Alaska #4 -- July 19, 2008

On Wednesday we woke up very early and looked out the cabin window. No land. Soon after, however, we started to see low islands. The captain had announced that we would arrive late at Ketchikan. When we got down to Deck 5, about an hour early, a line had already formed. By the time they allowed people to disembark, the lobby was jammed. Repeated announcements asked people not to go to Deck 5. No one cared.

I have read that it rains 300 days a year in Ketchikan. This was one of those days. We found three other cruise ships in port. We visited a gift shop near the pier, then moved on to look for a store that the naturalist had recommended: Ketchicandy. We picked up some chocolate-covered Oreos, which were as good as he had said they would be. We moved on to the Wells Fargo branch to patronize the atm, then proceeded to Creek Street. I wanted to take photos of the funicular, which leads up to the Fox Point Lodge, a restaurant. Beyond the funicular, the street reminded me of Sausalito during a flood.

We wandered around a bit more. My daughter was shocked when I pointed out the store that sold reindeer sausage. We stopped at a coffee place (I didn't note the name) and had something. My daughter expressed a wish for a proper cookie. She pointed out that there was nothing like that on the ship.

We had had about enough Ketchikan, so we stopped at another store near the pier, then reboarded the ship. This required scanning our cruise card and passing through a metal detector.

When the ship sailed, the naturalist talked about what we were seeing. I enjoyed seeing the rest of Ketchikan spread out along the water. Almost everything is built on piles. I saw some bald eagles and two ships of the Alaska Marine Highway. We saw a couple of whales, and he said there would be whale watching at about 7:30.

After dinner, we went out and saw more whales breaching and sounding.

My daughter took the photo of the Creek Street sign. All rights reservered.

Last night we went to the ball park to see the Giants play the Brewers. Before the game there was a crab feed in the parking lot to honor Crazy Crab. We received a Crazy Crab bobble head and a good crab sandwich. We did not wait for the guest of honor. We each got another bobble head when we entered the park. Our seats were in the very top row of the upper deck section behind home plate. The wind blew through the arches and the green material stretched across kept banging me in the back of the head. The temperature reminded me of Candlestick, but all the flags were blowing the same direction.

Crazy Crab ran across the field once and showed up on the video screens during the 7th inning stretch.

CC Sabathia almost had a shutout. The Brewers won 9-1.