Alaska 2023 - Day 3 - Landfall in Ketchikan (and Jennie's Birthday)

     Our first port was Ketchikan, AK.  One thing about cruising Alaska is that you arrive early to your ports and have to be up and at it.  I did not marry a morning person, but she did a job of getting up and out the door on time.  In addition to the views we would see, Jennie wanted to see three things;  bald eagles, bears and whales.  When I went outside to our balcony, I saw a bald eagle sitting on top of a cross right across from our room.  I told Jennie to come outside and we were amazed at how long it sat there.  We were off to a great start on her list.

    We had no excursions planned for Ketchikan so took a walk into town to see what we could find.  One of the places we wanted to visit was Creek Street.  This is a historic boardwalk, perched on pilings, along the banks of the Ketchikan Creek.  It was famous for all the brothels that lined the street and was known as the place where both men and salmon swam upstream to spawn.  Since we were off the ship early, we had the place almost to ourself.

    We walked back to the port area and decided to take a 90 minute tour of Ketchikan.  The tour would drive us out to a few viewing areas and allow us to see most of the island.  The tour was good, albeit a bit boring.  We did manage to see another eagle in the trees as well as some deer.  We were still missing the bears and whales for our list.  After arriving back at the pier, we went to a restaurant for clam chowder and fish/chips.  The waitress put us in the back corner where we had a great view of the snow covered mountains.

    The sail away time for Ketchikan was at 1400, so we were back on board by 1300.  Tonight was the night we were going to eat in the Crown Grill for Jennie's birthday.  We had a few cocktails before dinner and checked in for our reservation.  The manager of the restaurant said, James and Jennie from the Block.  She thought I put him up to that, but it was all him.  After dinner they brought a birthday dessert for Jennie and sang happy birthday to her.  We ended the night relatively early as our wake up call tomorrow was 0455.

Alaska 2023 - Days 0, 1 and 2

     Several months ago, Princess Cruise Lines was offering $1 deposits for upcoming cruises.  I decided to place my deposit on a 7 day Alaska Inside Passage cruise before consulting Jennie about this.  She always said she did not want to take a cruise as she was afraid of motion sickness.  She took the girls out to Oxnard, CA and they took a boat ride out to the channel islands, a 35 mile journey.  When she said she did fine with that trip, I knew she would do fine on a huge cruise ship.

    In the weeks leading up to our departure we kept checking the forecast and it looked like rain was in our future.  One week before departure every port day showed rain and temperatures in the upper 40's/low 50's.  We packed rain clothes, warm clothes, boots, gloves and hats.  In fact, we packed so much that Jennie's bag was overweight when we checked in at Phoenix Sky Harbor.  After much rolling of my eyes, we transferred enough weight from her bag to mine to avoid paying any excess baggage fees.

    We arrived in Seattle to sunny skies and 65 degree temperatures.  After we arrived at our hotel, we walked across the street to the pub for some food.  After lunch, we walked down to the boardwalk to find Pike Place Market.  Unfortunately for us, we navigated around it and ended up walking an extra 2 miles before we found it.  By the time we arrived, things were shutting down and we didn't get to see the fish tossing.  We walked back down to the water and found a place for dinner named Elliot's Oyster House.  We pushed our anniversary dinner from yesterday until today so we could celebrate it in Seattle.  We sat outside with a view of the water and enjoyed good food and better beer.  After dinner we walked the pier and took an Uber back to the hotel.

    The next morning, Day 1, we were up and out of the hotel by 1100.  We took an Uber to the ship and got our first look at the Discovery Princess.  At the time of our sailing this was the newest ship in the Princess fleet.  She is 1,080 feet in length, has 19 decks, 3,600 passengers, 1,346 crew and is 145,000 gross tonnage.  The boarding experience was the best that I have experienced over many cruises.  From the time we stepped out of the Uber until we stepped foot on the ship, no more than 45 minutes had elapsed.  My last cruise out of Long Beach took at least 2 hours to board.  Since this was Jennie's first cruise, she was amazed at just how big the ship was.  And since this was her first cruise, I was hoping they had huge stabilizers to keep the movement away.

    Our room was not ready when we boarded, so we headed up to the Lido deck for some food.  We walked around the adults only area of the ship, visited the Sanctuary and booked a 1/2 day for our last sea day.  Around 1400 our room was ready and we got our first look.  The room had nice decor and was a decent size.  We unpacked our stuff and got ready for the sail away.  As the ship left Seattle I realized that cruising the Pacific Northwest has a different feel, temperature wise.  That 20 knot wind blowing across the deck made it very cold for the desert dwellers.  Even though the pools were heated, there was going to be no use for the swimwear we packed.  We went to dinner at the Skagway dining room and headed to bed.  Late night party people we are not!

    We woke up for our first full day at sea and the slightly choppy waters of the Pacific were making Jennie queasy.  We went down to the Skagway dining room for breakfast and spent most of the sea day taking it easy.  Princess brought an Alaska naturalist on the journey to give a 4 part talk on Alaska.  We went to his first talk today.  He was full of great knowledge and fun to listen to.  We bought a map from the gift shop that showed where our best chance to see wildlife would be while underway.

    We ended the first sea day and looked forward to our first port, Ketchikan at 0600 tomorrow.