mk-ultra

Okay, where the hell did I leave off?  I've been deliberately doing all the things -- especially ignoring my work laptop and phone.  Conscious decision to be a bit more disconnected on this cruise, because, well, 3 years of not enough vacation time.  😛
So, armed with a Corona in the cabin, picking back up from yesterday:
Day 4 - Sitka
1000 arrival in Sitka.  1145 Tongass Forest Nature Hike.
The hike is billed as "moderate" with +-300' elevation changes, mostly over trail stairs.  Some other non-stepped inclines/declines.  The hike begins from the "Mosquito Cove" trailhead, about a 5 minute van ride north from the port.  Promising name.  Almost foreshadowing (but not really).
I'll start with the track I recorded using the GaiaGPS app.  It's the one I use for serious bizzness hiking or off-roading.  It may help picture what we hiked:

The trailhead is at the south end of that almost totally north/south bit starting where the road crosses it SW to NE.  The Mosquito Cove trail is actually a "loop" trail, but we only did about 1/2 of it... heading north along the water for maybe .75 mile with frequent stops to have some history / nature explained to us.  One naturalist specializing it botany in front, one college student doing a work/study program bringing up the tail end to make sure someone didn't get eaten by a bear or something.
Naturalist guide was very good (and kinda saucily funny).  Student had a bit of a moose-in-the-headlights thing, but warmed up when everyone engaged her.  Learned a lot about the flora and fauna, and the, "volcanic top soil that has a pH which means we don't have mosquitos here."  It took everything I had in me to not raise the hand (I was using to slap a mosquito off of my neck) and ask how the loop trail got its name.
After the N/S out-and-back we hoofed it about 1/2 mile back west down the road and then joined another trail (the squiggly bit at the bottom of the track).  This one did a half loop through a slightly different ecosystem, climbing up to a marshy/bog area very different from anything else we'd seen.  Lots of varying spruce, hemlock (the tree kind, not the poison your emperor or philosopher kind) and some very pretty yellow flowers (skunk something -- I'll dig the name up).  The older ones live up to the name... not in a gross way, but a vaguely "I think I smell a skunk" way.  Came across two of my favorite AK plants: A really big Devil’s Club and some Cow Parsnip  Go ahead and touch ‘em.  Free entertainment for the rest of us  😈
I think GaiaGPS was very accurate on GPS track, distance and time for this hike.  Don't let the 113' foot ascent number throw you off.  Every foot you go up, you come down (hopefully).  Make sure you have shoes that don't jam your toes going downhill.  That gets old, fast.  Glad I brought all my usual hiking duds and not just the around town stuff.
Weather was good to excellent.  Rain didn't really start until we'd pulled away from the dock.  🙂
Photo dump:








Din-din was at Wonderland.  Slightly hit-and-miss.  Mostly hit.
Miss: tomato water served in a test tube with some oddball sodium alginate molecular gastronomy "sphere" in it.  That stuff was done to death by Grant Achatz a decade ago and needs to be sent to wherever things like that go to die.
Miss: vegetable garden thing served on the weirdest deformed bean shaped "plate" ever -- guaranteed to dump your silverware in your lap at least twice.  Water-logged veg allegedly blanched, served on some tasteless "soil" -- with (god help me) bear scat looking chunks of freeze-dried foie gras.  Absolutely nothing about it worked.  Except the one, lonely, slightly pickled beet.  The beet should just be served on it's own shining dish where it can be properly admired.  Don't F with the beet.
Hit: crispy crab cone.  Top layer is a gauc-like avocado puree, with crab below, and at the very bottom of the cone a little wasabi land mine to clear your sinuses.  I love wasabi.
Hit: crispy wrapped (and sadly only one) shrimp with a habanero foam to dip it in.  Win.  WIN.  WIN.  More shrimp, please.  Foam had some heat to it, but nothing that will send you running to put your mouth (or other end) out.
Hit: tuna tartare, served in a scooped out lime, with a citrus granita and some tobico eggs on top.  Bonus when you sneak some of the leftover habanero foam over to that plate.
Hit: entree was the branzino with a kinda fake skin on top made from finely crushed panko, some jasmine rice underneath, surrounded by a sweet/sour tamarind sauce.   Win.  I don't know what it is with RCI and branzino, but it's always been one of my faves no matter how they prepare it.
Mostly miss: dessert was that massive chocolate "world" globe they melt down with some hot caramel sauce.  It's got some peanut butter ice cream inside sitting on top of a chocolate ganache.  Meh.  That's dessert overkill -- like fire-hosing the room with sugar syrup.  Too much going on for it to really taste like anything.  I dare you to let your kid have one and chase it with a double-espresso.
Tomorrow is a sea day.  Bridge tour, custom Filipino lunch served in my cabin (go Yen -- Genies pull off some cool stuff even without explicitly asking)!  First time I've ever had room service / in-room dining on a ship.  I'm usually low-touch.  Then a bridge tour.  Then Escape Room.  Then Jamie's.  Then totally face-plant.
I'll try to backtrack and write-up Day 5 tomorrow.  Last Frontier Food Tour.
 
 
 
 

I’m sticking with “aardvark with bondage fetish.”

Hello?  Security?  May have a towel issue.

Hello?  Security?  May have a towel issue.

Hello?  Security?  May have a towel issue.

Okay, where the hell did I leave off?  I've been deliberately doing all the things -- especially ignoring my work laptop and phone.  Conscious decision to be a bit more disconnected on this cruise, because, well, 3 years of not enough vacation time.  😛
So, armed with a Corona in the cabin, picking back up from yesterday:
Day 4 - Sitka
1000 arrival in Sitka.  1145 Tongass Forest Nature Hike.
The hike is billed as "moderate" with +-300' elevation changes, mostly over trail stairs.  Some other non-stepped inclines/declines.  The hike begins from the "Mosquito Cove" trailhead, about a 5 minute van ride north from the port.  Promising name.  Almost foreshadowing (but not really).
I'll start with the track I recorded using the GaiaGPS app.  It's the one I use for serious bizzness hiking or off-roading.  It may help picture what we hiked:

The trailhead is at the south end of that almost totally north/south bit starting where the road crosses it SW to NE.  The Mosquito Cove trail is actually a "loop" trail, but we only did about 1/2 of it... heading north along the water for maybe .75 mile with frequent stops to have some history / nature explained to us.  One naturalist specializing it botany in front, one college student doing a work/study program bringing up the tail end to make sure someone didn't get eaten by a bear or something.
Naturalist guide was very good (and kinda saucily funny).  Student had a bit of a moose-in-the-headlights thing, but warmed up when everyone engaged her.  Learned a lot about the flora and fauna, and the, "volcanic top soil that has a pH which means we don't have mosquitos here."  It took everything I had in me to not raise the hand (I was using to slap a mosquito off of my neck) and ask how the loop trail got its name.
After the N/S out-and-back we hoofed it about 1/2 mile back west down the road and then joined another trail (the squiggly bit at the bottom of the track).  This one did a half loop through a slightly different ecosystem, climbing up to a marshy/bog area very different from anything else we'd seen.  Lots of varying spruce, hemlock (the tree kind, not the poison your emperor or philosopher kind) and some very pretty yellow flowers (skunk something -- I'll dig the name up).  The older ones live up to the name... not in a gross way, but a vaguely "I think I smell a skunk" way.  Came across two of my favorite AK plants: A really big Devil’s Club and some Cow Parsnip  Go ahead and touch ‘em.  Free entertainment for the rest of us  😈
I think GaiaGPS was very accurate on GPS track, distance and time for this hike.  Don't let the 113' foot ascent number throw you off.  Every foot you go up, you come down (hopefully).  Make sure you have shoes that don't jam your toes going downhill.  That gets old, fast.  Glad I brought all my usual hiking duds and not just the around town stuff.
Weather was good to excellent.  Rain didn't really start until we'd pulled away from the dock.  🙂
Photo dump:








Din-din was at Wonderland.  Slightly hit-and-miss.  Mostly hit.
Miss: tomato water served in a test tube with some oddball sodium alginate molecular gastronomy "sphere" in it.  That stuff was done to death by Grant Achatz a decade ago and needs to be sent to wherever things like that go to die.
Miss: vegetable garden thing served on the weirdest deformed bean shaped "plate" ever -- guaranteed to dump your silverware in your lap at least twice.  Water-logged veg allegedly blanched, served on some tasteless "soil" -- with (god help me) bear scat looking chunks of freeze-dried foie gras.  Absolutely nothing about it worked.  Except the one, lonely, slightly pickled beet.  The beet should just be served on it's own shining dish where it can be properly admired.  Don't F with the beet.
Hit: crispy crab cone.  Top layer is a gauc-like avocado puree, with crab below, and at the very bottom of the cone a little wasabi land mine to clear your sinuses.  I love wasabi.
Hit: crispy wrapped (and sadly only one) shrimp with a habanero foam to dip it in.  Win.  WIN.  WIN.  More shrimp, please.  Foam had some heat to it, but nothing that will send you running to put your mouth (or other end) out.
Hit: tuna tartare, served in a scooped out lime, with a citrus granita and some tobico eggs on top.  Bonus when you sneak some of the leftover habanero foam over to that plate.
Hit: entree was the branzino with a kinda fake skin on top made from finely crushed panko, some jasmine rice underneath, surrounded by a sweet/sour tamarind sauce.   Win.  I don't know what it is with RCI and branzino, but it's always been one of my faves no matter how they prepare it.
Mostly miss: dessert was that massive chocolate "world" globe they melt down with some hot caramel sauce.  It's got some peanut butter ice cream inside sitting on top of a chocolate ganache.  Meh.  That's dessert overkill -- like fire-hosing the room with sugar syrup.  Too much going on for it to really taste like anything.  I dare you to let your kid have one and chase it with a double-espresso.
Tomorrow is a sea day.  Bridge tour, custom Filipino lunch served in my cabin (go Yen -- Genies pull off some cool stuff even without explicitly asking)!  First time I've ever had room service / in-room dining on a ship.  I'm usually low-touch.  Then a bridge tour.  Then Escape Room.  Then Jamie's.  Then totally face-plant.
I'll try to backtrack and write-up Day 5 tomorrow.  Last Frontier Food Tour.
 
 
 
 

I’m sticking with “aardvark with bondage fetish.”

It looks like a giraffe that fell on its back🦒

Is that a grilled tomato on your dish?  Hmmmm. Sorry just had to ask!
Loving this blog while I sit at home nursing my COVID misery which I must have gotten while on my cruise last week to Bermuda.  Not to worry…it wasn’t  a Royal ship!  

To me, it looks like a hermit crab.

Loving your pictures! 
We just booked a southern Caribbean for late spring 2025...may have to swap it out and head back to AK. 

You can’t leave the damn towel animals unsupervised for a second. 

Day 2
Started off with the C&A Top Tier event at 1115 in Two70.  Here's this cruise's pax breakdown:

Top dog on this cruise is a gentleman named Craig.  289 cruises and over 5200 points.  Sheesh!
Lunch was at Izumi.  I'm not big on sushi rolls drowning in miso mayo, so I asked if they could do an omakase-style sampler of nigiri.  They were glad to oblige.
Dinner tonight at Chops.
Sorry for the lack of photos.  Quantum does have the new-ish Starlink service.  Happy to report that on the pool deck, WJ, promenade and my cabin it's not bad.  Nothing to write home about -- and definitely an improvement over last December's experience on Navigator.  The only place I found WiFi unusable is in the Solarium.  [after the trip edit... wifi at Solarium was sorted out by day 2]
This is definitely a colder AK trip than my one back in 2016 (also in May).  No chair hogs at the outdoor pool (LOL - because nobody wanted to sit out there).  Not bad at all at the indoor pool either.  No wait.  They have the little pink covers that have been popping up telling pax to not be chogs and it seems to be working.
It really started to cool off once we got past Vancouver's myriad of islands and poured on the coal (21.5 knots).  More just the wind than it being really cold temp-wise.
This evening: Headliner Showtime "MO5AIC" in the Royal Theatre.
Tomorrow: Ketchikan.  Wildlife Safari & Beach Bonfire for me.  Swapping in my heavier jacket for this one since it's got some boat time to it.

Ha!  Totally wrecked the casino trying to rid myself of Canadian Monopoly money this afternoon.  It paid for my hotel stay, plus some bonus additional $CAD.  Adhering  to my rule to just walk away when good-fortune visits you.

Had breakkies at the "Honey Salt" restaurant here at the JW (gotta use up that property credit).  For the second time in my life, I remembered to snap a pic before demolishing the plate.  Holding up the [APPLAUSE] sign.
It's their slightly-modified take on eggs Benedict.  American bacon and sautéed spinach, with the world's crispiest skin-on breakfast potatoes.  Really, really good.  They actually decently toasted AND lightly buttered the English muffins, which makes me want to hug a chef.
 

Yuppers. Grilled tomato. I used to kinda scoff at them, but they grow on you after your one-thousandth Full English.  😝

Obligatory nerd content.  Internet speed is still holding up (other than the Solarium).  55N.

The trip to Annette Island for the "Wildlife Safari & Beach Bonfire" was worth it.  It's about a ~40 minute boat ride from the cruise dock to the island, where they lightly beach the boat and you climb down a ladder from the bow to lightly beach your person.  On arrival, the "bonfire" has already been lit.  Okay, they're doing a little marketing.  It's a damn campfire.  One over which you will roast some reindeer sausages if you desire.  Take that, Rudolph.  Plenty of beer. 
You get about an hour to poke around the beach area, but you aren't at risk of going far.   The hillsides leading to the beach/cove are steep and the ground above the beach is an impressive (I mean that genuinely) pile of blow-down timber.  HUGE timber.  Boat has two captains, a deck hand and a naturalist giving a play-by-play on the PA while you're underway.  Saw multiple whale spouts, a couple of breaches, and a ridiculous bunch of adult and juvy bald eagles trying to get themselves a herring-run brunch.
Boat returned a bit late, so no Chef's Table for me tonight.  I'll trade extra time seeing what we all saw today, all in good company, over Chef's Table any day.
Tomorrow: Sitka, with a Tongass Forest Nature Hike.

You can’t leave the damn towel animals unsupervised for a second. 

Lunch with a view from CK. Caesar salad. Roasted chicken (yum) with a weird, cold “farro and veg risotto.”  You're not allowed to use farro and risotto in the same sentence.  Not yum. Crème brûlée with a side of snow-capped mountain. 

Passing what I believe is Annette Island, which is where the excursion boat will be taking us for our hike and bonfire thingy in a few hours.

Oh, and this is the onboard itinerary my Genie Yen put together. I let her do pretty much everything except shore excursions.  I made a couple of minor mods after this was printed out. 
 
 

Yuppers. Grilled tomato. I used to kinda scoff at them, but they grow on you after your one-thousandth Full English.  😝

The trip to Annette Island for the "Wildlife Safari & Beach Bonfire" was worth it.  It's about a ~40 minute boat ride from the cruise dock to the island, where they lightly beach the boat and you climb down a ladder from the bow to lightly beach your person.  On arrival, the "bonfire" has already been lit.  Okay, they're doing a little marketing.  It's a damn campfire.  One over which you will roast some reindeer sausages if you desire.  Take that, Rudolph.  Plenty of beer. 
You get about an hour to poke around the beach area, but you aren't at risk of going far.   The hillsides leading to the beach/cove are steep and the ground above the beach is an impressive (I mean that genuinely) pile of blow-down timber.  HUGE timber.  Boat has two captains, a deck hand and a naturalist giving a play-by-play on the PA while you're underway.  Saw multiple whale spouts, a couple of breaches, and a ridiculous bunch of adult and juvy bald eagles trying to get themselves a herring-run brunch.
Boat returned a bit late, so no Chef's Table for me tonight.  I'll trade extra time seeing what we all saw today, all in good company, over Chef's Table any day.
Tomorrow: Sitka, with a Tongass Forest Nature Hike.

You can’t leave the damn towel animals unsupervised for a second.