Not Zen 205: A Parent Way

A Parent Way

Across from a busy road, in the shade of peach and poplar trees, park planners made a clearing and planted grass. They built play areas for children. They placed benches so parents and other caretakers could rest as they watched. Soon enough, the local parents came. Their children played. More and more people traveled for miles to enjoy the park.

From a bookstore across the street, members of the philosophy club came with their books. They sat at the picnic tables. They read quotes from Zhuangzi and debated their meaning. New to the philosophy, they wondered how one would go about putting the Tao into action.

The discussion was led by a woman who needed to let her children play while she talked. She had read Zhuangzi many times and she was able to tell the group about aspects of the Tao, its history, and its practice. However, in an hour she reached the end of the time she had allotted. Her children began to interrupt her.

“I should go now,” she announced. “Please continue the book discussion.”

Several other members left with her but the rest, although they past their scheduled time, looked around them and decided to talk about nature for a while. The felt the natural world was related to the Way. In any case, it was a beloved subject on its own. They couldn't help but notice and comment on the park and the trees around them. Soon, though, all the members had to leave except for three, who had no other obligations.

The two younger members discussed their adventures outdoors, their observations about the natural world, and the Way, while the eldest mostly listened and contributed a few observations about people. As they talked, a young couple wandered over with their toddler and a crying infant. They parked their covered stroller, infant still crying inside, and the woman left with her toddler. The man, sitting on a bench next to the stroller, got out a book to read.

"Can't he quiet his baby?" asked one of the members of the philosophy club.

"Why did the mother leave?" asked the young lady who was also a member. She scowled at the mother as she disappeared with her toddler down a trail in the park.

"You haven't mentioned the other children," said the eldest. "I notice some who are well-behaved, some who are not, some who are loud, some quiet, some who flee their parents as soon as they can, and others who hang close by."

His observation sparked a debate on the best way to raise a child. The younger members of the club had not yet had children of their own. As it happened, they took opposite sides on parenting philosophies. One supported an authoritarian approach while the other proposed a reasonable, permissive approach. Each of them pointed to parents and children around them, citing examples, while their elder tried to remind them of other ways.

"When a child gets old enough, a moral approach can work," he suggested. "It's firm but reasonable."

"What, bothering your child about right and wrong all the time?"

"Yes, exactly."

Meanwhile, the infant cried in its baby carriage. Its father sat close by, reading his book and occasionally peeking under the hood of the carriage to see his child.

"Shouldn't he do something?" asked the younger man.

"No, it sounds like a teething cry," said the elder.

"Couldn't the mother come back and do something?" the woman asked.

"Not even a mother can fix sore gums." He knew it was likely the parents had taken whatever steps they could. 

After another minute, the cry changed. The child's father closed the book, stood, and rummaged underneath the stroller. When he pulled out a bag of changing supplies, he spilled it. The smaller items bounced away from him. The senior member of the philosophy club rose. He picked up pieces of the changing kit, handed them to the father, did it again, and did it one more time laughing about how many pieces there were. Soon, he and the father traded murmured phrases the others couldn't hear, followed by a shared laugh. The father changed the infant's diaper and, for a moment, the infant stopped crying. The senior man returned to his seat at the shared philosophy club table. The others chuckled as he took his place.

"Was that a moral approach?" asked the younger man.

"It doesn't answer the question about approach at all," said the woman. "It doesn't tell us anything about which way will win."

The older man thought about it for a moment. He rubbed his chin.

"The way of taking an appropriate action, whatever it is," he suggested, "is a winning one."
 

Not Even Not Zen 408: Worst in the Field

Worst in the Field

Worst in the field,
Worst in the field,
I’m the worst soul in the field.

Verse 1:

My super power is 
making things awkward.
You don't want me on your side.
My love is just
a drop in the ocean.
I'm not the king of the tide.

Verse 2:

I chop the wood
I carry the water
No wisdom do I gain
You know I'm living
paycheck to paycheck
then I do it all again.

Chorus 1: 

I think and think
But there’s nothing I’m knowing.
I sweat and toil 
but I'm not really growing.
I'm the worst lily in the field.

Verse 3:

I hold your hand
I sweat like I'm bleeding
'Cause I'm a stupid goon
I'm a swamp
I smell like a crayfish
Creature from a lagoon

Verse 4: 

I work a job
But don't really cut it
Learned it yesterday
I don't need to
relearn the lesson 
but I'm doing it today

Chorus 1A: 

I think and think
But there’s nothing I’m knowing.
I sweat and toil 
but I'm not really growing.

Chorus 2: 

I’m a slip 
in the walk of devotion. 
I’m the saltiest drop 
in the ocean.
I'm the worst lily in the field.

Verse 1R:

My super power is 
making things awkward.
You don't want me on your side.
My love is just
a drop in the ocean.
I'm not the king of the tide.

Verse 2R:

I chop the wood
I carry the water
No wisdom do I gain
You know I'm living
paycheck to paycheck
then I do it all again.

Chorus 1: 

I think and think
But there’s nothing I’m knowing.
I sweat and toil 
but I'm not really growing.
I'm the worst lily in the field.

Chorus 2: 

I’m a slip 
in the walk of devotion. 
I’m the saltiest drop 
in the ocean.
I'm the worst lily in the field.

I’m the worst soul in the field. 

I’m the worst lily in the field.

-- copyright 2025 by Eric Gallagher

 

Not Even Not Traveling 64: Alaska, the Complete Visit

Coastal Alaska

A cruise ship seems too removed and too upper-class a method to use for visiting a U.S. state.

It wasn't. I came around to the idea in part due to family persuasion but also in part because traveling by ship does, in fact, become reasonable when looking for ways to visit our state with the largest coastline. We missed the interior, naturally, of which there is too much for us to ever really know. We saw a significant amount of the Alaskan seaboard, though, and it was fine.

• Days zero and one, getting into Vancouver, Canada. 
• Day two, getting onto the Koningsdam. 
• Day three, shipboard life. 
• Day four in Juneau, Alaska. 
• Day five in Skagway. 
• Day six, Glacier Bay. 
• Day seven, Ketchikan. 
• Day eight, differences among ship crew and guests. 
• Day nine, the Vancouver Aquarium. 
• Final observations. 

We went in the summer, admittedly - but it was very fine. 

Not Even Not Traveling 63: Alaska, Entry 10

 

Final observations and lessons from life aboard a cruise ship:

The Return

On the Friday we turned toward home, we woke to discover we had lost an hour overnight. The time changed forward from 2:00 a.m. to 3:01 a.m. or something like that although it actually happened whenever we hit the arbitrary time zone line. The hour stayed lost all the way to Vancouver.

Working Out

Although we walked more on the Koningsdam than I’d expected, I still needed my low impact exercise. The leg movements designed to keep me able-bodied require a gym with an elliptical, stationary bike, rowing machine, and a treadmill. Our cruise ship had everything. Moreover, it had a sub-culture of fitness I wasn’t expecting to find on a cruise. 

For instance, the Koningsdam had a yoga studio. Everyone in it seemed to be a yoga professional, so I thought I’d better hold off. They wouldn't want to teach me the basics when they're all super advanced. Admittedly, I could have probably have gone in, failed to keep up with them, and still been welcomed to some extent. But why do it? I had plenty of fitness center equipment. 

There were more passengers enrolled in the fitness classes like yoga or spinning (interval training with stationary bikes ) than I ever saw in the sauna or hot tub. 

My main goals were to spend enough fitness time to help my body and to avoid any further injury. It was way easier to do than I expected.

Missing Out 

We could have chosen to take knitting lessons or other art lessons during the voyage. We could have gone for the dancing, too. (I used to love dancing.) There’s only time for so much at once, though. Choosing one activity pushes out another. I’m glad I kept up my writing, exercising, and playing games with friends. If I had to point to what I longed to do but missed, though, it would be dancing. And probably the art. I’m impressed they were possible choices. 

Trivia Games 

On Friday, we finally won a trivia game. We had lost a bunch of games by two or three points. This time, we won by two, maybe because it's a general trivia round, not a subject-matter round about pop music or about cruise ships in history or about Alaska history. However, I was busy writing (this, among other things) in the library when it started. I had to rush and still missed the first half of the game. Maybe the team won because I didn't mislead them. I got to answer the last third of the questions but, for those, I got a couple of my votes right, so yay.

 

Vancouver Library

We went to the library partly because we like books but mostly because a well-supplied library seemed such a startling and welcome sight. The downtown library is huge. The books come in many languages. The reading spaces are beautiful.  

 

Not Even Not Traveling 62: Alaska, Entry 9

Saturday - Vancouver Again

On Saturday after our cruise ship landed, we found that we weren't allowed to check into our hotel. It was too early in the day for our rooms to be ready. It’s a common-enough problem with cruise timing. The YWCA offered a bag holding area we could use. We traveled with lot of baggage, too, because the ship and the YWCA had plenty of space. 

By the way, about the YWCA Hotel in Vancouver, BC,

Cost: Expensive
But in Comparison: Half the price of other downtown hotels nearby
Staff: Very good
Facility Quality: High
Result: Recommended 

My wife asked me to sort through our options for the day. I had a fistful of brochures because the city is big. There are plenty of activities to choose from. I wanted to find a low-key one during which we could a) see more of the place and b) make our own tour, of sorts. I ended up putting the Vancouver Aquarium at the top of our list. It is Canada's largest aquarium, which seemed promising, and it was bound to have a lot of Pacific Northwest attractions, also cool. 
 

Vancouver Aquarium

We took the bus. That may seem like an odd choice but I wanted to take public transportation, not a taxi or a ride share. Diane felt the same way. You can get to know a lot about a city by its subway or its buses. To our surprise, the Vancouver buses were accommodating for city visitors. They are not just for commuters with pre-bought cards. Some other places (ahem, Chicago) made us go to a special shop and buy blocks of passes. Vancouver accepts a credit card swipe - and that's all it takes. No preparation necessary. Pretty sweet. 

During the ride we saw a lot of college-aged folks getting on and off. Some of them were, like us, headed to Stanley Park. Now, from the park to the aquarium I knew we'd have a hike - but that was also the idea. The park was large. Our destination was in the northeast center of it. I thought walking through the place was a way to see people and understand a little about the city. That proved true, too. We got a glimpse of the river harbor action. I enjoyed the various fitness-and-recreation crowds (joggers, cyclists, dog walkers, dog trainers, musicians, etc.). On the way back we got to see (and hear the bagpipes played for) a Scottish-Canadian wedding outside a restaurant in the park.

You can buy aquarium tickets without waiting in a line if you stop by a booth along the way. They're even discounted slightly. Why wouldn't everyone do this? Of course we got our tickets there. But we encountered (and bypassed) a big ticket line at the front entrance to the aquarium, so obviously not everyone goes to the satellite ticket counter. 

Inside, the exhibits divided quickly into themes. There was the BC Coast, Pacific Coast, Tropics, Amazon, and a special Jellyfish display. We explored them all. The bigger aquarium tanks took two floors of vertical space. The biggest displays of all - those for the sea otters, seals, and walruses - were actually outside to give them more room. 

We found plenty of animals in terrariums, as well. Some of them had cute names, like Quentin Tarantullino. Those names are mostly for the parents, I think. References to movie directors aren't going to tickle the fancy of most five year olds or get them to like the tarantula, which mostly hides from them anyway. I also liked the common names for some animals, like those in the Pleasing Poison Frog terrarium. It's a darned nice name. Those little frogs do look friendly. Don't pet them, obviously. 

Our tickets included the 4-D Movie Salmon Run. After enough walking from place to place, taking a seat for a while seemed attractive. However, only a minute into the show, I blinked, fell asleep in my chair, and woke when the "4-D" experience began by shooting cool air into the back of my neck and hitting me with soap bubbles. (The bubbles were supposed to enhance the film of salmon swimming upstream in a bubbly river.) Although the focus was on the salmon, the film showed us plenty of brown bears. Grizzlies are a subset of the brown bears and, as a group, the brown bears are pretty dangerous for humans. Black bears can get shy; you can literally scare them away sometimes. Polar bears are more often immediately deadly; too bad for you. But brown bears are inconsistent. People can feel safe around them and, suddenly, a brown bear changes its mindset and people become its prey.

 There's no question about salmon being the prey of bears, eagles, foxes, and more. Animals on the pacific coast are dependent on the salmon runs. This was a film for family audiences, though, so all the shots of salmon losing their battles were shown from a distance or they otherwise managed to avoid showing gore. Soap bubbles, that's the thing. We got washed by them twice. 

We skipped the science exhibits that were strictly for kids (and grudging parents). Instead, we next headed outside to the big animals. 

Well, the sea lions were loud. They had the biggest tanks, dove the deepest, and they were charming but, still, they liked to yell. In a separate set of trenches and tanks, the seals stayed quiet to the point of being almost invisible. And in their set of narrower tanks, the sea otters were the most charismatic. It really did look like they enjoyed showing off to the audience at times. They pranked each other. We watched one otter steal ice from another, mostly for the laugh of it. Neither otter seemed to prize the ice. It was something to be hoarded by the otter who wanted to lie in it. It was something to steal and eat for the otter who wanted to annoy her aquarium-mate. Little kids crowded around the otters more than any other exhibit. I sympathized with their choice. 

Amazingly, on the way back from the aquarium and at the southmost edge of the park, we saw an English Bay otter in the wild. I have no idea how common the sight might be. A dozen other people in the park stopped to watch the otter as well. It kept diving and ignoring the audience. Presumably, it could not obtain a standard feeding time in the wild the way one might in an aquarium, so it had to go about its business, hunting and foraging in the bay.
 

Not Even Not Traveling 61: Alaska, Entry 8

 An Aside: More Cruise Thoughts

Ethnicity on the Ship 

I do try to make travelogues into 'should I do this?' reviews and I'll get back to doing that. I've come this far with plenty of mentions of travel groups, though, and I haven't touched on race or ethnicity. Those are groups Americans think about a lot.

The number of African Americans or African Canadians aboard the Koningsdam was small, maybe one or two percent.

Chinese Americans and/or Chinese Canadians were better represented. They were still no more than fifteen percent of the crowd, though.

Ethnically, I can't tell Canadians and Americans apart unless they're being really obvious. I could tell we had a fair number of Dutch, Germans, French, Scottish, English, and other Europeans, though. We had some Indian Americans (not American Indians) and some non-Chinese, non-Indian Asian-Americans but not many. 

The crew, of course, was totally different. The main dining room staff were composed totally of Indonesian nationals, almost all of them men. In other places, we met cruise staff who were Indian, Philippine, Indonesian, Sri Lankan, Thai, Laotian, Dutch, and Mexican. We may have had a few Africans as well, possibly from Ghana or South Africa to judge by accents. The only European Americans I noticed on the staff were the entertainers. 

Of course, the most important categories are these:

Friendly and open
  - Most guests fall into this category
Friendly but shy
  - A minority number but still significant
Mostly polite
  - Over-populated with the ship staff
Disdainful of others
  - This includes multi-generational families
  - And includes large groups of retirees traveling together
  - And any other group preoccupied with their members
Unfriendly
  - Almost none (yes, actually)

Food Service

The full service restaurant had bad service by American standards. However, that’s maybe a too high (or just too different) standard. It was still very good but it wasn't what we're accustomed to having.

* If your fries come with vinegar, there will not be enough
* No one will check with you to bring more
* If you ask for any condiment, you will not get enough
* You will need to learn to ask for two helpings of sauces if you like them 
* The food is like Golden Corral, always a bit bland
* The cooks don’t know how to make good fries
* The waiters won’t leave a menu at the table
* They really want you to order everything at once, even the dessert
* You need to get a manager if you want to add to your initial order
* You probably won’t see your waiter again 
    - the team system means you’ll see six different waiters instead
    - none of them will know what you said to the others
* The system is super efficient, fairly uncaring, and very polite
* And the food is good. And the service, too. It really is - but it's different.

Not Even Not Traveling 60: Alaska, Entry 7

 Cruising Tricks

Once more, we ordered room service with the aim of carrying it up to the crow's nest. That's where we could eat with more elbow room and comfort. This time, however, the room service staffer caught me carrying the tray. He was an Indonesian man about my height, dressed in white kitchen clothes. He insisted on taking over my job, putting the tray back on his cart, and delivering our full and somewhat fancy breakfast to the crow's nest area. There, he placed our breakfast on the table of our choosing. He was solicitous about it every step of the way.

At 6:00 in the morning Pacific time, there were only five other guests in the crow's nest. They stared in awe at us. 

"How did you get breakfast delivered here?" A man asked me as soon as the server left. He was tall, bearded, and rather genteel-seeming. He kept his voice low.

"My wife has been ordering room service," I said. I gestured to the direction she had left in search of the fancy coffee drinks we blended with our regular coffee. "We've been taking it up here every day, pretty much."

"But he delivered it!"

"Yeah, he caught me." I shrugged. "And he insisted."

"Wonderful," he breathed. 

Not much later, a middle-aged woman approached me ask. A taller woman approached right after. This made for three out of the five early risers in the crow's nest who asked about our food delivery, all of them in tones of awe. The tall woman, who had a German accent, repeated the question and added an eye roll as we talked, as if she were stunned by the obviousness of my answer.

"Your wife is a genius." She said after she heard the story. She gave me a thumb's-up. 

I didn’t think the ship's crew had really understood what we were doing until today. Now I was worried that everyone would know. And yet we were following the ship's rules. Our cabin was too small to eat breakfast. We could take it someplace better. We did. 

Ketchikan, Alaska

On Thursday, we arrived late to the port in Ketchikan. I had time for an extra-long workout on the ellipticals in the ship's fitness room. 

To be clear, we were following the Holland America schedule. The ship's plan was to dock in the late morning. Traveling on the ocean takes time. Even revving at all-out power, all night, the engines of the Koningsdam couldn't get us southward through the straits from Glacier Bay to Ketchikan any faster. For our berths at Juneau and Skagway, the captain (and the cruise line, I'm sure) timed our arrival for roughly dawn. That gave the crew enough light to operate and it gave the ship's guests their maximum time in town for nature hikes, train rides, shopping, rafting, or whatever. 

In Ketchikan, we were scheduled for a cross-country jeep drive plus a canoe trip. It was one combined adventure.

It was our least adventurous excursion of the trip. From the description, I thought I would be steering or at least paddling the canoe. The pictures looked reasonable. Not to give too much away at the beginning, but the guides were pretty good. The excursion itself, as designed, was the problem.

Well, I said the guides were fine but mostly I meant the bus driver. He was an unusually articulate fact-fountain about the Ketchikan area. He had been working in Alaska, not always in the same position or for the same company, for six years. He observed the weather was sunny but he mentioned that, in Ketchikan, it's usually not. Ketchikan gets thirteen to fourteen FEET of rain per year. In May 2025 alone, it got two feet of rain. The area doesn't get much snow. 

"So this is a good day for your too-er," he concluded. The first few times he said the word 'tour,' I had to figure out what he meant. I still have no idea what accent that is. 

The normal population of Ketchikan is 8,000. We had arrived on a day with five ships in port. The next day, there would be seven. Basically, cruise ships can triple the population because Ketchikan is so small without them. It's a good example of an Alaska town, though. It's isolated. It's near the water. It's got mountains. (Deer Mountain, right at the southern foot of the place, rises over three thousand feet.) It's got a cog railway going up one mountain, a tunnel near the town center (built by dynamiting beneath existing houses), a boat in the marina from “The Deadliest Catch” television show, a place called Danger Island, and impossible parking.

Many residents have no parking near their house or apartment. Lots of their buildings sit on steep hills. It's not unusual to park downslope from home and take a hundred-foot staircase to the front door. 

The bus driver unloaded all this info in five minutes. We spent at least twenty minutes riding and he did not stop talking. We heard about the Tongass National Forest, people living on houseboats, the logging industry, area construction projects, and high retail prices on everything.

Finally, we arrived at the base camp for the jeeps and, unfortunately, we were not done. The driver selected a few guests to start their jeep tour. The rest of us had to endure another bus ride to the lake because, due to overbooking, we had to start with the canoe leg of our excursion. 

We endured a terrible drive not meant for buses, with potholes taken at two miles per hour, and enjoyed another great lecture on Alaska. On the way, we learned about three major native tribes, totem pole builders, how to make paint from salmon eggs, and more. There are no moose near Ketchikan, the driver pointed out, and very few wolves, so the only large animal we were likely to see hiking was a bear. At last, we arrived at the lake.

Kind of Lame

Well, it was a pond, really. It had deep, black water, as many Alaskan ponds and lakes seem to hold, but you could skip a rock across it to the picnic site. 

This is the start of my not recommending this particular excursion. After a lecture that covered material we'd already heard (not the canoe guide's fault, I think), we got into our watercraft. If you've ever paddled a boat with two dozen other people, you may have some idea what it was like. Four paddlers did all the work. Another four dipped their paddles in and tried to help. Someone's child back-paddled randomly, slowing our progress. The people in front had the most control over the steering but they didn't want to steer. The back-paddling child influenced our course almost randomly.

The pond is so small, all of this made no difference. And the trip was so brief, only a few minutes, our uncertain paddlers had no time to learn how to improve. 

The pond itself was great. The water was interesting. The place is nice. But our experience: boring. 

Then came the nature hike. I've had longer hikes coaxing an escaped cat to return to my house and seen more wildlife then, too. The nature path was well built. It simply didn't go far enough before looping back. There were mushrooms and fallen trees to discuss but, compared to most hikes, that's not a lot. After the walk, we paddled back in pretty much the same muddle in which we'd arrived. Finally, it was time for the off-road experience.

Beep-Beep, another Jeep

Well, I've done some off-roading. It can offer great sights and sometimes a challenging experience. This driving, though, was equivalent to driving on a bad road in Pennsylvania. We rode on logging trails with potholes. We were surrounded by vegetation at all times so, except for one pile of bear poop, there wasn't much we could see. There were no sights, no challenges, no learning. At the halfway point, we got out to talk. 

Right away in the discussion, I learned at least one woman seemed entertained by the off road experience. So I withheld my comments. Still, I kind of felt that if you were entertained by the drive you would also be entertained by parking at a Wal-Mart if there were sinkholes. We drove out; we turned around; we drove back. There was no discovery of a place or an emotional arc of achieving more and more difficult terrain, and no wildlife. We didn't see any unusual plants. I ate salmon berries at the brief stops because my wife made the effort to find them. They were moderately bad, as salmon berries usually are, but they were the highlight of the trip. 

Not Even Not Traveling 59: Alaska, Entry 6

Wednesday, the Glacier Experience

If you're an early riser and your cabin room is small, order room service. You need to order it the evening before, true, but there's a payoff. You'll get a full breakfast hours earlier than the food becomes available elsewhere on board. Plus, you can carry your tray wherever you want. Everyone else is asleep. You can walk to the next floor up and eat breakfast in the crow's nest while watching Alaska drift by. We did.

For a while on Wednesday, it was mostly us and our coffee. Slowly, other guests joined. The ship sailed into the mouth of Glacier Bay. Soon, standing by a window with my cup, I discovered sea otters in the blue-gray waters around us. After a while, I realized they were everywhere. They floated in twos or threes, sometimes whole rafts of them. From a distance, they looked like furry potatoes. Sea otters aren't a glorious sight from the top deck. Other folks in the crow's nest claimed to see whales, and I did spot some movement in the water along with a plume that could have been a whale or could have been two sea otters sneezing. 

I had failed to bring my binoculars at 6:00 a.m. At the times when I have my glasses on, I can count the barnacles on a whale's backside, but I didn't have those, either. I wanted to run back to my cabin for them while shouting at the whales to ‘hold it right there’ but that didn’t seem like a promising prospect.

This was maybe a form of payback. For years, on vacations at places like Virginia Beach, I would spot dolphins and point them out. My wife, effectively blind without her glasses when we were young, would scramble to get her lenses on. She was always too late. Within a second or two, the dolphins would submerge. They would pop up in a different position after she'd removed her glasses. Sometimes she put on and took off her glasses three times. But I was the only one seeing dolphins, really. Since then, she's had corrective vision surgery.

"Hah!" she said next to a window in the crow's nest. She pumped her fist. She told me she'd seen the fins of two whales in the distance. But this time, it was just plumes for me. That was all. Eventually the crow's nest filled up around us with a couple hundred people all trying to look at Glacier Bay simultaneously, most of them with cameras. It wasn't easy to move around.  

The ship's crew set up a microphone in the middle of the crowd. They took turns speaking about the bay. Eventually, they introduced the National Park staff. The park service staff included among them a Tlingit tribal member. The Tlingit have lived in the area for hundreds or possibly thousands of years. Archaeologists and botanists have figured that some green areas of Glacier Bay (forests, bracken, grasses) existed 8,000 years ago. There have been signs of continuous inhabitance uncovered, so it's possible the same tribe has been here the whole time. However, the park staff and Tlingit administered no lessons about the glaciers (none I hadn't heard or read before, anyway) so I plodded down to my cabin and climbed back up to deck twelve. From the Koningsdam, deck twelve provides the clearest view of the shoreline. I took my binoculars. 

We passed Reid Glacier on the starboard side. (I rushed from side to side as I needed. After all, there were otters.) The Reid ice was dirty with rocks. Glaciers are nature's bulldozers. They push things around pretty fast, geologically speaking. The edge of Reid had pushed a lot of rocks into the sea. Then it receded. It's a thing that happens depending on sea temperatures, salinity, and the pace of the ice's push down the coast. So the ice kept its land-locked dirty color most of the way to the beach. 

Not much later in our voyage but on the port side, we encountered the John Hopkins Glacier. In this one, the ice glowed blue in parts, much as you might see in a picture postcard of glaciers.

This glacier was named after the college in Baltimore. That seems weird but it's what we were told by the park service announcer. It’s not named after Hopkins, the Quaker who founded the school. It really is named after Johns Hopkins University by an alumnus who explored Glacier Bay. I suppose we have to be grateful he didn't name it "Johns Hopkins Where I Got My Degree And My Parents Are Very Proud Glacier” although I think that's supposed to be understood.

The Koningsdam proceeded to spin next to the Johns Hopkins glacier while staying (very nearly) in place. For such a large ship, its turn radius amazed me even though I knew about the azipods beneath the waterline, now. I felt almost sorry we didn't negotiate other, even more narrow spaces or do silly water tricks with the Koningsdam. 

My lawnmower doesn't turn as well as this, I thought.

As a group (well, as a captain and four thousand passengers), we proceeded past Clark Glacier and Riggs Glacier while I dashed from port to starboard and back, pointing out sea otters. Not everyone had seen them. A set of four ladies followed me from place to place for a few minutes, long enough to spot the floating, furry brown dots. Two of the ladies used their binoculars to confirm for the others.

"They really are otters!" she declared. Without binoculars, as I mentioned, they might as well be brown potatoes floating there.
 
Then it was time for me to rejoin my party, play afternoon trivia and, eventually, meet again for dinner. 

Evening Dress

At our fancy, nice-shirt dinner we had one more odd thing happen. We got visited by whales. 

Out the port-side window, a plume shot up. It was a puff of white against the dark blue sea. Behind everything, the shore trees looked slightly dark in the gradually waning sunlight. 

"Oooooh!" Three or four people who had happened to be looking in the right direction made appreciative noises. One of them stood up.

"That was definitely something," Diane told me. She smacked my forearm.

"A whale?" I turned my head.

Before she could answer, another plume shot up. This time, more people rose to their feet. I was among them. 

"Good of you to order the whales," I mentioned to the couple whose table I was starting to crowd as I edged toward the window. They made appreciative noises and also made it clear they didn't mind if I and the others got closer. 

The Koningsdam was really at top cruising speed. We were leaving each individual whale behind. Sometimes, though, we saw three or four spouts at once. We had to be passing by an extraordinary number of them, an entire pod of humpbacks spread out for a mile. Finally, I got to watch a pair of whales breach together. At least, from the dual splashes, that's what I was seeing. The main thing I noticed was the wide tail fin. Even at a distance, I could tell a humpback was diving. As our guides had explained, once you saw the tail you would not see the same individual again. It would be under the surface too long to pop back up while being still in our changing view. Instead, I stood and watched until the spouting and ripples slowed their appearance. 

We traded quips with the couple who had been nice enough to let us lean over their table as we watched. With glances back at a final spout from a submerged humpback, we walked back to our seats.

Not Even Not Traveling 58: Alaska, Entry 5

Tuesday, the Docking Procedure

We walked up to the crow's nest just after dawn. I wanted to watch the Koningsdam sail into the dock. At first, our passage through the fjord leading into Skagway looked like any other part of our trip. As we closed in on our destination, though, the waters narrowed. Suddenly, our ship needed to navigate a narrow channel between several other large ships and two dozen smaller ones. Space between the vessels started to seem awfully close.

As we neared our docking point, I looked to the east where a Princess cruise vessel and one from the Celebrity fleet had settled. The Princess, oddly, was launching an escape boat. The passengers were fleeing or at least they were shuttling from their ship to some other.

At the same time, a ship behind us to the south from the Royal Caribbean line was closing in. We in the Koningsdam were getting near to colliding with a vessel directly to our north, a second ship from the Princess line. The near-collision was eerie. No one seemed worried. The captain sounded no alarms. All the same, the momentum of our multi-story vessels looked unstoppable. I was watching it happen.

The Princess turned sharply, as if backing into its parking space. I hadn’t known it could maneuver quite so deftly. It wouldn’t help the Koningsdam, though. I could tell. The bow of the Koningsdam was going to hit the Princess broadsides. Yet as close as we were, we also were turning. Our ship spun in place, or so it seemed. It moved like one of those trick cars that can turn all their wheels at once. 

Later, my brother-in-law Norm clued me in about the azipods. They are combined units providing both a propeller and a steering mechanism. Each azipod allows for 360-degree rotation. Does the captain need to turn on a dime? No need for a rudder, just turn on the azipods! The big cruisers still have main engines and rudders; that's what they use when they want to plow straight ahead with a lot of power. When they need to pull a stunt, though, like making an impossible turn in a tight spot, it's azipods all the way. 

Underneath the waterline, around the sides of the ship, the azipods wait, ready to be multi-directional engines like on a spaceship.  

A side note: the Princess ship with escaping passengers? That really was pretty much how it seemed. The passengers were off-boarding via lifeboats. The reasons: earthquakes and avalanches.

The Princess cruise ship had to dock in its berth. There aren't many docks and they are reserved years in advance, so there was no choice. However, a recent avalanche had cut through the boardwalk area for the Princess line and buried it under tons of rubble. There was no path left for the Princess passengers to disembark in Skagway, not via their dock ramps. They had to use the emergency lifeboats to go into town. 

Skagway

One of my earliest sights in town was the airport. It was populated by a dozen helicopters, most of them employed by the tourist industry, of course, during the summer. I would guess they do other jobs over the winter. From the ship's observation deck, we also got a good view of speedboats in the harbor, the tourist mecca of the closest streets, and buildings in the non-tourist parts of town, which were often hidden among the tree-filled hills.

It turned out that one of the speedboats was our morning destination.

The Ocean Raft Adventure 

The description of this excursion was misleading. 

1) The bottom of the boat is a thick aluminum alloy. It's not something I've seen on wooden rafts or rubber rafts.

2) The engine is a high powered racing model. Again, that doesn't say "rafting" to me.

3) The sides of the boat are inflatable like a river raft. Yay. They are exactly what you'd want on a bumper car, because they are ready for some contact with other boats, the shore, etc.

4) The passengers would not survive high-speed contact. The boat would be fine. However, the seats are saddles with no stirrups or seatbelts. So a big "bump" would launch everyone into the water (best case) at 70 mph. 

That's never happened at Skagway, ever. Nothing like it, even. Still, that's what the rules of momentum dictate.

When I saw "raft adventure" in the excursion title, I thought I would be doing some steering and paddling. Instead, the captain gets licensed every year by the Coast Guard. She made the engine go breeeeeeeeee!  Until she throttled it up a notch, which made it do breeeeeRAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRR and the little aluminum wedge skipped along the tops of waves like a Jet Ski or Waverunner. Thump, thump, thump. Twenty two passengers bobbed their heads up and down like we'd agreed to this. 

My general advice is: read the excursion descriptions carefully. 

As a speedboat crew, we were dressed like the Oompa Loompa Space Force in bright orange jumpers. There's a good reason for it; it gives the locals a laugh. Also, it was warm. The wind in the fjord was frigid and fast. I would happily take home one of those super-expensive jumpsuits right now even if it stayed in my closet for most of the year. As we picked up even more speed and did donuts to test our hand strength (the saddles had grips and they were essential), I thought: gosh, I'm warm. 

I also thought: this is going to be the fastest wildlife spotting, ever. Can I identify a bald eagle as we pass a roost at 50 mph? 

As it turned out, the captain knew what she was doing. We skipped across the waves from site to site, sure, but we slowed down to gawk at the wildlife, too. Since the captain (Alyssa, with her assistant Hannah) *did* spot eagles in trees at high speeds, our overall performance was excellent. At first, she pointed to an eagle, then another. She found a bumper crop of seals sunning on rocks along the shore. She located another colony on a different, less rocky shore. Soon, though, we were finding more and more eagles everywhere the boat turned. 

"Wow, this is a really good day for the eagles," she commented.

It was a pretty great day for waterfalls around the fjord, too, but I gather most days are. We skipped from place to place, slowed, and gawked at the various features of the landscape, flora, or fauna. Since the tide was about 10 feet low (it gets up to 20 feet low sometimes), we got to see black mussels lining the rocky shores. It's a natural version of wearing Goth necklaces, bracelets, and bangles. 

On the water, we spotted a rare species of sea duck, although by "rare" our captain meant they're out of season, not endangered. They don't get hunted. They're not even worried by our speedboats. 

On the sides of cliffs, we pointed out waterfalls to one another. This included the unfortunately named Twin Waterfalls, which suffered damage in an earthquake tremor last year is now pretty much a single fall. I had the feeling the boat had to stop there because it had stopped there for years before. The site was still in the script. A note of uncertainty in the voices of Alyssa and Hannah indicated they weren't sure if the tradition made sense. Maybe they used to say, "The twins are the best! Taa daa!" and they haven't figured out how to replace that.

I would rate the excursion highly. The score, roughly, is

Seals: 25
Ocean ducks: 44
Eagles: 17
Adult passengers: 21
Twelve-year-old passengers: 1

By the end, our young lad begged to sit on the outermost saddle seat while the captain made the speedboat do donuts. The captain gave in to his request after some careful testing to make sure he wouldn't fall out. Then she spun a final set of donuts in the fjord. My inner twelve years thought it was fun, too.

Ocean Raft (Speedboat) Adventure: 10

Not Even Not Traveling 57: Alaska, Entry 4

On Monday, Juneau

When we sailed into the dock at Juneau, Alaska, I had been staring at fir-lined shores for hours. We had seen the mainland from the observation deck for most of our trip. The coast had been green the whole time.  

So Alaska is as lush as the rest of the northwest. Well, it's overgrown in the summer and there are still snow-capped hills in the distance. Maybe during the winter it's a sheet of ice with polar bears walking around in white parkas but I wouldn't know. Even the Pacific waters are a summery green, here. They are a little translucent, too. The effect is haunting. 

Juneau has about 38,000 people, or so said our tour guides. That means the state capital is about half the size of my hometown, Frederick. Downtown Juneau looked busy when we docked, although I know it may simply have been due to our arrival. Tourist boats create a rising tide, it seems, which lifts the local shops financially. This is a place where "remote wilderness destination" and "summer tourist trap" occupy the same geographical coordinates.

Diane and I headed down the departure ramps soon after we were allowed. Together, we hiked the town. I was amused to find a Ben Franklin store on the main drag. I hadn't seen a Ben Franklin anywhere else for fifteen years. I even bought knickknacks and candy from it. Mostly, though, we bided our time until we could tour the countryside.

Off-Roading on Segways

Our scheduled excursion began with a bus trip into the hills beyond Juneau. Along the way, our guides introduced themselves. RJ was from Utah. Ally was from Tennessee. Both of them claimed their jobs were really great. They were happy to be working in Alaska and happy to have been recommended to their positions by their friends.

From the sound of it, they do have nice summer gigs. Although Alaska rents are high and the Segway tours are essentially a company store (with the apartments provided by the business), the pay is good enough and the rent cheap enough that everyone makes solid money. Many of the summer jobs in Alaska are run on the company-store model and not all of the rents allow for a good-enough profit by the student workers. This outfit was doing well by its staff.

Along with us for the trip were two other segway guests, both women from the Princess cruise line. They said they were mother and daughter, aged 60 and 30, but they looked 45 and 15. It was kind of shocking but I have been made aware previously of a West Coast aging difference. They were from Seattle. The daughter, not actually a teenager, seemed sort of in charge on their side.

"I invited my mom for her sixtieth birthday," she said. 

Neither of the women had been on anything like a segway before. For their first time, they opted to go off-road on the big-wheelers, which seemed like a doubtful choice to me. After the older woman sat through the safety video, which points out all the ways you can disfigure yourself or die, she got so frightened of her prospects on the machine I started to worry for her, too.

Our instincts turned out to be correct inasmuch as her sense of caution made her stiff. As a consequence, she found it hard to steer. (You steer by changing your balance.) She made jerky, panicked movements that turned simple forward motions into gyroscope-assisted seizures. Meanwhile, her daughter glided around like she was born on wheels, serving as an enthusiastic cheerleader with comments like "You're doing great, Mom!" which is what people say to you when you're clearly not doing great but they're trying to prevent you from having a nervous breakdown.

We drove along the woodland trails beside a scattering of small ponds. At one point, the tour guide stopped us. We hopped off our vehicles and, since I was freed of the need to worry about our companions, I immediately started walking towards one of the ponds. Before RJ or Ally could say anything, I sank into quicksand.

Fortunately, my reaction was pretty good. I scrambled back out with barely any harm to my shoes. 

"Yeah, you can't really walk there," RJ drawled. 

"Seems like." I exhaled, hands on hips, and stared at my mostly-clean shoes. I had been ankle deep a moment earlier, so the sight was weird. The surface hadn't left much impression on me. When I glanced back, I saw I hadn't left much impression on the surface, either. It had seeped back in around my footprints.

“Well, how deep would you say that pond is?” he asked, pointing to one of the many circles of stagnant water with a yellow water lily in the center. I could see the bottom of it, which was only about two feet down. 

My wife guessed, "About three feet."

“That one goes at least twenty feet. What looks like the bottoms of these ponds are just silt. The silt rests on a bunch of floating plant roots, so it makes a surface that looks like a solid floor but it's not."

"Are the edges of the ponds similar?" I had to ask. 

"Where you sank into the moss? Yeah, under the green layer is the same kind of stuff that's in the ponds, just not as thick. Some of the ponds go at least ninety feet down, they say. Geologists come around to measure them."

RJ, with helpful comments from Ally, went on to explain how all the ponds were formed by glacier recession. That's why they are only ten feet across while being twenty, seventy, or ninety feet in depth. When the glaciers started melting at the end of the last ice age, they ripped channels in the landscape. Into those rocky fissures, the glaciers then deposited loose rocks and dirt. None of the resulting land is very stable. The ponds are sinkholes, really, where the smallest and most fragile materials have washed away and sunk into the porous landscape all around them. The resulting holes filled up with water and, eventually, they also filled with plants and loose silt. 

Really, they are disguised cliff edges. There's almost always a water lily at the top.  

"They do look pretty," Ally said. We all agreed.

Now, I had hopped immediately into quicksand, which is pretty dumb. In my defense, I hadn’t encountered quicksand since second grade, and that was actually in a Batman television show. In real life, I had maybe never seen it until this trip. That's despite my past slogs through swamps elsewhere. 

What happened next was, our mother and daughter combination proceeded to forget about the quicksand, too. Even though they had seen me go in, even though they had listened to a lecture about the dangers of the pond edges, even though we had shared a joke about them, they forgot. I think they reacted to everyone talking about how pretty the water lilies were. 

The mom said, "Let's get a selfie." 

She grabbed her daughter's hand. They marched toward the edge of a disaster-pond. After two fast steps, they started to sink. The daughter screamed and leaped back. The mother was not quite as nimble. She lost her balance. Fortunately, her daughter's hand kept her upright and her daughter pulled her back. We all took a deep breath. We had a good laugh. Well, most of us did. 
 

Hiking Around Juneau

After a few miles, our trail narrowed. We had to park and hike across a footbridge. 

We were learning about the forest. The guides seemed to understand The Hidden Life of Trees (even if they probably hadn't read the book, someone among them might have, once). They knew a forest is different than a grove, that soil needs certain bacteria to provide plant health, the roots of trees are the brainstems, the boughs preserve moisture and bring it inland, parasites only succeed when trees are too weak to defend themselves, and more. 

They described specifics about the Alaska coast forests, where three types of trees predominate: Paper Birch (fast growing pioneers), Sitka Spruce (not as fast but they overgrow and push out the pioneers), and Hemlock (which can grow in a shadowy environment and eventually push out most other species). Foresters can often tell the age of an Alaskan forest by looking at which trees predominate. By the time Hemlock comes along, the forest is starting to mature.

For a while, we hiked along a creek bed. It was also a canal bed, in places. The canal was only a few feet wide. Most people could jump over it. 

The reason there were flooded sections of canal, empty canal troughs, and broken timbers from a canal was: greed. Well, gold. A few miles farther on, miners had begun excavations in a mine shaft. They were part of the Alaska gold rush and their mine, although not a large one, started out promisingly enough. They were trying to follow the seam. They needed water for their animals, men, and tools. This being gold rush times, they helped themselves to the local creek. 

They dug a canal to the mine. They broke the earth barrier between the natural course of the water and their canal. With that, they diverted the whole stream. They had what they needed. They were in business. 

Within the year, the Alaskan snowcaps gathered ice. The ice melted. The little stream flooded. So did the canal. So did the mine. In fact, the jump-across canal wiped out the mine. The miners re-diverted the water back into its natural course but it was too late to do them much good. The water remained and worse, the sides of their tunnels fell in after the flood. 

Good Evening 

Back aboard the Koningsdam, we lost another game of easy trivia. It was too simple. Most teams scored better than nine out of fifteen. Once again, we fell a couple points away from the win. At least I learned, 'some boys kiss me, some boys hug me' is the start of Material Girl by Madonna. 
  

Not Even Not Traveling 56: Alaska, Entry 3

 First Full Day at Sea, Sunday

We Learn to Vote with Our Feet

In the morning, we walked up the stairs to the Crows Nest, essentially the indoor observation deck. We got coffee cups, a half-hour of peace, and made plans to take binocular lessons after my morning workout. Well, I didn't make the plans. But I didn't plan on taking a cruise, either, and it was turning out fine. 

The Koningsdam fitness rooms were better than I felt I deserved. The rowing machines weren't very adjustable but I adjusted. The ellipticals were smooth. The treadmills were, well, completely full. Twenty of them, and every tread had feet on it. Ugh. So I had to go back to more ellipticals and then to stationary bikes. 

Afterward, I joined the binocular lessons, which were mostly about types of wildlife and how to identify them. This was detailed enough to be useful. I'd recommended it.

Next, Diane wanted to attend a seminar on whales in the main auditorium. We got great seats. But then it began. The script was so bad, it made me squirm. I focused on tolerating it for Diane's sake but she was so irritated by me squirming and looking for ways to cope with the embarrassing script that I knew I wasn't at my best.

The presentation had some good material, too. I hadn’t heard before about humpback whales coordinating their feeding. That was new to me and new to Alaska, in fact. The coordination had been recently introduced to the area by whales migrating in from elsewhere. The NPR footage of interviews with scientists about it was great. When we returned to the ship presentation portion, though, the awfulness returned. It was so bad I had to contemplate *why* it was. 

What makes a presentation bad enough that I need to close my eyes and meditate? In time, I realized the script violated a basic writing guideline. The rule is:

    Don't tell the audience how to feel

It's the base-level advice for getting readers or listeners on your side. Don't berate them. They will be inclined against you in response. But the ship's presentation script repeatedly hammered on how we, the audience, should feel. Fortunately, Diane grabbed my hand and stormed out with me. 

"Sorry," I murmured.

"Don't be." She shook her head. "I'm sorry. The description was so much better than this!" 

As it turned out, my wife expected the presentation to be as useful as the one on binoculars. Well, it was a lesson learned for us but not about whales. What we found out is we're old enough now to not be shy about leaving a lecture hall. We can vote with our feet.

In the afternoon, we played trivia games. They were a bit like pub trivia but simplified, only fifteen questions. It's hard to score less than ten points, even for me. We would have won the evening trivia game, in fact, if our team had trusted me for the bonus question, which was “When did Dunkin’ Donuts become Dunkin?” I guessed 2018, which the host said was right. But that's not how teams work and we didn't get the three-point bonus while missing the outright win by only a point. 

A good tip for trivia players is not to stand up, gesture at everyone, and shout, "I told you so!" That applies to a lot of teamwork during the rest of life, too. 

Recap: 

Our first full day at sea? Pretty nice.
The cruise ship furnishings? As good as the highest end of the most expensive cities in the world.
Were we getting good value? We will never be able to eat or drink enough to justify our meal plans. And that's fine. 
Fifteen drinks per day? No thanks, I'd rather live.

Not Even Not Traveling 55: Alaska, Entry 2

Boarding the Cruise

Saturday

The moment we boarded our ship, the Koningsdam, I experienced "acute class awareness syndrome," which is when you suddenly realize you're in a floating petri dish of economic stratification. Nobody on this ship was yacht rich - because if you're yacht rich, you don't cruise on someone else's boat, you cruise on your own while complaining the helicopter pad is too small. 

Instead, we walked into an ecosystem of wealth levels: young families with the aura of inherited money, high achievers (doctors, lawyers, etc.), folks with at least a toehold in the owning class ("I just bought another truck for my quarry"), older folks who brought their multi-generational family with them, older folks splurging everything on their "final voyage" cruise, and older folks who are definitely not on their final anything, not the final cruise, not their final Bloody Mary, not the final time at the blackjack table, and not the last on the slot machine either ("Go get me another stack of chips, honey"). The final contingent brings the numbers, for sure. Probably a third of the guests were retired, heavy drinkers although, to be clear, they were not retired *from* heavy drinking.  

My wife and I did what newbie cruise passengers do, I suppose: we scurried around like caffeinated hamsters checking out amenities. Pool? Check. Sauna, hot tub, spa heated benches that make you feel like a pampered lizard, and a steam room that gives you a voluntary tropical fever? Check, check, check, and oh, hell no but check. We discovered trivia games (where you learn that everyone else knows more about 1970s sitcoms than you) and a surprisingly nice ship library, well-stocked with hardcovers, trade paperbacks, and magazines. 

Among the varied ship's contingent, I found myself noticing a particularly striking couple - a handsome African-Canadian man with his Laotian wife and family - the kind of pairing that's unusual enough to catch your eye, but I had no excuse to talk with them. So I was basically a creepy cruise ship anthropologist taking mental notes. 

We did manage to have an extended conversation with a personable Hawaiian fellow who was taking his 72-year-old mother on the cruise. He admitted he was wrestling with the dilemma of adventure-seeking adult children: he wanted to go open-ocean kayaking but his perfectly reasonable mother considered staying alive to be a higher priority for her.

In the evening, we re-learned that my wife's sister kills at music trivia. We came within two points of the win. Most of our score was from her.  

First Day Cruise Summary:

Nice ship? Very.
Nice in-laws? Yes, but they know the difference between Laura Branigan and Olivia Newton-John. (It's the haircut, I think.) 
Nice passengers? Yes.
Nice crew? Too early to tell. We were just getting to know them. 
 

Not Even Not Traveling 54: Alaska, Entry 1

Thursday July 10

We traveled from Baltimore to San Diego, then from San Diego to Vancouver.

Advice: don't do this.

Friday July 11

To be clear: we got up early on Friday morning. We got out of bed. But we did not get to the park when we'd planned. That's because we were chatting and grabbing breakfast. Instead of taking the bus to Lynn Canyon Park like responsible, budget-conscious tourists, we grabbed a cab, which is the international travel equivalent of scoring an own-goal at the beginning of the match.

We did actually get there, though, and in a strange city sometimes any start is a good one. Also, the park was obviously lush, bordering on postcard-perfect. We gave ourselves points for our good tourist judgement.

I had originally planned to hike the entire trail loop at Lynn Canyon. In retrospect, it was about as realistic as learning Portuguese by watching soccer matches. The park, it turns out, is huge. The trails are beautiful in a way that makes you simultaneously grateful to be alive and acutely aware of the quality of your shoes. If you go to Lynn Canyon, be prepared to hop from rock to rock on the stream beds and from log to log on the trails.

The park makes a big deal out of its suspension bridge. It hangs over a waterfall. It's a nice place to get the 'I'm so alive' sensation of wobbling over a great height with a plunge to a certain death while, at the same time, being completely protected by the rails and suspension wires.

After the bridge crossing, we noticed how Canadian law is different from ours. We saw plenty of signs saying that dogs had to be kept on leashes. The dogs and owners informed us by their example that the signs were not enforceable, in their opinion. The canines involved were many and slobbery - by which I mean friendly - so it was no big deal. We hiked down side-trails that led to the creek, where we discovered that rocks are indeed slippery and Canadians are indeed willing to go swimming in a creek created by snow melt. So are their dogs.
 
We then trudged up the main trail to the tops of several hills, one exhausting climb after another, because they call it Lynn Canyon and not Lynn Gentle Rolling Meadows. We spent a lot of time looking down at where we had been and wondering if we had to backtrack. (The answer was: oh yes.) The hike was the natural world's version of the dreams where you suddenly realize you're flying, except your legs hurt, you're sweating through moisture-wicking fabric, and every dog wants to taste your flavor combination of insect spray and body salt.

After several geological ages of hiking, we reached that magical moment that occurs on every outdoor adventure when someone says, "We've earned a drink." This is similar to the older,  traditional recreational code of "I can't feel my feet" but it seems to conclude the hiking session with more cocktails and fewer complaints.

Lynn Park summary:

Worth it? Nine on a scale of ten, yes.
Would we go again? Eight out of ten, yes.
Dogs on leashes? One out of twenty-seven. She was very friendly.