First Day at Sea
Left to our own devices, Stan and I tend to sleep late when we can–I think it’s because we run ourselves so ragged during the week–and so we’re always tired. This last several weeks has been incredibly stressful for me–and we were sleep deprived. Even so, when I woke up at 7:30 and looked out of our oceanview window to see the craggy low mountains, I knew I wanted to get up and go on deck to enjoy the scenery.
We were lucky enough to find a window seat after we got our breakfast (the eggs benedict wasn’t that good–I wished I’d found the lox before I already had a plate full of food). The views were amazing–but we’re not yet at the iconic craggy glaciers of Alaska. My attempts at using my binoculars were not successful even with Stan’s coaching until he showed me how to pull out the eye pieces so my eyelashes didn’t hit the lenses. I think I’ve got the hang of them now, but it may still take me a while. I’m sure they’ll get a lot more use tomorrow when we’re kayaking–and since they’re waterproof I’ll be able to have them with me all of the time. We’ll have a waterproof camera and a waterproof pair of binoculars–one for each of us and we can trade off.
After breakfast, we went up to 15 and the outer railing to get better views. It was still pretty warm–warmer than we expected and we ended up carrying rather than wearing our jackets.
We ended up taking a nap before the vodka tasting–I guess that was to make up for getting up early!
Programs
I think almost all the programs on the ship are all infomercials. We got to the session on improving our digital photography while the GoPro talk was still going on. The photos the GoPro takes are absolutely amazing. They were sharp and focused and vibrant–it made me want one–but not badly enough to do anything about it :-).
The digital photography talk starte with a short plug for a specific camera, but it didn’t stay that way. The presentation wasn’t stellar, but it was useful–she walked through each of the photo settings on that particular camera and showed when to use the–Auto, Landscape, Portrait, etc. My camera is fairly similar to the one she was discussing, so it was helpful–I really don’t know as much about my camera as I could. I typically use the Auto setting, but I’m going to try out some of the others, especially Landscape, and see what kind of results I get.
After our British Pub lunch and another round of sitting by a window watching the sea, we went to a presentation on how feet cause back problems and other pain. The talk itself was interesting–she showed how uneven walking affects the back and knees and hips. Then the sales pitch started–we were both either gullible or convinced–it’s hard to say which right now. We bought the Good Feet inserts–and we’ll see if they really do help. Considering the amount of time I spend with my back hurting and how much I spend on massages, chiropractor, shoes, and so forth, if these help, they’ll be well worth the money.
In the elevator, we chatted with a couple who said they were going to the lumberjack show. That sounded interesting so we headed to the Princess Theater for it. It was partly a bit of history, partly an enumeration of the lumberjack competitions, and partly a guest-participation axe throwing contest. The winner won two tickets to the lumberjack show in Ketchikan tomorrow. We don’t plan to go to that, but it was fun watching people throw the axes at a target–I’d never heard of such a thing!
Formal night
Tonight is Formal Night–so we’re going to get dressed a bit early so that we can get some photos taken before dinner. We don’t tend to buy a lot of the ship-taken photos, but we often get one of our formal pictures–we both clean up pretty well! After the fact: No pictures, but we had a lovely dinner and turned in early. Even though we were gaining an hour overnight (moving into Alaska local time), it seemed like a good idea to get some decent sleep before our sea kayaking adventure in Ketchikan!