Alaska Trip Part 2: 1st Sea Day, Sitka, Juneau

After sleeping in a MUCH more comfortable bed on the ship Wed. night (8/26) we awoke really early Thurs. morning and braved the cold for a spectacular view of College Fjord, and specifically Harvard Glacier. (All of the glaciers in this fjord are named after colleges: Yale, Harvard, etc.) All of the glaciers were beautiful, and it's amazing how big they are. Here is some of the beautiful scenery we saw that morning:

Yeah, I know we look pretty goofy, but it was COLD!

After leaving the glacier I made myself go and work out for a bit (I knew I was going to need it with how much food I was planning on eating throughout the cruise), then we got ready for breakfast and met down in the dining room to surprise my mom with the matching shirts Tyler & Jen designed.

Here's the gang (Doug & Jenn and Mindy & Chad weren't able to come). Under "Flake" it says "Cruisin' since 1959":

The was our first "Sea Day", and later that morning Fun For Less had a variety show for our group with Kerry Summers. Kerry does a variety show, where he does a little magic, ventriloquism, and some other fun stuff. My bro-in-law Dean got called up to participate as Dolly Parton. It was pretty funny and Dean was a good sport. Kerry is also an Elvis impersonator, and later on in the week he put on an Elvis show for us. The most awesome part about it is that he has Elvis-like hair...and it's not a wig! He wears it like that all the time. The poor fellow was assigned to our table in the dining room for dinner, so we got to know him better than most...nice guy.

Our family hung out in the karaoke lounge for a lot of the rest of the day, and many of them even participated. I missed a lot of it, though, while I was up in our room *pumping.

Later that evening is when the real "fun" started. We hit a storm while at open sea, the likes of which was the worst that even most of the crew had ever seen, and many of them even got sick. The boat got rocking pretty hard, and a few members of our family were too sick to even come down to dinner. I got a headache from it, and David was feeling a little nauseous, but we got dressed up and went down. We were doing okay until someone ordered fish and David caught a whiff of it, and almost lost his lunch, so we left without eating. We ended up sitting in the middle of the boat for a couple of hours or so, as it seemed to not be as rough there. Later we finally felt hungry and not too afraid of up-chucking so we scavenged some food. David and I were pretty much fine after that and slept pretty well, but the storm lasted through much of the night.

The storm delayed our arrival in Sitka the next morning, but we were very happy to have the rocking over with! Sitka was a "tendered port," which means that the boat didn't dock, rather little boats (tenders) took us to shore. Sitka is a pretty little town that was originally inhabited by the Tlingit Indians, then later by the Russians, so there were lots of influences from both of those peoples there. There is a national park with a Totem Pole Trail, that David and I went to.

The tender boats coming back to take another group into town:

While at this little dock area I saw a sign on a little message board there advertising/requesting transportation to the Seattle area in exchange for sailor-type work on a boat. The notable thing about it was that the requestors were 2 girls.

We were lucky that our trip was after the worst of the mosquito season in Alaska. Apparently they get really big there. David took this picture of a bug, which I think is a mosquito, on the window of one of the shops there in Sitka (this picture is not cropped...it was that big):

This is what Alaskans wear when they want to feel sexy in the winter. We saw these in several shops!


This is St. Michael's Cathedral of the Russian Orthodox Church, rebuilt from a fire that destroyed it in 1966. A story was told to us that during the fire one man lifted a chandelier out of the building in order to save it, but after the church was rebuilt it took several men to be able to carry it back in. That was some adrenalin rush!


One of the many totem poles we saw in Sitka:

On Saturday we docked in Juneau, the capital of AK, where we were grateful that we brought our umbrellas, since it rained on us all day long. After getting off the ship David and I, along with several other family members, booked a little bus ride up to Mendenhall Glacier where we saw...

this...

and this...

and this!

Just kidding.

But we did see this little bear cub up in the tree (if you look at the little black blob in the middle of the picture, that's him).

Up at the glacier there is a national park that has "trails" up on stilts so that us nosey tourists can go and look at the salmon swimming in the streams (there was a lot) and the bears eating the salmon, without disturbing the bears and without the bears disturbing us. I really wanted to see another bear, but the little cub up in the tree was the best view I got. I did, however, see lots of fish-remains that the bears left behind, along with some bear poop. :) (We took a picture of it, but I'll spare you.) Some of the other family members who came up a little later got to see a mama bear feeding on some salmon...lucky!

These rocks used to be covered by the glacial ice, which smoothed them. I think it's pretty interesting how the glaciers are literally rivers of ice that advance and retract.

The rest of our day in Juneau was spent browsing around the shops and collecting free stuff. When we boarded the ship they gave each passenger little coupon books that included several freebies that you could collect at various shops in the port cities. One of the deal-ie-o's was a charm bracelet that you collected one charm each at several different shops in the cities. There were also coupons we got for loose "gems," little necklaces, etc. Being the cheapo that I am, we got all sorts of free stuff. I'm sure those stores (all of them fancy jewelry stores) rolled their eyes at us when we would come to collect our freebies and not even want to look at their expensive wares, but oh well. David and I, Brandon and Jennifer, and Kayla (and sometimes Jeff if he wasn't doing homework) had fun on our little treasure hunts. If anyone has a good idea for all of my loose cheapo gems, let me know!

*Ahh pumping...it seemed like I was doing that the whole time practically! When we were off the ship I carried my supplies around in my trusty backpack to be used every 3-4 hours or so. I tell you what, I got pretty good at sitting in bathroom stalls in the airports, visitor centers, restaurants--pretty much everywhere we went--to take care of business. Only to dump all that precious liquid down the drain when I was finished. It was kind of annoying to have to leave the crowd so often, and I know I missed out on some fun stuff, but it was all worth it to be able to go on the cruise and then come home and still be able to feed Mary! She started nursing again like a champ, but I had to go through the pain of starting nursing all over again! Oh well...things are much better now.