in the room all that much, and we were so tired at night that we slept through all the commotion.
• Weird Princess cruise lines thing: soda was not free. You could buy a can of soda for $1.75 (no way!) or purchase a seven-day all-you-can-drink pass for $30 (also no way!). So we didn't drink any soda, not that that's a bad thing at all. But when you CAN'T have it, you want it really badly. So in Juneau I popped into a drug store and bought myself a nice, cold can of Coke ("only" 85 cents).
  
• Some of the food highlights on the ship were Alaskan king crab legs (the waiter noticed that I was working through mine with gusto and offered me another serving; he will forever be in my good graces for that), lobster tails, and prime rib. And lots of fruit, including watermelon, strawberries, and papayas. Someone really knows what I like to eat, that's for sure. We also had Alaskan seafood chowder and reindeer chili.
  
• We went in the hot tub on the top deck almost every day, and I'm really glad we did. On one afternoon, we ran onto the deck in our shorts and flip-flops (it was pretty chilly) and one of the waiters exclaimed, "Good afternoon! Welcome to the Caribbean!" which was awesome. As was drinking cocktails in the hot tub in 40-degree weather.
  
• We played trivia almost every day as well; they usually had a late-morning/brunch-time trivia and another one around 4:30 pm. We always finished in the top two or three (20 questions, all sorts of random stuff), but there were a few other die-hard trivia groups in attendance as well to beat us. However, we finally won one morning, and earned four travel alarm clocks as our prize. Our crowning glory, though, was "Jeopardized Trivia," for which we came back from Victoria early and rushed through dinner to attend. We were the only team to get the correct answer for Final Jeopardy, and since most teams (including us) had bet it all, we ended up with a whopping $3,600, to claim the prize of two bottles of champagne! Woohoo!
• After the cruise got back to Seattle Sunday morning, we spent the day there, checking out Pike Place Market and some of the more notable neighborhoods. After a long day of plane rides back to BWI Monday, we finally got back to my parents' house for the night, and happily greeted Moxie and Mojo, who had been consorting with dogs for three weeks. Tuesday we drove for 12 hours back to Louisville, and today I made a tiny dent in all of the housework that needs to be done.
• Bad news: Even though I would be so tired every evening on the cruise that I would fall asleep by 9 pm at the latest (one night I fell asleep at 7 and slept a full 12 hours, which I haven't done in forever), I am now stuck on Alaska time, which means I'm wide awake at 2 am, feeling like it's 10 pm. Oh well.
• Overall, it was a great trip. It's been a rough few weeks, but I'm glad that it's over, glad that I survived, and really glad we went to Alaska. I'd definitely like to go back, maybe next time in more of a camping/wilderness mode. Maybe.
  

Plans for the rest of the week:

• More cleaning: dirty laundry to wash, clean laundry to put away (the worst part), cat hair to vacuum off the carpets
• More organizing: putting away every single textbook and packet of notes that was ripped from the bookcase over the last month, gathering donations for Goodwill, and figuring out something to do with my ever-growing pile of JAMAs (it just feels wrong to throw them away, but no one wants them, either)
• Movies to see: Spider-Man 3 (maybe it's at the $1 theater by now?), Pirates of the Caribbean, Knocked Up, and Harry Potter 4 (rental), among others.
• Tomorrow night we see The Lion King, which will be the final show for our 2006-2007 Broadway Series (sniff).
  
• Friday I'm going to Kings Island (that's the Ohio version of King's Dominion for you east-coasters) with some friends, and I'm quite excited. You might guess that since I was 100% excited about ziplining, that I like thrill rides. Rollercoasters and water slides are pretty much guaranteed happiness for me.

As is champagne won by being smart.