Intro

Intro

On May 18th Bob and I will celebrate our 30th anniversary! To celebrate, we’re taking a couple of weeks off and heading back to the Pacific Northwest. We’re starting with a cruise to Alaska (Coerced by the Cruise Monkey again!) Neither of us has ever been to Alaska, so we thought it would an interesting destination and also give us a chance to spend some time afterwards in the Seattle area.

We were actually at sea for our 1st anniversary, so it will be especially nice to be able to celebrate our 30th at sea too.

We’ll try and keep the blog up-to-date on our trip, however as we learned on our last adventure, this is not always easy to do! Internet connectivity is both limited and expensive on board ship, but we’ll do our best to keep on top of it.

We’re very excited and can’t wait to share our photos and journaling with you!

North to Alaska!

Thursday, May 21, 2015

Thursday May 21 - Ketchikan

Bob went solo at our next port of Ketchikan.  My knee was hurting so I stayed aboard watching lifeboat drills and float planes, and reading.

Selfie waiting for tour to begin

Trolley for the tour

Tour guide


The first stop was Saxman Park, which has many totem poles and a reproduction of a clan house. Two tribes, the Tlingit and Haida, lived in the area. Their totems have distinctive differences in style.


Yes, that's a figure of Abraham Lincoln on top of this totem. It commemorates how members of a U.S. cutter, the Lincoln, mediated a dispute between Raven and Eagle clans. Because totems only have human or animal figures, they couldn't put a ship on it.  But members of the crew gave them a picture of the ships namesake, Abraham Lincoln, so they carved him instead.


The phrase "low man on the totem pole" isn't strictly true. The position of figures on a totem pole do not indicate their significance to the story. The man at the bottom of this totem is the key figure in the story.


Reproduction clan house

The second and final stop on the trolley tour was downtown Ketchikan.


Downtown Ketchikan
Seaplane dock

Creek Street, the original brothel district

Totem of Raven stealing the sun and moon


Later that afternoon, we attended the Maitre D' wine tasting which we enjoyed doing on our last cruise. Wines were different, but one of the managers presenting was aboard the Regal Princess and we recognized him.

Back in our cabin, we watched the movie "Skyfall" before turning in.

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