Day - 10 - Vancouver

Breakfast in Vancouver 

And just like that the vacation is over and we have to go back to reality :(. Boooo


Look at that leg room!!!

And did you note the LONG leg hairs?  No one ever does until I point them out but even * I * noticed them in this shot with the nice dark background!!  Wow! (Won’t make me wax or shave, thanks)

Leaving Vancouver 

Lots of smoke. 





The tidal difference between fresh and salt water 

I believ this is mount Rainer in the background. 

There is so much smoke making it through the atmosphere that the moon was RED coming up. It was pretty but near impossible to get a good picture of. 

We landed at 12:30am. So really Thursday before we got home at 2 am. 

It was a fun relaxing trip really. 

Day - 9 - open water

Sunrise 4:04 am. Why do I have a picture from 4:04?  I had to go potty so snapped a picture really quick and went back to bed!

Played cribbage with Robert. 
Watched the world go by!


Saw lots of whale spouts and even watched a whale breaching BUT my camera was aimed the wrong way. I have the memory regardless. There were SO many whale spouts you could see against the setting sun. There were so many whales out there!!



We had the whole family out watching them it was fun. Robert and Janet were on the balcony behind me. 





Beautiful sunset!


What is this?  This is a pod of killer whales. Yep. Seriously. Robert and I went to the buffet for a last minute crepe before they shut down and. Managed to catch two pods of killer whales right off the ship. So beautiful!!













Sunset 9:30pm. Goodnight world!!

Day - 8 - Ketchikan

Our official shore excursion got cancelled due to lack of participation. BUT we still managed to do the Lumberjack show. 

Until then this is the start of the day..

Outside our balcony. 



We walked the streets of Ketchikan. 

That’s a LOT of rainfall. Apparently all of this region is a temperate rain forest. Who knew before we came? Not me. I was prepared with rain gear however. Just in case. Honestly we had the best weather while we were in Skagway we did have to fight sleet on the walk back to the boat. It was a cold and damp 10 minute walk but with layers it wasn’t horrible in the end!  Otherwise it was great weather with very little disruption due to weather. Denali was wetter than the southern stops for sure!

Anyway the edges of Ketchikan are supported on pickings. We went down to check them out and to see the star fish. 

See it in the middle

Here are some crawling up the posts. How weird. 

Jelly fish and more star fish in the top of the chopped off piling. 



When I saw this at a distance I yelled “grouper” because it truly looked like a grouper swimming up. It was NOT. It was a seal!!

Look at those soft corals!!

Here are the pilings. There are building sitting on top of these pilings!!

Poor little star fish caught out of water. I chucked him back but not sure he lived. :(

Muscles on the piling spitting water periodically!

Look at the diversity in the colors of the star fish moving up the pilings. 

And with that we went to the Lumberjack show. It was loud and entertaining. Butch enjoyed it way more than I did. He was hooping and hollering for our team (Canada) to 











Making a bunny

With a smiley face

Starting to the top

Half way…

Almost there. And for some

Reason I stopped taking pictures. Hahaha. Oh well just know it was a cute show and the chainsaw noise and smell made me think of Dad and my childhood in the woods. :)

More impressive soft coral. 

Fun doughnut shop. No, we didn’t go in. Should have :)
Note the change on water depth. There was about a 8 or 10 foot tide change between when we came in and when we got back to the boat. No clue of it was low tide or not at the time we got there but it was neat to see the difference 

Back in open water. We will be at sea for the next day and pull into Vancouver early