June 28, 2018

Today got off to a hilarious start!  Lynda was up and out of the RV by 7:30 in search of the shower that is across the road from our parking spot.  Within 15 minutes she was back and none too happy but with a story to tell.

I will preface her story with the information that yesterday when she scoped out the showers she noted that you need a token for a 7 minute shower.  The tokens are available only from a machine that is located outside the building where the showers are.  Lynda purchased a token for each of us as the machine wore a sign saying that it occasionally runs out of tokens and she didn’t want to be the one not to get a token in the morning!

Now for her story.....she is standing in the doorway of the RV....I am still in my bed....it is not yet 8 a.m.  

Lynda:  Do you want to hear my story now?  It is a doozy!  Or you could go back to sleep and I can tell it to you later.

Me:  Now is good.

Lynda:  Are you sure...there is no rush....we can stay here another day....I can just read my book for a while.

Me:  Now is good.

Lynda:  I’m wet but its not from a shower....it’s raining outside.

Me:  mmm hmmmm

Lynda:  So, I went in to have my shower - there are two stalls.  One is handicapped and really large but I thought I’d go into the other in case someone came in who needed the larger one.  I got all my clothes off and when I went to put my token in I noticed on the machine that it said you needed two tokens for a 7 minute shower and I knew that I’d never be able to get my hair washed in 3 1/2 minutes so I put my clothes back on and went outside to the bakery across the street to buy a coffee so I could get a dollar bill to buy another token.  The token machine only takes $1 and $5 bills and I don’t need $5 worth of tokens!  I came back with my coffee and bought my 2nd token and went back into the shower stall and got undressed AGAIN and put my first token in and nothing but a trickle of cold water came out!  Nothing I did affected the pressure or the temperature of the water!  I figured it must be broken.  So, I got dressed again and went back outside and bought one more token (as I still needed two of them) and went back into the handicapped shower stall and got undressed again.  I put my first token in and once again....nothing I did affected the pressure or the temperature!  It was at this point that I decided to give up and come back here with my last token to give to you and hope that you have better luck than I.  All I got to do was pay $4 to get undressed 3 times!

Me:  Yikes!  That doesn’t sound good at all.

Lynda:  Nope, you can go back to sleep and I’m going to sit up front here and read my book and drink my coffee.

Me:  Sounds good.

15 minutes later I roll out of bed, get up, put my bed away, reinstall the table, and gather up my bag for the shower across the road.  I take the extra token Lynda brought me this morning and off I go.  There is someone else in the first shower so I take the handicapped shower, flip up the seat so there is lots of room in there, get undressed, dropped my token in, turned on the shower and voila....there was lots of water and after a few seconds it was nice and warm.  I had a great shower and only needed to use one of my two tokens.  I got dressed, came back to the RV where I told Lynda about my experience.  

She took my extra token and another dollar so she’d have two and is now back over at the shower and I’m hoping that she’s having a better experience this time!  

LOL....she’s back and I’m happy to report that she is smiling and clean AND with a left over token as she only needed one in the end.  We’ve decided that the place might not have turned on the showers/heater until after 8:00 a.m.  That’ll teach her to be an early bird in Alaska.

What an interesting day this has been.  We ended up doing the Ididaride Dog Sled tours with the Seavy family here in Seward.  Although there was stuff to learn and the scenery was gorgeous we both agree that this is NOTHING like riding a real sled with a team of five dogs pulling you across a frozen lake in Yellowknife where there is not another soul in sight.  Today we were in a wheeled sled (7 of us in total including our musher) being pulled by 14 dogs along a gravel path that led through the lush green of this coastal climate.

So the upside was that we got to see some amazing scenery, we learned that there is nothing quite like the real thing, we got to meet a movie star dog (he was in Disney’s Snow Buddies), and we helped the Iditarod teams with their summer training programs.  Another very cool element of this experience is that one of our 14 dogs thought he was a rabbit!  He was about 1/2 way back the string and he just kept hopping straight up into the air like he had springs on his feet.  It was hilarious!  As well, I love the name of this company....Ididaride is such a great play on the name of the race “Iditarod” and speaks to the activity of I did a ride.  There have been several really unique and creative names of businesses we’ve seen along this adventure.  One that comes to mind for me was called Moosquito and their logo was of a moose with a mosquito nose...very clever....the mosquitoes here are the size of small moose after all!

From Seward we headed north in the direction of Whittier where we planned to catch a ferry to Valdez.  I say planned as that is what we’ve been saying to everyone who asks....unfortunately we’ve arrived in Whittier and from what it appears....the sailing tomorrow to Valdez may already be sold out.   We’ll be able to find out for sure in the morning when their offices open again so until then we’ll remain hopeful (Lynda is way better at doing that than I am on this one tonight though).  On the upside...the drive here was unforgettable.  One of our first stops was along the highway where there was a huge pond that was completely covered with lily pads that had beautiful yellow flowers.  I was hoping to find a moose standing in the water there but alas that sight is still eluding me.  As we drove further north we began to see changes in the landscape.  We were leaving the thick coastal vegetation behind and moving into a more open type of space.  It looked like it should all be perfect for wildlife but today was not a wildlife kind of day...nothing presented itself to us.

The highlight of our trip though was when we arrived at the tunnel that would lead us into Whittier and the entrance to Prince William Sound.  This tunnel trip is a full 7 minutes inside where the walls are jagged rock and you’re driving on train tracks. We arrived just in time to line up for the 7:30 pm run into Whittier.  (Traffic is just one way in the tunnel and so runs on a specific schedule for both directions). The toll to go through the tunnel is $13 into Whittier and free going back out.  Our fingers are crossed that when we go into the harbour masters office in the morning to pay our campsite rent for tonight ($20 for the MOST gorgeous spot on the planet) the ferry office will tell us that magically there is one spot left on Friday’s ferry to Valdez but if that doesn’t happen we will get to drive the most amazing tunnel for a second time!  The Pollyanna side of me is excited by that prospect but the realist part is thinking that a 5 hour ferry ride through the most majestic scenery ever is preferable to a very long drive tomorrow.

Lynda is making a pot of Kraft dinner for our supper tonight as I get caught up on this post.  There is a very interesting bird singing and calling to his friends right outside our RV.  The sun is glistening off the snow on the mountain tops all around us and we are tucked up right next to the sea with a view of glaciers, waterfalls, and little mountains that are so close you can pretty much reach out and touch them.  We are literally stuck in Whittier (the tunnel closes at 11 pm) and it feels kind of creepy cool.  We can’t go anywhere if we wanted to which takes the control away from us but this place is so unbelievably gorgeous that somehow it’s okay to just “be” here for now.

Tomorrow will be a new day with new adventures.....

L & L