Ferry to Bellingham

Ferry to Bellingham
September 15, 2010

Woke up this morning. While still in our room, I saw Seller seals sitting all around a buoy. Of course not dressed, camera not ready. What do you do? Watching for a little while longer, I saw a magnificent bald eagle flying low, with the dark green spruces behind him. He was so close to us, I could see his eyes, his feathers, his bright white tail spread as he came to land in one of those spruce trees. His large orange feet grabbed hold of the branch. Why wasn't I outside with my camera??? Of course during the rest of the day, there was nothing like that, that close. Go figure.

 I had to add this great picture of a whale diving... Ok, I confess. Jan and I were getting a little frustrated that every time we tried to get a picture of a whale diving, it was gone before we clicked. So Jan came up with the idea of holding up her tiny stuffed whale's tail in front of the camera. I think it works, don't you?
Our cabin did not sit in the best place - right within the Pursers lounge. Seems like a gathering place for all kinds of people. last night all the crew was outside our door, organizing a search for some woman. I don't know if she was a stowaway, or people she knew just couldn't find her? Who knows? It wasn't a frantic search - they were joking and laughing - it was just annoying!
Allen and Jan had been up since 5:00 at least and gotten beautiful pictures of the sunrise. I'll try to do that tomorrow but it's so early! Found out the captain had been tooling around in the dark - had even turned the ship in a 360 degree circle - to kill time. You see he had an extremely narrow passage to go through and it was low tide. I believe he wanted daylight to travel the passage by. And it was narrow! There were buoys on either side of us most of the way. Allen swears he heard the ship scrape bottom while he was in the cafeteria!

Today was a trip south with a stop at Ketchikan. There was only 2 1/2 hours there but we were all hoping to see totem poles which the town is known for. Of course, the ferry dock was a few miles from town and the totem poles were mostly on the other side of town, but we thought it was doable, if we were willing to split the cost of a taxi. Coming into Ketchikan we got to watch many, many float planes land. In fact, Jacky said he felt like we were on an aircraft carrier because of all the plane action! There was also a city ferry going back and forth from the island which had the airport on it, to the mainland. This is where the Alaskans were going to build the 'bridge to nowhere'. The bridge did not get built and we got to watch quite a bit of activity in the waters around us - float planes, ferries, and cruise ships.

As it turns out, we were delayed getting to the dock because another ship was in our place. I heard a crew member say this other ship had gill nets wrapped around that needed to be cut off. We weren't able to dock until 3:00 - which means disembark at 3:15. And leave at 5:00. I was nervous about going in and trying to get back in time. As it was, an enterprising couple of guys had a 'tour/shuttle van' and were willing to take us to town and back in time to catch the ferry for $10 each. Of course we decided to take them up on it, and since there were 18 of us, they didn't do too badly for an hour of their time. Unfortunately they did let us off in town - in the middle of gift shops. We had 40 minutes which we used mostly walking down to the water and taking pictures of shops and cruise ships. There was ONE totem pole in Whale park near where we were dropped off so we all took pictures of that one.

The really cool thing about Ketchikan is that the 1/2 mile or so inland of buildings by the water is actually built on pilings. It is literally built over the water! If you look in the photos, you can see the pilings as well as the buildings right over them. The actual soil doesn't start for quite a ways up - and it's mostly houses that are on it. If fact, right next to a cruise ship, were gift shops.

It is an old town and the buildings reflect that!

We were all picked up in a timely fashion and , after a detour to a salmon ladder (you could really see the salmon swimming all around), we made our way back to the ship.

I must confess, I did worry about some of the nice people we have met on this trip getting back on in time - especially when I expected to see them out on deck as we left and they weren't there! But never fear, everyone I knew made it back in plenty of time.
Not too much left of the evening. We had spaghetti for supper, took a few more pictures and went back to the room. No chairs, we sat on the bunks all hunched over. It wasn't long before my back started giving me fits so ...bed time!