Wallhangers & Lawn Art
No cruise is complete without a thorough exploration of the local pubs, restaurants, and neighborhoods (usually in that order). It’s not just beer, food, and exercise that I’m after when I’m poking about town. I enjoy looking at the art and artifacts that the locals put on display. What you find hanging from the walls…
Signs of Alaska
I grew up in a sign-painting family and worked in the industry for a number of my early years. Back then, the zoning boards and code enforcers did everything they could to tamp down signage in the visible landscape. Urban planners said signs were, “just a means of indexing the environment.” Well such ‘planning’ was…
Sitka: Can you hear me now?
By boat, Sitka is pretty darn far out there – for us anyway. To reach Sitka without exposing ourselves to big open ocean, there are a series of narrow and breath-taking passages that wind through, past, and by places like Murder Cove, Peril Strait, Poison Cove, Sergius Narrows, and The Eye Opener (a lone rock,…
Whale Watching in Reverse
There’s a perpetual joke aboard Awesome that I have somehow been whale jinxed: whales seem to avoid me like the plague. I’ve come to accept this as one of my real-life super powers. Along with choosing the slowest line at the grocery store and causing all cross-town traffic lights to go red, I also have…