Alaska Trip Part 3: Skagway, Ketchikan, 2nd Sea Day, Coming Home

This is way late, but I'm finally finishing up my last installment of recording about our Alaska trip. Feel free to skip!

Sunday, 8/30 we docked for the day in Skagway, AK. Brandon & Jen looked up the information on church services in Skagway ahead of time, so they, David & I and some other members of our family went to church. It was interesting, because they have a lot of young adults (single and married) come up to work during the summer, so their branch swells to about 150 people during those few months. During the other months of the year there are only about 15 or so members. Crazy. Anyway, their church building is quite small, with pretty much only a small chapel and a few rooms/offices right off of the chapel.

I had a funny pumping experience there at church: It was time to pump again after Sacrament Meeting, but the bathroom there only had one stall in it, and I didn't want to monopolize it for the entire pumping session. So I asked one of the regulars if there was a classroom or somewhere else I could use, and she arranged for me to use the branch president's office, which was right off the front of the chapel room. Pumping in the president's office was weird enough in and of itself, but soon after I started I heard Sunday School begin, and was really hoping that everyone else couldn't hear my pump going. After I was finished I had to walk out of the office and come out into the front of the chapel from behind the Sunday School teacher (who everyone was facing), carrying my pumping backpack, and find my seat. It was pretty embarrassing for me, but David said no one was really even paying attention to me. He may have just been being nice to me, but I'll take it. Here is the little church:

After church Kayla, Brandon & Jennifer, and David & I continued our scavenger hunt for free stuff. We felt (okay, rationalized) that since we weren't "buying" anything we were okay to do that on Sunday. :)

A view of one of the streets of Skagway:

Kayla (Jeff was doing homework), Jennifer, Brandon, David and me:

Some huge mushrooms we saw growing by the creek:

A couple of salmon that were fighting. They were going at it for several minutes and it was fascinating to watch:

This little waterfall was so beautiful:

Brandon had to go really bad and couldn't wait to get back to the ship. Luckily, we came across this gazebo bathroom right off the highway :) :

More beautiful scenery:

Monday, 8/31 we docked at our last port, Ketchikan, AK. All of the towns were interesting, because you could tell a lot of their economy came from people on the cruise ships, but none more so than Ketchikan. The day we docked there there were three other cruise ships docked there as well.

After finishing up our treasure hunt for free stuff, David and I went on part of a walking tour in Ketchikan. One of the points of interest on the tour was this "street," that is actually wooden stairs (there were lots of those here). If you'll look closely, you can see the street sign where this street meets up with another street.

Here we are in front of "Dolly's," the most famous of the "establishments" on Creek Street, aka the Red Light District:

Gotta love this sign:

Another picture of fish. You have to look closely, but the two dark spots towards the bottom right are two salmon jumping up the rapids. It was seriously so fascinating (and quite frustrating) to watch all the fish work and work and work at swimming upstream, where they would lay their eggs, then guard the eggs for a couple of weeks until they eventually died. A little bit sad, but I couldn't help but be impressed with their selflessness. They give their lives for their kids!

Tuesday, 9/1 was another full day at sea, and luckily we didn't run into any storms this sea day. David and I played a little miniture golf and basketball there on the ship (those ships are seriously amazing!), went on a tour of the galley, and went to Kerry Summers' Elvis show. (Unfortuneately I didn't blog about this earlier, because I've already forgotten a lot of the details of what we did!)

The ship workers were so talented! Check out this detail (those are watermelons):

Elvis lives!

Every night when we would come back to our room we were treated to an awesome towel animal and pillow mints. (Luckily, David didn't like the mints, so I got his!) Such luxury!

While on the galley tour, we saw the menu boards for dinner...

...and more importantly, dessert!

Those menu boards reminded me how very spoiled I had been for the past week. I ate A LOT on this trip, and thoroughly enjoyed it!

We also saw some wild life, from the ship. Here you can barely see the fin of a killer whale sticking up out of the water:

As mentioned in a previous post, our family hung out in the karaoke lounge a bit. My sister-in-law Jennifer (Tyler's wife), got recruited to be Madonna for the Carnival Legends show on Tuesday evening. She was a bit embarrassed that the song they made her sing was "Like a Virgin," and that the male dancers were wearing super short, tight shorts, but it was quite funny to watch. They also had other karaoke stars perform as Garth Brooks, Gloria Estafan, James Brown, Brittany Spears...quite entertaining.

David and me with our waiter (I've already forgotten his name!) and assistant waiter (Elnie?). These guys were great, I especially liked the singing/dancing numbers they would do during dinner. Elnie tried to get me to get up and dance on one of the nights, but I was too embarrassed. The waiter at the other table was able to get JenMarie up a couple of times, though!

Wednesday, 9/2 we woke up early (relatively) and disembarked in Vancouver, Canada, then hopped on a bus that took us to Seattle, WA, from where we flew home.

David and I were again on a flight with several other family members, and we were all lucky enough to be able to get on the earlier flight home, which meant that we got to board about an hour after getting to the airport, rather than waiting 3 more hours. I had a ton of fun, but I was definitely ready to get home. I was so excited to see my kids!

Who wouldn't be excited to see these two kiddos?

Thanks again to David's parents for taking such good care of Josh and Mary for us! Ralph definitely deserves Grandpa of the Year honors!