Alaska, Day 3, Sitka

Oh! My favorite place in the whole world right now. Sitka houses about 9000 people. Most of their houses are on little bitty islands just big enough for a house and maybe a satellite dish. Everyone owns boats. Very few cars.

I LOVED this house. SO cool! We arrived in Sitka around 9am.We were not able to get the cruise ship near the docks in this town so we all had to shuttle back and forth in these little boats. They probably had about 50 people in them. On our way back to the ship the guy that was driving our little boat didn't know what he was doing. I also think the tides were working against him but it took us 25 minutes to get a rope attached to where ever it was supposed to go so we could get off. It was a joke. Everyone was getting upset and telling the driver how to do it but I don't think it was completely his fault. We would get very close and then we would bump off the side and that would send us back out away from the ship. Over and over and over again. Finally some supervisor got on and got us in. He was so mad at our pilot that he was shaking. I fear the pilot may have gotten fired that day. This is the view from town looking out into the "bay". Not really a bay, don't know what to call it. Fjord, maybe? Anyway, the ocean that has no waves because we're really inland a ways. You can see the huge cruise ship looming in the background.

We walked quite a ways to a National Forest that had lots of totem poles from the indigenous Indians. BEAUTIFUL!!!!

This is where we saw our first Bald Eagle up in a tree. He was flying around at one point. Bald Eagles have a wing span of 8 feet across. Hold your arms out and add 2 or 3 feet to them. They really are quite impressive.

We shopped at all the little stores there. Lots and lots of jewelry stores. The cruise ship gave us a book that had coupons in them for charms and collector's coins from various shops. It was like a huge scavenger hunt. We went from shop to shop asking for our free items. It was a blast. You had to collect them from all four ports of call to get the entire sets. The charms ended up spelling out "Alaska 09". We got 8 "gold" coins, 4 coasters, Christmas ornaments, hats, necklaces and I don't remember what else. All free. Whoo hoo!

We went all the way to Alaska and found a Mexican joint to eat at. We shopped till we literally dropped! We got back to the ship around 4ish. Of course you have to add a half hour for the guy to get us docked right. But we were exhausted. We went back to our rooms to rest, then to dinner at 6pm.

At 8:15 we watched the cruise director and assistant put on a Blues Brothers show. That was GREAT! They acted just like John Belushi & Dan Aykroyd. We also watched a magic show this night. He was stupid but funny. Silly, I guess is a better word. And stupid.

After the shows were over, we had to go upstairs so we could see just how dark it was. This picture was taken at 11pm! Crazy!!!

The following pictures were both taken at 10pm. Both the sun and the moon were up at the same time. I just couldn't get over that sun! Good thing we had a room with no windows. We took our handy dandy clock that shines up on the ceiling which helped tremendously. Only problem was, the only plug was down by our feet so the clock showed upside down. Not good when you think its 6 am but its really 9!