2026 Great Bear Rainforest Cruise

 At 2:00 AM this morning, the ships clocks were moved forward one hour to put our clocks on the same time as Prince Rupert, Vancouver and Seattle. So last night, I did what everybody should do in those circumstances and stayed up an hour later than I should've. When we arrived at 7 AM this morning, I never felt the thrusters as a ship came into dock. It wasn't until around 9 o'clock that I stirred and got ready for our day in this port. The fried egg service in the Lido this morning was very disorganized and quite slow but eventually, I received my two eggs over broken and two pieces of link sausage and two pieces of bacon. I supplemented it with a smoked salmon sandwich that I prepare each morning. We then gathered up all of our things and made our way off the ship in this new port town to us. The port has a nice set of ramps leading up to an immigration building which we did not have to do anything inside of. We then went out onto the boardwalk where there was an informat...

  This last Thursday of our cruise found us waking up to the sound of the thrusters as the ship docked in Ketchikan. We weren't in a hurry to get off the ship so we slept in until 8 o'clock. We enjoyed the leisurely breakfast in the Lido and I had an appointment at 9 o'clock to have our safe battery changed as we were getting the low battery warning light coming on.After calling the front desk and attendant came down and changed out the battery easily. We were in Free to sit on out upon our day. My main goal was to purchase a 2027 Alaska calendar as we have not seen many yet so far in our cruise. And previous years I've been able to find them in this port. However, since we are so late in the season, we struck out in virtually all of the stores until we found a display of calendars in a shop on Creek Street. So I purchased one there which features photograph of northern lights. While on Creek Street, we watched the remains of the salmon run, trying to make it up the Gre...

 Since we didn't set an alarm, we let the sound of the thrusters wake us up. As is customary when the ship docs, we don't feel any movement or touch when the ship comes up against the dock. I've only been to Wrangell once before and that was on a flight on my way to Valdez. And I never left the airport so I've never been in the town itself proper. We prepared for our day, enjoyed the leisurely breakfast, and then scanned off the ship into a light drizzle. Our general plan for the day was to walk the little town and see what we could see, and depending on that it would determine when we would get back to the ship. We walked up  the main street and a few shops were open and we stepped in and chatted with the proprietors or workers and enjoyed those conversations. In the little Ace Hardware store we met Kathy who, as it turned out, grew up in Sitka and was a student of our now deceased friend who was the math teacher when she was in school. She clearly remembered him and t...