Cruise to Alaska Day 03: Ketchikan

This was our first port day and one of our longest port days, with both our first excursion and a ton of free time in one of the loveliest towns in Alaska, so excuse the shocking number of photos and videos that I am about to subject you to:

Can you have a better breakfast than one eaten on the back-end of a cruise ship at sea? Don't be fooled by the fact that half my plate is fresh produce--I gained something like five pounds on this vacation! But as hard as I've been working out since I've gotten home, I would not trade in a single chocolate croissant or heaping serving of bacon. That food was amazing!

It tasted even better with this view.

We passed through this fog on the way to Ketchikan, but most of our port days were sunny and clear and warm.

Our first excursion was canoeing around a lake in Tongass National Forest. Although I can swim, I am not confident in or on the water, so I love myself some life jackets!

Matt is confident in and on the water, and when he canoes, his forearms look hot.

See the dead tree at the bottom of the frame, with the little seedlings growing in the lichen on top of it? That's how these trees grow

The dead tree then rots out from underneath them, so the mature trees have these roots that look like spiderlegs.

This fungus is called bear bread. Bears eat it just prior to hibernation to constipate them.

Early in the spring, then, they eat this skunk cabbage, to get their bowels moving again. If you eat it, it will give you, too, diarrhea, but if you simply wrap your salmon in it to bake, it will give the salmon a nice mustardy flavor.

I am pretty proud of myself that I'm canoeing and not dying. This vacation and all its water activities was a huge confidence booster for me!

It was a big canoe, with several people per side, except that I kept looking behind me and noticing that I was the only one paddling on my side--humph!

Since this is a National Forest, not a National Park, some parts of it are logged, but not this area. It's original, pristine forest here.

I survived the canoe trip!

Now on to explore Ketchikan!

Whales are so common that they're used in advertising!

Also salmon.

Yes, I did take pictures of all of the totem poles.

This totem pole makes me sad to look at now, though, because it was underneath this totem pole that we phoned Will to wish her a Happy Birthday. We were only able to leave her a voicemail, and I cried. Oh, my gosh, I missed the kids SO MUCH on this vacation!

Super tall totem pole!

Creek Street is now a boardwalk of indie shops over a salmon creek, but it used to be a red light district. This shirt is also an example of the work of the artist Ray Troll, whom we fell in love with on this vacation. He lives in Ketchikan (although his work is apparently seen all over the world), and we bought several prints of his while we were here. Now that we're home, I'm going to go online and buy another T-shirt of his that I wanted but didn't get at the time.

Here's the creek.

And here's how the gentlemen could get there!

 As Matt and I were walking along this creek, he suddenly exclaimed, "Ooh, I see a salmon!"

"Nuh-uh," I said, because I have that kind of positive attitude.

Nevertheless, I looked, and didn't see any salmon, and looked, and didn't see any salmon, and looked, and didn't see any salmon, and looked, and then--I saw a salmon! And then another! And another!

It turns out that the creek was absolutely teeming with salmon!

Can you see them?

 They're actually easier to see on video:



But these guys, resting a bit before the tide rises enough for them to be able to make it up these rapids, are a little easier to spot:

Yeah, we possibly hung out watching salmon for hours before remembering the time and hiking back to the ship.

Found another totem pole on the way there, because of course.

And our cruise ship!

Not pictured: Soho Coho, our favorite shop in all of Alaska, the random tourist with whom I fangirled over salmon at the Salmon Ladder, any of the beautiful stained glass pieces that decorated the light posts along the dock, or the very instructive lecture on cetaceans that we attended and that taught me exactly how to positively identify the humpback whales that we're going to see in a couple of days!

Cruise to Alaska Day 02: Cruising the Inside Passage

We went to the Captain's Reception, where the ship's officers all introduced themselves and there was free champagne and nibblies.

This day had the second most beautiful scenery of our cruise (you'll see the MOST beautiful scenery when I show you the Hubbard Glacier!), but you'll notice that I only took one photo of it. Real photographers see more deeply when they look through the camera lens, I think, but as for me, I think that I have to choose whether to look deeply at something or take pictures of it--a memory doesn't feel as real to me if I've only seen it through the camera. So for much of the trip, I chose whether I wanted to look at it or photograph it, and on this day, I clearly wanted to look!

White-sided dolphins from our cruise ship! After breakfast, I bundled up and sat out on deck most of the day, alternating binoculars and Hamilton. 

This isn't the last time that we saw white-sided dolphins, but I believe that it's the only time that I photographed them.

Ditto with the sea lions!

I was pretty excited about the lecturers on the ship--we had a naturalist and an oceanographer. I brought my travel journal along to each lecture and took notes.


Here's our naturalist.


See? Notes! People commented on my note-taking, and once, as I was casing one of the fifth-floor lounges for the best spot to watch the string quartet, an older gentleman in a track suit waved me over to him solely because he'd seen me taking notes at that day's lecture and wanted to discuss it with me. One of my favorite things about this cruise was adult conversation--very little talk about kids, but lots of talk about books, movies, travel, and history!

Even though the scenery was majestic--we were cruising the most narrow part of the Inside Passage, including the Seymour Narrows, a part so treacherous that it requires its own pilot--this is the only photo that I took of it on this day, and even this is at the very end of the day, when the fog is coming in and I'm on my way down to our room to dress up for a reception.

Okay, I sat in our window and read for a little while longer before I got dressed.

And then we hit the martini bar, because the entire ship had an open bar in honor of the Captain's Reception! It turns out that I love myself a dirty martini. I'd meant to try as many different cocktails as possible while everything was free, but instead I had two dirty martinis.

So obviously we then hit up the super fancy restaurant while we were nice and drunk. Thank goodness for the bread basket!

Our cruise included all the food, even the fancy food at the fancy restaurants, and my philosophy was that if there was something on the menu that I'd never eaten before, then by god, I was going to eat that thing! Here I'm eating my first caviar.

Not pictured: the whales that we also saw (my first whales!!!), the blanket burrito that I spent most of the day happily in after an attendant thought that I looked cold and brought me THREE fleece blankets, the captain, whose biography informed us that his career at sea began when he ran away from home as a teenager(!!!), or the cruise director, who gazed at the captain with stars in her eyes during his welcome speech.

P.S. Want to follow along with my craft projects, books I'm reading, dog-walking mishaps, road trips, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!

Cruise to Alaska Day 01: Indiana to Seattle to the Sea!

Matt and I are just two days back from our cruise, and as happy as I am to be home, I'm also really missing it! Nobody is serving me flank steak here in my own house, or asking me if I'd like an after-dinner cappuccino, or offering me a blanket because I look cold. Nobody put a chocolate on my pillow last night! It's HOT here, and there are no dolphins frolicking outside!

As you might have guessed from that, Matt and I had a wonderful time on our cruise. It was the first cruise for each of us, and I can definitely see how people go on cruise after cruise after cruise. And it's not just the way that you're pampered or the fancy food at every meal, although that's certainly awesome. My favorite aspect of the cruise is how we got to our room, unpacked once, and then every day, we opened the door to leave that room and found an entirely new place to discover. It's a magic hotel room that does all of your traveling for you, and all you have to do is disembark and go explore! And the at-sea days are days at a fancy resort, where you can lie on a lounge chair by the pool, drink a milkshake, and watch for sea lions through your binoculars.

Oh, and the lecturers! And the musicians! And the nice people whom you meet and then get to hang out with all the time, because they're on the same ship as you!

So yeah, we liked it. I don't think that the kids would have enjoyed this particular cruise, on this smaller ship with fewer kid-friendly amenities than the larger ship, but we certainly enjoyed the familiarity with everyone that our smaller ship provided, and the adult-focused amenities and activities.

So, some pictures from Day 01, wherein we left home before sunrise, flew across the country, found our ship, and launched from Seattle into the sea:

Pre Muster Drill: Trying our life jackets on for size.

We were explicitly told to NOT form our faces into this expression of panic in the case of an emergency.

We are packed in like mackerel, as we will be into our life boats.

I've never been to Seattle, and I'm not really there this time, either, unless you count the airport, highway, and port, which I don't.

It IS a lovely view from port, though!

And at least I've SEEN the Space Needle in person now!

See? Space Needle!

Matt's the host for our alumni group traveling on this cruise, and like a good host, he brought everyone cookies!

We didn't even eat at the Grand Dining Room this night, just the buffet, and our food is STILL super fancy! I'm having flank steak and mushrooms, and Matt is eating a freaking LOBSTER! And sure, it's a buffet, but it's, like, a *nice* buffet, where your waiter puts your napkin on your lap for you and the waitstaff serves all the food so that you don't have to get your germs on it. Also? They are VERY generous with the bacon.

Not pictured: the ship's library, where I checked out a copy of Hamilton to read, the decks, where we walked around afterwards and watched sea lions, our room, where a bottle of wine, a fruit basket, and a flower arrangement waited for us, or the gorgeous scenery, which I sat in our window and watched until I practically keeled over, I was so tired.

A Taste of Our Town

Every town has its random little festivals and events and weird things that make it unique. My hometown, for instance, doesn't have an Independence Day parade but a Memorial Day parade, and it begins with a genuine Wild West-style shoot-out right on Garrison Ave.

Our town has an Independence Day parade, and an event where people eat soup, and a bicycle race modeled on the Indianapolis 500, and an entire month of chocolate-themed activities, and this particular event that we all went to a few weeks ago, in which a bunch of our local restaurants and food trucks gather at City Hall so that we can eat something from all of them at the same time.

People in our town like to eat.

We fit right in here:

Our deal is that anyone can choose anything that catches their eye, but everyone shares it. That doesn't so much seem to stop Will throwing some shade at Matt while he takes a big bite of her lime gelato, however.

The kids shared the mint truffle on the left, and Matt and I shared the bourbon one on the right. Nom!

Sooo... this is my favorite thing. And yes, your eyes are not deceiving you, it IS a grilled cheese sandwich made with macaroni and cheese inside. It's the specialty of a food truck that only makes grilled cheese sandwiches, and it's my secret boyfriend. Don't judge me.

Garlic cheese fries! The expression on Will's face is there because we're listening to a polka band, and I'm getting super into it. It turns out that there are worse things than having your mother breathing in public right next to you--she could be dancing. And singing along. To a POLKA BAND.

Smoothies! Our Will is a child of unabashed appetites, a girl who isn't afraid to let everyone know how much she deeply adores food, and she was in her own personal heaven at having an entire smorgasbord of every type of cuisine ever created to choose from.

And yes, after the smoothie, we did share a gyro.

There was also a taco in there somewhere, and raspberry ice pops, and some kind of kebab. It's a wonder nobody puked in the bounce house.