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We've been sailing all night through the Strait of Georgia with Vancouver Island to the west. It rained a bit last night. We spent the entire day at sea. The dinner last night was one of the two "Let's play dress up" dinners for the cruise. It was a very nice evening and a fine dining experience. Marilyn popped for some excellent wine and we all had a very good evening. We hit a couple of bars with some entertainment and had a blast. Thank God we picked up another hour in moving northwest toward Ketchikan over night.

The ship arrived in Ketchikan at 6:30 AM. As usual, I was up at 5:00 AM to watch the sunrise and arrival into Ketchikan. Ketchikan is a cute little fishing town with mountains all around. I knew that a lot of this area was mountainous, but didn't know all of it was. Every mile we've travelled from Vancouver has been mountainous.

Back home we selected excursions to do at each of our 3 ports on the way to Anchorage. The activity for Ketchikan we picked is a backcountry jeep and canoe experience. We had a great time driving several miles into the bush, climbing mountains and busting through streams. After an hour in the jeep, we then arrived at a beautiful lake, Lake Harriet Hunt. The lady it was named after was famous for shutting down the red light district in town. That didn't endear her to me, haha. But the lake was really gorgeous. We then paddled a large canoe across the lake to take a nature walk and learned a lot of things, most of which I've already forgorgotten as usual. Before the walk, they gave us a nice shore lunch of clam chowder and smoked salmon. We saw a 750 year old Sitka Spruce and lots of other interesting plants.

After arriving back in town, we had about 1-1/2 hours before having to board the ship, so we decided to take in some of the local color. On the advice of our guide, Jacque, we went to the Asylum Bar. It's owned by a couple of elerly ladies who provided great service and some good stories about the area.

After getting back to the ship we had a couple more cocktails in the hot tub to soothe our aching paddling muscles. We were all a bit pooped and took a nap long enough to miss our dinner time, so once again we ate at the buffett. Our schedules for sleeping are a bit off since we are curently three hours earlier than Chicago. But, who cares about schedules?

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