Sea day and a glacier

Monday was a sea day and the big excitement was floating past a glacier.

Cindy and I played early mirning games - a suduko which we sucked at, identify flags of variou countries whichbwe were also miserable at and E and D joined us for the last round of unscrambling words into foods. We had a respectable finish on that one.

We saw lots of waterfalls on the way and interesting rock formations. Icebergs were randomly floating in the water.

Cindy and me in front of the glacier. It's there, trust me.

E and D were smart to be outside in their raincoats

Cindy and Ecwent up to a higher deck to see the glacier. It was pretty slick because of the rain so I stayed on the deck below.

There it is, the Dawes Glacier. Not sure what I was expecting but here it is in all of its glory.

Cindy and I played a lot of trivia games and sat in on this music game show. Our team, which happened to be entire side of the audience where you were sitting, won. All of the games were really crowded today, as were thr restaurants and seating areas, be ause people nowhere else to go.

After dinner we played a round if musicals trivia with E and D and lost. The ship was really swaying so E went to her room early and our Houston friends gound us and convinced us to play crab trivia. It was interesting andxwe did not do well but it was fun.

Second port - Sitka

Sunday's port of call was Sitka. We did a little shopping a d met this bear before getting on our biat excursion.

The boat was named the Tatiana and since that's the name of one of L's friends, I had to get a picture for her.

One of the first wildlife sightings was this bald eagle.

This is an eagle's nest and if tou look closely, there's an eaglet in there.

This was a whole group of sea otters, pretty hard to see and photograph.

The guide passed around this sample of otter fur. He said their fur has 1,000 hairs per square inch.

There were so many fishing boats out, all fishing for salmon. We probably saw more than 60 professional fishing boats all in about the same area.

Once the fog and clouds cleared we could see the mountains around Sitka. We also saw sea lions, humpback whales and salmon jumping out of the water.

Drinks were included on the boat so I took the opportunity to try an Alaskan red amber, made in Juneau. I liked it.

The excursion dropped us off in downtown Sitka where we did more shopping. This food truck was serving reindeer sausage which I did not try.

So much salmon - everywhere. We had to take a free shuttle back to the ship as we were pretty far from the pier. We were told they can dock six cruise ships at a time.

I bought a Sitka sweatshirt (mostly because I liked the color), an Alaska Christmas ornament and a meat stick with 2 percent reindeer meat that I plan to give to B.

Back on board we unexpectedly met up with our Houston friends and a other guy (a trivia master) and won with a perfect 30/30 score. A lot of the questions were the same ones from the other day so we did have a bit of an advantage. We won free drink tickets ... again! We played a round of music trivia with them too, but didn't fare as well.

Here's the winning team!

Cindy and I went with E and D to the Italian restaurant on board. It was D's 29th birthday so they brought him a special dessert with a fake candle. Apparently there are no real candles allowed on the ship.

First port - Ketchikan

Another day another beautiful sunrise. We saw whales from our balcony Saturday morning. Hard to photograph though.

Arriving in Ketchikan we saw the U.S. Coast Guard station.

This eagle totem pole is in downtown Ketchikan. From Google: Located at the entrance to the famous tunnel, alongside Cruise Ship Dock 3, is a gorgeous, stylistic Eagle totem pole that was carved by Nathan Jackson of Ketchikan. The name "Ketchikan" is believed to come from the Tlingit word "Kitschk-Hin" which means "thundering wings of an Eagle".

Cindy and I did the Ketchikan City Highlights Tour on a trolley. It was a beautiful day and apparently a rare one without rain. We were dressed a bit too warm. I think it was around 75 degrees. The tour guide joked that they issued a heat advisory for the residents.

This was the workshop at Saxman Totem Park where we stopped. The man in the picture is the artist who made the eagle totem pole. He's 88 years old and can get paid $5,000 to carve a linear foot. We were a little disappointed he didn't talk to our group.

This is the Seward totem pole in the park.

This totem pole we're standing in front of has Lincoln at the top. It's an interesting story.

One of the colorful totem poles.

After the totem park we were taken to the Southeast Alaska Discovery Center. It was kind of boring but we got to paint Christmas ornaments.

My finished eagle ornament. Kind of pretty. One woman asked if I was an artist. Not quite.

With the tour over, it was time to shop! I bought two T-shirts and an Alaska magnet. How funny that we ran into our Houston friends, Julie and Nathan, in one of the shops and asked if we'd be back on the ship in time for the afternoon puzzle race.

We did make it back in time to team up again ... and we won! We each got a free drink ticket ...

so Cindy and I celebrated with glasses of champagne. Mine was at the $15 "free drink" price limit.

Leaving Ketchikan a bit after 5 p.m.

Cindy and I had dinner at the Mecican restaurant, Pink Agave. We split these chocolate tacos for dessert. Delicious.

Sea day

Pretty sunrise Friday morning.

Here comes the sun. We had to go to Sailor Services to get Cindy's purchases linked to my account. I found out the $40 "premium" wi-fi a week I paid for was a glitch in the app. It should have been $40 a day (definitely not worth it) but since it was their mistake they're honoring the $40 for the entire cruise price. Woke up this morning and found I can't open any email, don't know my password, so I'll have hundreds to swift through when the cruise ends. Annoying.

Cindy's breakfast mimosa.

We played geography trivia and actually did better than I thought we would.

Our next activity was speed ouzzling. We teamed up with two couples, Charles and Marion in the back, New Jersey-to-Arizona snowbirds, and Julie and Nathan from Houston, to put together a 300-piece puzzle. We came in a respectable second place out of maybe a dozen teams. (We also met up with them later for movie trivia and then the Houston couple along with E and D in the afternoon for music trivia). Never winners.

Just before lunch we found the newlyweds sitting on the deck watching for whales. They did some.

We had pizza for lunch. I tried the limited edition Virgin English pale ale. The beer was ok. I took two slices of the pizza back to the room but the wouldn't fit in the fridge. It's a ridiculously small refrigerator.

We met E and D for dinner at The Wake, the ship's steak restaurant.

We all had steak except for D who had venison. E wasn't feeling well so she left early and went to her room. Dinner was good and the three of us left full.

Starting to cruise

First order of business was to find coffee. We got to the pier around 12:30.

Cindy and I got in line to get on the ship at 2. It was a long process.

Our room 14th floor.

Sail away party. Free champagne!

Me and E.

Bye, Seattle.

Cindy and D.

Sunset.

Before dinner we saw a comedian from Ireland, Sean Finnerty.

We had dinner with E and D at Gumbae, a Korean BBQ restaurant. It was interesting.