Stopping in Canada

The employees on the ship are amazing. The guy who cleans our room greets us by name (how does he do that?) and we stepped out breakfast and our room was cleaned in the short amount of time we were gone. Cute how he made a V with the blanket when he made our bed.

Our last port was Tuesday when we stooped in Prince Rupert, British Columbia, Canada. We had to sign up to take a tender to shore. Each one holds 200 people comfortably, an employee told me, but in an emergency they could push that to 325.

We had time to explore the town and its shops, of course. E and D found us as we were exploring. We were in Cow Bay so there were cow designs everywhere, including this bench outside of one of the stores.

This picture shows how far put our ship was (not far) but zoom in on the picture and you can see seals sunbathing on those metal bars. We saw this on a short walk with E and D.

Our excursion was "Cow Bay Bites and Brews Walk." The tour guide was a college student who was born and raised in the town. He said he loves when the Virgin ship pulls in because it brings the party people ... and sunny weather which doesn't happen often.

Our first stop was Cowpuccino, a bakery and pot shop.

We were offered a delicious assortment of baked goods - no pot lol.

Our next stop was Dolly's, a seafood shop. By chance, Cindy and I were seated on a bench with the Cowbay Sites and Bites sign right behind us.

They served us clam chowder and cheddar biscuits. I'm not a seafood fan but the chowder was surprisingly tasty and you can't go wrong with a cheddar biscuit.

A local artist had several murals painted theought town. This was at an auto body/machine shop.

This was the entrance to the Sunken Garden in town.

Volunteers take care of all of these flowers. Our guide said it's a community gathering spot and has hosted some weddings.

We passed by two totem poles. He said once a totem pole is erected it's never touches so that's why the paint is faded. When the totem pole is done with its "life" it crumbles back to earth. I was surprised that tidbit wasn't mentioned in Ketchikan when we were learning all about totem poles. Perhaps different ribles habe different rules?

Here's our ship with a cool sculpture in front of it. This was in a park area where we gathered before our final stop - a brewery for a beer and pizza sampling.

Here it is - Wheelhouse Brewing Co.

They led us to an upstairs room and brought out three pizzas. They were all good. Funny, we found out later that E and D ended up at the brewery on their own for lunch. She said they waited a long time for their pizza, probably because the kitchen was getting ready for our geoup and cooking a lot of pizzas.

Cindy spotted this eagle in the bay after our tour as we walked toward more shops. Kind of weird to see one just hanging out.

The shops were cute. Cindy bought a "Wheels on the Bus" type book about hockey - "the pucks on the ice go bonk, bonk, bonk ..." Too cute. We didn't buy this hot sauce.

This was the back of a T-shirt. Tempting but I didn't want (or need) another T-shirt so I took a picture.

The only thing I bought was a box of maple sandwich cookies. One shop was handing out samples and these are individually wrapped so I thought it woild be nice to take one to mu co-workers when I'm back at the museum next week.

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 the 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.