Donald H. Harrison

  By Donald H. Harrison MODESTO, California—A plaza located where five streets intersect boasts a life-size sculpture of a teenage girl seated on the side of a 1957 Chevrolet and a high school-aged boy leaning against it as they talk. It’s an ode to the movie American Graffiti by one of Modesto’s most famous former […]

  By Donald H. Harrison SACRAMENTO—I had worked in the building as a news reporter during the 1960s and 1970s, spanning the gubernatorial administrations of Ronald Reagan and Jerry Brown.  Shuttling from hearings to news conferences to floor debates, and then back to my desk at the Associated Press, and later at the Capitol bureau

By Donald H. Harrison ABOARD SEA PRINCESS — One day while strolling aboard the ship, I asked a pianist who was playing both classical and show tunes whether he often was asked to play the theme from The Love Boat, made famous by singer Jack Jones.  The young pianist, from Argentina, responded that he was

By Donald H. Harrison ABOARD SEA PRINCESS – There were some 3,000 passengers and crew aboard Sea Princess, and quite clearly Finnegan McNeil was the celebrity that a good percentage of them talked about.  How tiny he was to be of such service!  How cute!  How did he like being on the high seas? His human

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,