Our scheduled arrival time was 7 AM. The ship is going to be docked for a few hours. We need to be back on board by 12:30 PM. As usual the ship was already docked by the time we got our coffee from room service.

On first impression, Ketchikan is a pretty city established on Ketchikan creek. It has a beautiful mountainous backdrop.

We had a scheduled shore excursion for highlights of the city and its environs. The excursion lasted about 90 minutes and was via a quaint trolley (looked like a railcar on tires). The driver, a young man, was both the driver and the narrator. He was enthusiastic and had interesting anecdotes to recount. But there was nothing noteworthy. The highlight of the tour was the native village of Saxman a couple of miles off the city. It reputedly contains the largest number of totem poles. What was interesting was the price of totem poles for sale in the local shop peddling trinkets and such. It seemed curious that they would get these totem poles made in China and Laos and get them shipped over here! They also did have the same things made by local artisans. The price difference was extraordinary! The imported ones cost between 5 and 10 dollars for totem poles from 6 to 12 inches whereas the locally made totem poles cost 10 times as much from 50 to 150 dollars. Amazing. But why would anyone want to buy a totem pole from China?

We got back from tour around 11:30 AM. We hurried to shop for more trinkets. For a change it wasn't Sandhya who was the impulse purchaser, it was me! For some reason I had this intense desire to buy a thermometer and a pocket knife. Strange! Maybe I was taken off guard by all this relaxation.

Our scheduled arrival time was 7 AM. We must have arrived and anchored much earlier because when room service coffee arrived at around 6:15 AM, the ship was already still and at anchor.
I had a leisurely coffee viewing the city of Sitka.

We went down to Deck 2 for breakfast. We sat at a table with 4 other elderly ladies. It is remarkable how many of the passengers on board the ship are elderly. Many of them with handicaps that makes them barely ambulatory. One of the ladies same from Southern California. A second one came from Montana. Two of the ladies were from Denver. Interestingly one of the ladies from Denver had flown Cessna 150's. We got talking about flying and spin training of all things at 8:30 AM in the morning. I'd never have imagined meeting a 65 year old lady who flew Cessna 150's for breakfast while on a cruise. Interestingly she said she was afraid of heights but not while flying—same thing for me. What a small world.

We were booked on a shore excursion in a semi-sub to look at the wonders of the underwater world. This was a great disappointment. All we saw was Kelp, Kelp and more Kelp. Of course, the occasional start fish. I wasn't inclined to take any pictures but Sandhya wanted some for the record.

 
Sitka is a small, sleepy city. Looks like tourism is their mainstay. But ours was the only cruise ship anchored for the day and not many were out because of the cold and the rain. The city is clean and quaint. But otherwise not much to it.

 
Ended the day with a great dinner followed by a magic show by Las Vegas comedian/magician Jeff Peterson. Quite funny and some light magic. Nothing heavy duty.

Glacier bay is widely touted to be a sight to see. And indeed it was.

The ship sailed out overnight from Juneau City northwards towards Glacier Bay. We went to bed late last night and I didn't expect to be up until later in the day (for me that means 8 in the morning). But I woke up quite early because the daylight. Unbelievably it was light at 4:30 in the morning. But then I shouldn't have been surprised. We were at a latitude of approximately 57 degrees North. And it was May (almost June – which is when we get the longest day in these northern latitudes).

In any case, I looked out on the Verandah and it was an amazingly picturesque sight! There was mountainous islands whose tops were obscured by fog (or maybe clouds—hard to say).

I went back to bed, but was back up by 6:15 when our attendant knocked on the door with breakfast for Sandhya and me.

I poured myself a cup of coffee and stood in front of the verandah doors of our stateroom. I savored the scenery. Here is a sample of what I saw when I looked out.

 
Of course, there will be those who'll complain that this is a cloudy day. Au contraire, this was picture perfect. Coffee in hand and a sight such as this. And we were just entering Glacier bay—not there yet! I slowly sipped my coffee as I watched the island go by. The ships are required, by the Forest Service, to leave no wake in these waters in order to not disturb the marine life. I poured myself a second and there were a couple more of such sights.

I wolfed down my breakfast while watching the scenery and did my my SSS's (for those who don't know what this is-- Sh**t, Shave and Shower). Of course, I took my time doing this and then nudged Sandhya awake. I must confess, I left her only about a ½ hour to get ready. As they say in India, I pressurized her into getting ready quickly. She did get ready in about 45 minutes and we were off the the bow to hear the narrative from the coast guard and hear and view the Glacier. I say hear, because when pieces of ice from Glaciers fall into the water, they make a tremendous thundering sound and then you can hear the splash of the ice and snow into the water.

I was bundled up. But not Sandhya. Any one who knows Sandhya shouldn't be surprised.

Me

Sandhya

It was cold and windy but the scenery was absolutely spectacular. We entered Glacier Bay through the --- straights and headed north towards the Margerie and --- glaciers. The entire Bay is surrounded by glacier topped mountainous islands. Take a look at some of these photos.

We finally arrived at Margerie Glacier. The glacier is around 250 ft tall from the surface of the water. We were told that around 100 ft of the Glacier is below the surface. The glacier is obviously active. Ice and snow blocks frequently peel of the surface and fall into the water. We could see that the water approaching the glacier was full of small icebergs. The glacier ice has a distinct blue color. The rock that has been gouged by the glacier on its way down the valley is stuck to the side of the glacier as the dark, black portion. The other glacier is directly to the north end of the bay is --- glacier. It doesn't have the typical blue color because it is covered by rock; that gives it a black color obscuring the blue color.

We headed back out of Glacier Bay, heading south on to our next destination—Sitka.
Sandhya and I got back to the warmth of indoors. After taking a short nap, we headed out for dinner followed by some great live music. We got some dancing in too. Ended the evening late, listening (again) to fabulous piano music by Glenn-Michael.

We arrive at our first port of call today. Forecast for the day is rain with a high of 50^o F. We arrived at 1PM and scheduled to leave around 10:15 PM. We had a shore excursion scheduled for 4 PM. There was plenty of time to kill, so we relaxed near the pool and had a couple of drinks. We had a leisurely lunch and headed back to our stateroom to bundle up against the cold and rain during our much anticipated shore excursion. I say much anticipated because I was quite excited about Alaska, didn't know what to expect, but expected a lot.

Well, around 2 PM, when we get back to the stateroom, we discover an envelope containing a notice that our excursion was rescheduled to 1:30 PM. What a shock! The tour had already started without us. I was furious and went down to the Front Desk (open 24 hours). I was calm, though, when I interacted with the nice young lady at the counter. She explained that she couldn't do much now and that this was the responsibility of the Shore Excursions department (and they were closed at this time). She did, however, offer to take our tickets and forward them to the excursions department. She was confident they would get back to me with a solution. I said I wanted a full refund and she offered forward my demand to them.

In any case, we decided to not let this spoil our day. We got off on to the pier. There were a number of kiosks belonging to local operators who were offering tours of the town and the Mendenhall glacier. We signed up with one of the local operators for a trip to the glacier.

Approaching Juneau

Shopping in Juneau

Mendenhall Glacier

 
This decision turned out to be one of the best decisions of the day! The guide was a Tlingit Indian who was funny and informative. His narrative kept us spell bound for the entire duration of the trip. Turns out his father (who was also the chief ) narrated stories to him about the tribe and also taught him the Tlingit language. He claimed to speak it fluently. He also learnt about his tribe's history. Interesting facts about the Tlingit. There are two major clans: the Eagles and the Ravens. Eagles can only marry Ravens or vice versa. But marriage within Eagles and Ravens is prohibited. The purpose was prevent inbreeding. Also, sons were raised by uncles and daughters were raised by aunts. The reason was that if they were raised by their biological parents the parents might be lenient! Finally, the successor to the chief is not the chief's son, but one of the boys raised by the uncles. There were a number of other anecdotes about the day-to-day life of the Tlingit—too numerous to recount.

We spent about an hour at the glacier. We had never been near a glacier before. Whatever, I knew was from the movies where people walked on glaciers and fell into crevasses to be dramatically rescued against all odds by a heroic figure (while the characters who dropped into the crevasse survived by eating moss and snails—or something like that). We didn't actually walked on the glacier, but were close enough.

Although it wasn't raining, it was cloudy. Ben, the driver (whose last name was Dover—a fake one he said later), told us that a cloudy and/or rainy day was the best condition to view the glacier. What is distinct about the glacier is the blue tinge to the ice. We were told that this was because the blue color of the spectrum is reflected and all other colors were absorbed by the ice.

Mendenhall Glacier

We got back to the ship quite happy the way things turned out.

Dinner was interesting. We shared a table with another couple who were from California. We were surprised at the number of people from California. I wondered by Californians would ever want to go to a cold place like Alaska! The gentleman had an interesting background. He was retired, 15 years. He was teacher before retirement. Before teaching he working in the private sector for a while. He got into teaching for altruistic reasons. We got into a long discussion about education, teaching, unions and a whole bunch of issues. We also got to know he had a bad back. It seemed like lot of people on board had one infirmity or another. Bad back was a common one. But the really interesting part was when food arrived. He had ordered 3 servings of the main entree! He also ate two and half of those servings. If memory serves me right, he also had dessert! Wow!

We concluded the day with a showing by the Filipino crew on their culture. What was noteworthy was that they were not professional performers. Very impressive. Sandhya and I know that that it takes a lot of effort and practice to put out such a thing. In fact, we know by experience that a 2 minute performance takes around 40 hours of choreography and effort. The crew put on a 1 hour show. Bravo.

The fascinating couple we met on the Juneau stop

The Theater where the Filipino crew put on a show

This was a sailing day. I did wonder if I was going to be bored having to stay on board all day and evening. Would I feel cooped up?

Didn't turn out to be the case There were lots of activities to keep us busy: Kitchen Tour, Cooking Shows, even a ballroom dancing lesson!

Kitchen Tour

Cooking Show

Swimming Pool

Lunch

Dinner

Our very first cruise starts today. And to Alaska. Sandhya and I are very very exited and looking forward to it. Anyone who has gone on a cruise has always had positive comments.

The thing about cruises is that everything is relaxed. We were given an approximate time to get to the pier where the ship was docked. We were supposed to get in around 10:30 to 11:00 AM or so. Given our only travelling experience with airlines, we were anxious and booked Shuttle Express to get to Pier 91 in Seattle. This is a brand new pier in Seattle.

I think we were one of the eager beavers. There were not many passengers in yet. So we relaxed for a bit.

A Happy Sandhya!

A Happy Me! Some say this does not look like a happy guy. But trust me, I am happy
This was just before boarding.

Pugent Sound from the Cruise Ship Terminal

Check in was a breeze. It took us less than 5 minutes. They had a very large number of check in counters with friendly staff. They snapped a photo of each of us for the record (they use this photo to check that it is really us when we get back from shore excursions) and handed us our keycards that also doubled as boarding passes. Conveniently they linked the key card to our credit card and all expenses on board were to be done with the key card. A great way to spend money in blissful ignorance of the damages we would discover to our wallets at the end of the trip.


On the way to embarkation, the view of the ship was breathtaking. It looked massive!

View of the Ship before embarkation

We went up to our state room. Compact and clean with a verandah view. The first thing I did (and so did Sandhya) was to have a couple of drinks before lunch. And then off to lunch--which was fabulous. We anticipated that the week would be geared towards eating and drinking. 

Our Stateroom

Departing Seattle

Dusk

Predinner Drink

Dinner