Worth Getting Sick Over

In our travels Judy and I have had several experiences which have made us motion sick. You have to understand, I’m the one who got seasick on the Circle Line cruise around Manhattan! But sometimes it’s worth it.

The one that always comes to mind is The Hulk – the big roller coaster at Universal Studios Orlando. I don’t know if you are familiar with an induction coaster. This is not your father’s roller coaster. A regular coaster pulls you up with a clanking chain and then lets you roll down a hill. Not so an induction coaster. Luckily a neighboring rider warned us to put our heads back against the head rest.

The Hulk blasts you up into a dark tunnel using magnetic induction. It must be what it feels like to be piloting a jet launched by catapult from an aircraft carrier. 0-60 in nothing flat. When The Hulk comes out into daylight it immediately turns over on its back and dives straight down. And that’s only the beginning. Suffice it to say that Judy and I were sick for the rest of the day – and it was worth it!

So back to the point of all this. Yesterday we took an 8 hour cruise in Resurrection Bay and Kenai Fjords National Park. Judy and I both had our sea bands on and we managed to avoid anything worse than a queasy feeling. But the point is that it would have been worth getting sick.

We went to two tidal glaciers and watched (and heard!) them calve from just a couple of hundred yards away. We saw seals lying on ice floes. We saw sea otters and a pod of orcas. And there were a bunch of horned puffins diving for fish as well as the occasional bald eagle.

Worth getting sick over? You bet! The sickness lasts a couple of hours, but the memories last forever. So next week in Valdez we will be looking forward to our trip into Prince William Sound. Seasick? Maybe. Memories? Oh, yeah!