We have a very nice room in Beijing. However, it is quite a bit warmer than expected, and we didn’t figure out how to convice the A/C to kick in. Here is our room:
Our bedroom
And the bathroom:
Our fancy bathroom
Had breakfast at IHOP next to hotel.
Loaded everything into car. Kathy had one large bag on her lap for the short ride to the airport. Dropped all the bags off at the curb and returned the car.
Took over an hour to go through lines (get baggage stickers; go through customs; check bags; go through security), but we got to the gate just as they were doing the preboarding. The US Customs guy took forever with a couple two ahead of us. And security seemed extra thorough. For all our work to keep our bags under 50 lbs (and using an extra bag), they never weighed them.
We are on our way home! The lady in the middle seat had a bum leg and wanted the aisle seat, so I sat between her and her husband.
Had breakfast at IHOP next to hotel. Went to Vancouver First Church of the Nazarene for AM service. Chatted with people afterwards.
Went to Chinatown; interesting. Gave us a feel for how lost and disoriented Xiao Ying will be in the US.
Went to Vancouver Aquarium. Nice; half is outdoors. Saw a dolphin show. Saw a baby Baluga whale. Thousands of people were there to see the baby Baluga whale. We saw an interesting video about the birth. One fascinating aspect was that they had to bring a different whale in to show this one how to mother her baby, since she, being born in the aquarium, never observed a mother whale in action. It isn’t all instinct.
Ate burgers at A&W; packed; went to bed (cot arrived; very poor).
We slept in late. Ate breakfast at a local restaurant.
Butchart Gardens. Beautiful; lots of pictures. We need to find “Annual Phlox” for our garden. A bit of rain.
Ate dinner on ferry. OK.
Vancouver hotel (no cot).
Got off ship, got car, barely fit our bags in it, went to ferry, missed it by 4 minutes, waited 2 hours for the next one, went to Victoria, walked around the inner harbor, bought a hand-painted poster of Grace’s name, went to our hotel a block away, ate at Old Spaghetti Factory, went to bed.
We changed time zones last night; I slept in. I ate breakfast and went to the disembarkment instructions while the rest of the family ate.
We put the final touches on our boat. There were 4 other entries. One didn’t hold all 12 pop cans. All survived the cannon-ball test (empty). But Kay had gathered our whole group, so we had many to cheer us on, so we won the competition! They gave us a tee shirt, beach towel, a water bottle, and some “Dam Dollars’. But we were disappointed when we went to redeem them; they just had some logo items.
We had dinner at the Pinnacle Grill, the extra-cost restaurant on board ship. The filet mignon melted in your mouth. The girls laughed at the tiny (and strange) appetizers.
We packed, put our suitcases in the hall, and went to bed about 11:00 with the alarm clock set for 6:30.
I set an alarm and we got up at 6:15 to do some whale watching. As we approached “Snow Pass” we started seeing some! First, in the distance, you could see the spout of wet air where they were blowing. As we got closer, you could see their back and tail. I got a few good pictures.
We let the girls sleep in since we aren’t scheduled to arrive at Ketchikan until 2:00 this afternoon. Grace woke up very stuffed up.
We spent the morning working on our raft/ship. Kathy spent some time on deck. A beautiful day!
At lunchtime Grace felt feverish and skipped lunch to lay down. Joanna and I walked around town a bit. There was a nice local artist’s gallery. We also bought some Tylonol for Grace. It seemed to help her some; she wanted to get pushed around town also. She also had a good appetite for dinner.
Today we were in Juneau. Grace and I did a dog sled ride. It was good. The dogs pulled a golf cart with 6 of us on it. They also took some pictures with our camera of us on it. They then showed us how the do a quick health check on the dogs at the checkpoints. Then a girl going to college in Fairbanks told what it is like learning to race, including some of her mistakes. Finally the brought out some two-week old puppies - very cute!
We spent some time walking around town. Lots of tourist shops. We saw the governor’s house, complete with a trampoline in the back yard!
We went back to the ship and worked on our “build your own” project. We filled the bathtub and made sure it floated - it did as long as the cans are somewhat centered.
I had surf-and-turf tonight. Wonderful! During dinner the captain announced we would be going through an area known for whales about 6:30 or 7:00 tomorrow morning. Kathy says she wants to get up for that.
We saw some beautiful sunsets tonight.
Sunset
Grace wanted to try the “Breakfast in room” option, so we did. It didn’t work very well. The selection was quite limited, we got the food for each room about 15 minutes apart, and it was awkward trying to all eat together.
Today was Skagway. It is a very small town, completely set up for tourists. Our highlight was the “White Pass” train, which Gran said was “required”. It is over 100 years old, being constructed for the gold rush, and went through a very rugged and beautiful valley up to a pass. I bicycled back down. 20 miles of downhill riding! Very fun!
Again, we ate in the formal dining room. Tonight, the put us in the upper area, by a window, which is normally reserved for the “early sitting”. Nice view!
Well, we didn’t go to church today! We were in Sitka. We slept in a bit, but not very late. We took the tender to town; the harbor is too shallow for the ship.
We went to the Raptor Center which is a clinic and rehabilitation place for these large birds. Quite interesting! We saw a number of bald eagles, including some wild ones who came to see why a few were hanging around. They brought out an injured one for us to look at, close up.
We then hurried over to a “semi-sub” and grabbed some “fried bread” as our lunch on the way. The “semi-sub” has a below water area where you sit and view sea life through glass windows. The water was clearer than I expected and we saw quite a bit of sea-life: crabs, sea-stars, jelly-fish, fish, kelp.
We then wandered around town, found a “Ben Franklin’s”, and bought some stuff for our “build-a-ship” activity. We asked our room steward to save some water bottles for us.
We ate dinner at the formal dining room. The girls got a DVD from the ship’s “library” and watched part of it before bed. Kathy & I took a nice walk around the deck.