Today we spent doing things I kind of didn’t want to do. First we did a little bus tour around Seattle, which wasn’t awful but it wasn’t a lot of fun for me either. I don’t know, maybe I was just in a weird mood. I even skipped the walk down to the locks…I just stayed at the top of the hill and played with my Sidekick.

After that, and lunch, we went to the waterfront and boarded a ferry to Tillicum Village on Blake Island. I honestly was not impressed. My opinion was probably colored by the fact that the main dish was salmon, and I basically had a couple of veggies and a piece of bread for dinner. But honestly…the whole thing was just really hokey. It was a little Native American performance with dancing - I think I might have fallen asleep though. I am pretty sure I did on the ferry ride back at least!

Getting off the ship in Seattle was reasonably painless. In fact, they were early, and we weren’t finished eating breakfast but they were trying to hustle us off the ship! We basically just walked right off - with one more trip past the hand sanitizers, I’m not sure why they care if you’re leaving! - and headed straight into the terminal. The customs officer didn’t even glance at my passport, and we went to collect our luggage and catch a cab to the hotel.

I really loved our hotel as soon as I saw it, it was called the Moore Hotel. Unfortunately we there much too early to check in - we got there around 10:00 and check-in was firm at 3:00! So my mom went to walk around, I went geocaching, and A just stayed in the hotel lobby to read. When I was done geocaching, I went back to the hotel and found A there, and we went to Pike’s Place Market to get something to eat. I had really fabulous Thai food at a little hole in the wall called Jasmine Thai - it was so great!

We went back to the hotel and found that our room was ready. We had been told that it was just an L-shaped room with no divisions, but we were pleasantly surprised to find that there was in fact a door. We’d already been promised to be moved to a different room (also with two separate rooms) for the next two nights that was cheaper, so we stuck with that plan even though the room we were in turned out to be fine.

Today was more or less a sea day, because we didn’t get into Victoria until 6:00pm. We played bingo in the morning, which of course was a waste - we didn’t win cash or a free cruise, so the point was really just to have fun playing. A said she likes it better than slots because the suspense is more drawn out.

We went to lunch at the Summer Palace restaurant with my mom, and the boat was rocking hard for several hours. It didn’t bother me at all (perhaps I should take up surfing?) but I still had a hard time in the hallways because everyone ELSE was tottering around.

At Victoria, we boarded our bus for a tour around the city. I thought the bus driver was pretty bad - LOTS of dumb jokes, mentioning things HE could see without saying “on your right” or “about 2:00″ or anything, etc. I just didn’t like the guy. When the tour was over, he brought us back to the ship. We immediately took the shuttle bus back downtown so I could do a little geocaching; I found one virtual easily, and I tried for a nearby physical one but it was somewhere that wasn’t open 24 hours.

We took the shuttle back to the ship and found out the cafe where we were to meet ms_interpret at 11:15pm actually closed at 10pm. Rather than waiting around alone in the dark and cold, we decided to head back onto the ship so we could finish last-minute packing before the bags had to be placed in the hallway at 1am.

Our day at sea was spent very simply. We read a lot, and we looked at Hubbard Glacier, which looked pretty much just like it did the last time I saw it. It was nice to have a balcony this time though; I was able to enjoy it from my own room rather than out on deck with a million other people. I don’t think we got as close as I did back in September 2005, though - I heard something about there being baby seals around so we couldn’t get any closer than a certain point. In addition to the weather, greater snowmelt, and better sales (end of season), that’s another reason to go in September if we go again. I think also, if we go again, I won’t do any shore excursions in some places because I still haven’t fully explored them myself. (The White Pass railway is still a must-do, though.)

We pulled into Skagway today at 7:00am. Our tour met at 8:00am and we hadn’t had any caffeine yet, so we were sleepy as we piled onto the White Pass railroad train. In fact, we were sleepy for a lot of the trip, especially on the way back. But the ride was just as amazing as it was the first time - I would probably do it a third time if I ever go back to Alaska. The views are just outstanding. I don’t theink there are any scenes in the continental U.S. that are so beautiful, with the possible exception of the Grand Canyon.

After we returned to downtown Skagway, we got some lunch and then split up - A went shopping and I went caching. The first one I tried for was a virtual that was easy to get, and the next one I attempted was downtown. After about an hour looking around in the cold and the rain, I gave up. I found a very likely spot but it just wasn’t there. There was another one about a mile away, but after walking a quarter-mile in the nasty weather, I gave up on that one as well.

I had a couple of hours before our afternoon tour, so I wandered through a few shops and the Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park’s visitor center. There was an exhibit there about Jack London, which inspired me to go buy a $5 copy of Call of the Wild at the locally owned bookstore.

Our afternoon tour was very cute, it started wtih a show at Liarsville, where we also panned for gold - it had been planted, of course. We then went back to downtown Skagway and the Red Onion Saloon, where we had a tour of the brothel rooms upstairs. I thought the whole tour was a rather good deal at $40, but one woman said she was going to get her money back because it was overpriced and she didn’t like it. I was tempted to say “good luck with that” but I didn’t.

We spent today seeing sights around Juneau. We were a bit late getting into port, and we were delayed further by a lunch that took too long in the Summer Palace restaurant, but we made it outside in time for our tour. Our first stop was the State Museum, which really should combine forces with the nearby City Museum - it would enhance both their collections.

Our next stop was a salmon hatchery, which utterly horrified me. It might have been better if the description hadn’t been so tarted up. The guide said the sexually mature salmon go into a “dream box” where they are touched with “a DC current” that “makes them go to sleep” and “they don’t ever wake up from that sleep.” Translation: we zap ‘em dead.

I enjoyed the Glacier Gardens much more than the salmon hatchery. There are no roller coasters in Alaska, but the ride up and down the mountain was pretty damn close! I really enjoyed the rain forest and the view from the top.

Our final stop was the Mendenhall Glacier. We walked out on the mud flat and took some pictures before heading back into the visitor center. Unfortunately, we were only in there for five minutes when they announced it would be closing shortly. Our driver didn’t come back for another 30 minutes, by which point everybody was waiting and we all piled onto the bus.

I asked the driver to drop me off in town because I had some errands to run; several other people got off the bus with me. My first stop was the Patsy Ann waymark, which I created after my first trip to Alaska a year and a half ago. I recorded the proper coordinates - I’d guessed wrong using a map, which resulted in running a quarter-mile the wrong way to find my own waymark! Fortunately someone in a jewelry shop got me headed the right way and I was able to take a couple of pictures and record the proper coordinates. Then I set off running for my next stop, the Alaskan Fudge Company. Time was short because our tour was so long, but I had time to buy fudge and race over to the shuttle pickup point. (We were parked at the AJ Dock, unfortunately.) But with a lot of running, I got all my errands done and made it back to the ship a full 30 minutes before all-aboard time.

Our first day at sea was, as usual, pretty uneventful. A and I woke up very early, and I had my dislike of freestyle dining confirmed by being sent on a wild goose chase looking for breakfast. I wanted table service, not the buffet, but it was nearly impossible to find. We finally got squared away in the Summer Palace dining room, which has traditional dining, the way I like it. Breakfast was fine.

After breakfast, A and I did some reading in the Bliss nightclub, which has really cool Asian-inspired decor and plays 80’s music videos on big screens. We went back there later in the day and played bowling for $10 total for one game. I think A bowled a 61 and I bowled a 44. I also got to play a single hole of Wii golf around lunchtime. I could have played more but there were lots of eager kids waiting so I kept my turn short.

When it was time to get ready for formal night, I discovered that I left my dress at home. I quickly ran to the gift shop but they didn’t have black slacks in exactly my size. I bought them anyway but they really were too small and I tried to return them. Unfortunately I could only have store credit, and only on the spot! I ended up with a bottle of DiSaronno amaretto, which you can’t even keep in your cabin; a nail kit that I thought was a wallet; and a 3 Musketeers bar.

I was unimpressed with Mambo’s, the tex-mex place we tried for dinner. I had really been looking forward to it, and the salsa before the meal was great, but the entree wasn’t any good at all. Even the margarita was barely passable. After dinner we went to the onstage show, Garden of a Geisha. A and I agreed that it was unintentionally hilarious. One of the geishas was played by a man and he smirked the whole time. The show wasn’t very realistic - I’m sure real geishas, and any self-respecting Japanese person, would have fled the auditorium immediately. It didn’t help that one of the male characters was wearing the obi of an unmarried woman, or that the acrobats did little more than voguing in midair. After all this we tried to go to the Friends of Dorothy meeting again, but we arrived 20 minutes late so who knows if anybody had shown up. We had fun with the bartender and server again, we had a lot of drinks and tipped them well.

Today can probably only be described as a disaster. We made it to Seattle in the end, but there were catastrophes along the way. We were almost to BWI Airport when my mother realized she had left her retainers at home. Fortunately FedEx offers same day service - it was $275 but she now has her retainers. The flight from Baltimore was fine, we had a three hour layover in Denver that was fine, and the flight to Seattle was fine even though I was in the middle seat. When we touched down I turned on my phone…and I had voicemail from Travelocity saying our reservation had been screwed up and I should call the hotel. So I did, and we’d been moved to a somewhat nicer sister property down the road. I told her a FedEx package would be coming there, and she promised to call. I was saved a mile (RT) walk because the FedEx courier was willing to drive it over. Now I’m exhausted from a screwed up day and I’m going to sleep.