At the end of our day in Juneau, I managed to make contact with Jason in the Holland America Seattle office. After I explained our situation to him, he appropriately sympathized although he held little hope he could do anything for us. At least he went as far as asking for our names, booking numbers (no, not THAT kind of booking number) and other details that indicated he actually listened. Still and all, he said, “There’s nothing I can do for you.”

“Please let me speak to your supervisor.” I responded.

“Jay speaking.”

I am wondering if all these names were fake and it was “J-Day.”

Once again the story poured forth, including our dissatisfaction with the apparent herd mentality of  Holland America tour providers and the lack of assistance by Holland America management.

Jay also listened, and he commiserated, but his answer stayed the same. “There’s nothing I can do.” But, to his credit, he suggested that he took our comments very seriously about how we’d been treated and was certain that Guest Relations would be interested in hearing from us. Without our even having to ask, he offered the telephone number. We couldn’t call, however, until the following morning since their offices had closed for the day.

The Statendam’s schedule including a docking at Skagway early the following morning, so we planned our day. We had a shore excursion on the books for the afternoon but nothing for the morning. We’d read that the town lay just a few blocks from the cruise dock, so we decided to get an early start and explore the town.

First off, Skagway is a tiny town situated at the base of some magnificent snowcapped mountains. I learned later that day that the snow we would see on many of the highest peaks is called “termination dust” because it signals the end (termination) of summer and the approach of winter. The combination of massive peaks, the colorful buildings of Skagway, interspersed with delightful flower gardens made this tiny town sing to my heart. I could have stayed here forever.

Skagway serves as the southern terminus of the White Pass & Yukon Railway, as well as the jumping-off point of the Klodike gold rush in the early years. Its buildings still display a frontier character, and at the hour we left the ship they were pleasantly uncrowded. As I’m known to do, I fell in love instantly. Its quaint houses and shops and narrow streets suited me to a t.

As soon as we hit the town proper, we noted the visitor center. Oops, I misspoke when I described the lady in the Juneau visitors kiosk as the only friendly, knowledgeable visitor bureau employee. Skagway’s visitor center is run by the National Park Service, and we enjoyed a delightful conversation with the ranger on duty, who originally hailed from California but had been a full-time Skagway resident for some nine years.She explained the town to us and told Gayle where she could find the local quilt shop.

Catty-cornered from the visitor center sat the Alaska Trading Company. “Let’s head over there,” I suggested to Gayle. I’m not a shopper, in fact despise spending time rifling through merchandise, but I was on a mission to find a few small treasures to take home. She agreed but thought we’d better make our call to Holland America guest relations before the day got away from us.

A bench strategically stationed outside the Alaska Trading Company gave us a view of the town’s main street while we sat on hold for a number of minutes. Eventually a live human being answered. Once again I explained the situation with all its ramifications, including the poor service rendered by the ship’s management personnel. Again the HAL employee listened, murmured his apologies and stated that it would be unusual for any refund to be given, but he promised to do what he could and further promised that we’d have HAL’s resolution within 24 hours–and it would be relayed to us by the Statendam staff.

To say that this litany of under-service colored our trip would be an understatement. From the point we contacted HAL management to cancel Chena Hot Springs we began to notice (and expect) all the customer service failures that occurred throughout the cruise.

If I haven’t said it before, let me emphasize that the “little people” aboard ship–such as the cabin stewards and the dining room staff–performed with exemplary efficiency and courtesy. We couldn’t have asked or expected more from them. The failures rested solely on the management team’s shoulders.

Onward and upward, we vowed, as we made our way into the Trading Company. I refused to let my disappointment color the rest of the day, especially as I began to discover the treasures I’d been seeking. I walked out with all the gifts I’d had on my list plus a lovely pink-and-grey hooded reversible Alaska fleece lined rain jacket. Heaven indeed.

We spent another three hours or so wandering the streets of Skagway, loving every minute. This truly exemplified the Alaska I’d sought. Gayle wandered into the local quilt store she’d seen advertised in one of the tourist mags we’d picked up and happily piled up a stock of quilting supplies to keep her in winter projects.

Our major disappointment with Skagway came about when we found “Grandma’s,” a craft store we’d been told about by several Skagway denizens–and it was closed, with little prospect of opening up during our stay. We later learned that Grandma’s is owned by a young lady who lives above the shop and cares for her invalid mother. When mother needs her, her Grandma’s duties are set aside temporarily.

I almost forgot the other major diasppointment, for me, of our all-too-brief stay in Skagway. I have a Facebook friend whose stage name is Dawson Dolly (with the biggest Gold Nuggets in the Klondike). Her real name is Cindy, and I’d “met” Cindy during the 2011 Yukon Quest. She’s a mushing fanatic also and even sang a farewell to my favorite musher, Hugh Neff, who’s a good friend of hers, as he departed Dawson City with a huge lead.  (You can watch Dolly’s farewell song here.)

Dawson Dolly does tours of Skagway during cruise season, and I’d talked to Gayle about going on one of Cindy’s adventures, but the timing just didn’t work out since we had a shore excursion scheduled for that afternoon. Cindy and I had messaged about the possibility of getting together for coffee or a meal if we couldn’t do her tour, but none of that worked out because of timing and circumstance. Cindy, I promise I’ll be back. Skagway is on my “must-return” list.

After a wildly-successful morning, we made our way back to the ship for lunch and to get ready for what promised to be the highlight of our entire cruise.

Our next port-of-call, on day four, was the capital of Alaska, Juneau. It’s the only U S capital where there is no road access. To get there you must either fly or sail.

Juneau also still sits in the temperate rain forest that is the Tongass National Forest, along with Ketchikan. When we docked, the weather was predictable. Whereas it mostly misted in Ketchikan, liquid sunshine was in full evidence in Juneau.

We’d scheduled a tour out to the salmon fish hatchery, the Mendenhall glacier and were booked for a salmon bake lunch after that. Understandably apprehensive after our catamaran experience the day before, I nevertheless had hopes this one would be better. I figured the most they could do was cram us into a bus with maybe 50 of our closest friends rather than the 200 we’d been buddy-buddy with the day before.

Luckily, we were right. We found our coach and met one of the two most pleasant drivers of our entire trip. His name was Gary, and he hailed from Illinois. He’d been working in Alaska during the cruise season and was very much looking forward to going back home within the next week. Ours was one of his last assignments of the season. I took an instant liking to him–because he sported a ball cap with a picture of a musher and dog team. (Do esn’t take much, does it?) We glommed on to the seats directly behind him and were able to converse with him while we waited, including learning where he’d bought the hat. I vowed to go on a hat treasure hunt that afternoon, and Gayle promised herself to scout out the local quilt and yard stores. We do have our priorities.

Our first stop put us in touch with Alaska’s premier private industry–salmon fishing. We’d learned the day before about the five different types of salmon (king/chinook, chum/dog, silver/coho, red/sockeye and pink/humpie) and at the Macaulay Hatchery we learned how eggs are incubated, allowed to hatch and grow into fingerlings. During that time the  area where they are raised is imprinted upon them. In the meantime when they have sufficiently grown, they are released into the ocean to grow up wild, returning to the Juneau area when they spawn. There are no farmed salmon in Alaska.  The hatchery has several large aquariums containing many varieties of sea life, and that was quite fascinating.

The ever-present gift shop proved not so entertaining.

It just occurred to me that I failed to tell you about an episode on the ship that took place on our second day and colored our perception of Holland America from then on. The ship’s entertainment crew schedules a number of “classes” or programs as entertainment or education. One of those featured Mark, the “shopping expert.” During all of my previous cruises I had never attended a “shopping” class. If I had, I’m certain I would have realized that Mark is a shill for  the port shops in our various ports of call. As we listened, we became angrier and angrier. He even exhorted listeners to call him if we were in a bargaining situation, and he’d come help us, because he knew all the shops and all the best deals and could intervene on our behalf.

Finally I stood up midpresentation and whispered to Gayle. “I’m outta here.”

She practically knocked me down trying to beat me out of the room.

“I will make sure I avoid any store Mark recommended.” Gayle vowed.  “That really offended me. He probably gets a cut of everything these stores sell.”  That supposition apparently proved true later that afternoon as I read in Lonely Planet Alaska that many, if not most, of the stores near the cruise ship piers are owned by the cruise lines themselves. Are we surprised?

From that point on we took special notice that everywhere we went via a Holland America conveyance, they would always manage to have a gift shop in the itinerary. It was not only offensive, it was sickening. I later learned that, in fact, the cruise lines own a good many of the stores in each port. It was no accident that Mark promoted the vendors he did.

From the hatchery we traveled north to the Mendenhall Glacier.

By the time we arrived at Mendenhall, the drizzle had turned to out-and-out rain. That wouldn’t have made so much difference if it would have been possible to push our way through the crowds that gathered every place we wanted to be. Is that their fault? No! No more than it was our fault for being where they wanted to be. But for a person who has had the ambition to be a hermit since she was 12 years old, that many people in one small area proved very daunting.

At some point in the future I would like to go back to Mendenhall Glacier to do some hiking on the trails there. We did a bit of exploration, but the rain drenched us pretty doggone quick. We decided to make our way up to the Visitor Center, which had some very interesting exhibits on glacier formation. That quickly proved to be a mistake, as well, since every other visitor had exactly the same goal–i.e., get out of the rain.

Gotta admit–it pretty much smelled like wet dog in there.

Far earlier than I would have preferred under normal circumstances we loaded up and headed back to downtown Juneau for the third part of our excursion:  lunch.

Lunch did not disappoint. I didn’t know previously that Salmon Bakes take place all over Alaska. They tend to be very overpriced for what’s basically a BBQ, but the food could not be faulted. Seating was outdoors, but we were sheltered from the rain by tarps draped over the eating area.

As you can imagine, salmon was the featured course; however BBQ chicken was available along with a large variety of sides. All of the dishes, right down to the blueberry cobbler for dessert, were delicious.

On the third day we were pretty excited to exit the ship and experience our first of several shore excursions to the Misty Fjords outside of Ketchikan.

Ketchikan has the dubious honor of being labeled the rainiest city in the United States, so we were pretty pleased to find that it was only misting, not raining. We made our way to our catamaran, which would be the method of transport for our journey. We were pretty darned impressed with the organization the tour vendor displayed by stationing personnel in brightly-colored jackets all along the route so that passengers wouldn’t get lost.

I was only slightly annoyed when I realized that the seating was close to full by the time we got there. We hadn’t been smart enough to get an early start so we could snag one of the window seats. At this point I should explain that the capacity of this cat was somewhere in the neighborhood of 200 people (my guess). There were 2 seats along the windows plus rows of seats down the middle of the vessel. In addition, hearty travelers who wished to brave the cold could make their way upstairs where they could stand on the upper deck. There was a small amount of enclosed seating on the enclosed portion upstairs also.

I was aware from my prior visit to Ketchikan with Shevy that the Misty Fjords, the major sightseeing destination in the area, are best seen by helicopter or float plane. Unfortunately those methods of conveyance are much more expensive and not within our budget. In addition after a helicopter ride from SNA to LAX some years ago, I have sworn never to board a whirlybird again.

The young naturalist who gave the commentary aboard the vessel was full of facts and explained where we were, where we would be going and what we’d be seeing. She explained how the Fjords were formed by glacial action and detailed the wildlife we might see as well as the botany of the area, populated by a combination of Hemlock, Spruce and Cedar.

As we cruised by the native village of Saxman, the windows began to fog. Two hundred people in side a small enclosure, especially with the humidity is a lot of hot air. Very soon only those seated next to the windows had any visibility at all downstairs. The rest of us were SOL.

As much as I’d wanted to see this area, I began to get grouchy. Very grouchy. Needless to say, there was much pushing and shoving and jockeying for position among all participants.

New Eddystone Rock - the Sentry of the Misty Fjords

At left is New Eddystone Rock, which is a basalt “plug,” a result of volcanic action at some point in the distant past, now “frozen” in position in the middle of  Behm Channel. This really caught my attention because I’d seen volcanic plugs exactly like this jutting out of the Navajo desert during another lifetime and another set of travels. Navajos consider this rock and others like it sacred.  Seeing something like in the middle of the Alaskan rainforest literally gave me goosebumps.

Gayle and I made our way upstairs, and I bullied my way to the front of the vessel, where I managed to get some fairly decent photos of the spectacular scenery that comprises the Misty Fjords. There I remained until we started to speed up and exit the Fjords.

Although my photos don’t display it well enough, the Misty Fjords are a scene of jawdropping beauty, steep cliffs carved over eons by glacial action.

The Cliffs of Misty Fjords

Expansive View

One of the many waterfalls sluicing down the walls of MF

Many animals live in these lush forests–waterfowl, bears, and more. The only thing I saw that day was a bald eagle. I know the photo is grainy; it’s been enlarged way beyond its capabilities.

Bald eagle

This fellow was well-aware, even from a distance, that we were there. He waggled his wings a few times and made motions as if to fly away. Instead, in a supreme display of what he really thought of us, he let loose with an amazing amount of shit.

Come to think of it, even though I was pretty satisfied at that point because I’d gotten some photos that I thought might fairly acceptable, I was feeling kind of like that eagle.

Gayle and I determined that day that WE ARE NOT HERD ANIMALS. We were not happy to be in the company of so many people. I honestly don’t know that any of them were as dissatisfied as we were, but we resolved, then and there, that we’d never book another tour without finding out the size of the group beforehand.

Because both Gayle and I have been (and she still is) affiliated with the Road Scholar organization through her service to ECCO, it was very easy for us to relate what we were feeling with complaints made by our guests when we had groups of 40 or 50. Decidedly not ideal, from the guests’ perspective. Having been, now, on both sides of the ledger, I understand far better why our guests feel as they do.

Grumbling and grousing, we made our way back to land with just enough time to hit the shops.

In the quiet of our stateroom we came to a crucial decision.