Donald H. Harrison

By Donald H. Harrison ABOARD SEA PRINCESS – Up on Deck 12, aft section, (that’s the back of the ship) there are three domains for youngsters who are cruising with their parents or grandparents.  One spot in the “Fun Zone”is for “Pelicans,” aged 3-7; another spot is for “Shockwaves,” the program for 8-to-12-year olds; and finally […]

    By Donald H. Harrison ABOARD SEA PRINCESS – Across from the glass-enclosed elevators on Deck Seven, the third level of Sea Princess’s atrium, is a piano mounted on a platform. In front of the piano and curving around half the atrium are 120 seats.  They start filling up about an hour before the

  By Donald H. Harrison TRACY ARM, Alaska – Less than a week after Sea Princess visited this fjord south of Juneau, an apartment building-size piece of the Sawyer Glacier crumbled into the water, amazing and then horrifying passengers aboard a small excursion boat.   The  “calving” of the glacier—as can be seen on YouTube—was a

  By Donald H. Harrison DYEA, Alaska – It was the first time for any of us, and grandson Shor’s apprehension grew considerably as the unimog—described cheerfully as a “jeep on steroids”—climbed a logging road to where our Alaska Excursions Mammoth Waterfalls and Ultra Zipline Adventure would begin here in the northern outskirts of Skagway. Nancy

By Donald H. Harrison SKAGWAY, Alaska –The narrow-gauge railroad that climbs from this town 20.4 miles to the Canadian border at White Pass, and then some 90 miles farther north up to the Yukon territorial capital of Whitehorse, is given the same sort of respect by civil engineers that they accord to such marvels as the

  By Donald H. Harrison SKAGWAY, Alaska – Carlin “Buckwheat” Donahue bought and sold oil leases in Colorado, acted in Skagway’s gold-days pageant, and tended bar, before he found his Princess. “Thanks to them, I’ve had a wonderful career,” he boomed. Princess Cruises has been bringing passengers to Skagway since the 1980s, and holds the

By Donald H. Harrison JUNEAU, Alaska – Back in the summer of 1982, when daughter Sandi was 9 and son David was 7, Nancy and I purchased a recreational vehicle and set out on a three-month family vacation to explore America.  One of the first “big stops” was the Grand Canyon, and, en route to Arizona, we talked

  By Donald H. Harrison JUNEAU, Alaska – At the end of a 20-minute drive from the cruise ship terminal to the visitor center’s parking lot for the Mendenhall Glacier, the MGT bus driver announced that return trips would leave from that very spot on the hour and the half hour until the last departure

  By Donald H. Harrison KETCHIKAN, Alaska – Just as stories can be transcribed into writing in books, they also can be told with immense carvings on totem poles.  The extended family that owns and operates Potlatch Park here has been producing both kinds of literature for the education and delight of the many visitors to

By Donald H. Harrison VICTORIA, British Columbia – They say we can never go back again, certainly not back to those years of refinement marking the transition from the late 19th to the early 20th century. But “they” are wrong, as they so often are.  You can go back, to a time of refinement, serenity,

  By Donald H. Harrison SAN FRANCISCO – In previous articles in this West Coast travel and sightseeing series, I have described visits to such Bay Area attractions as Alcatraz, the presidential yacht USS Potomac, the California Academy of Sciences, the Jewish Contemporary Museum, and the Wells Fargo Museum. Before taking leave of San Francisco,

Concord Stage Coach at Wells Fargo Museum   By Donald H. Harrison SAN FRANCISCO – Joycee Wong missed the fourth-grade study week in Old Town San Diego when she moved with her family from Hong Kong to Chula Vista, California. Starting her U.S. schooling in fifth grade, she didn’t have the opportunity to learn very

  By Donald H. Harrison SAN FRANCISCO – Anyone who flatters himself into believing that he has “been there and done that” will be quickly disabused of that conceit during a visit to the California Academy of Sciences in Golden Gate Park. The sprawling complex houses a planetarium, tropical rain forest and aquarium as well