Day 2
Tami found a jigsaw puzzle up on the activity deck, so we’re stuck here for a while. Just have to watch out for the occasional misdirected ping pong ball. Mike found one puzzle piece, so he’s happy with himself.
This is a day at sea, so we’ll be looking for shipboard activities. Not too much on offer this morning (mostly sales pitches gussied up as lectures), but this afternoon there is an actual natural history lecture and a wine tasting (with appetizers). That should get us through till dinner.
We are experimenting with our new technology for this trip’s blog. The iPad is our computer, but we found a keyboard to use with it that makes typing much easier. It works quite well, but we notice that the apostrophe, the “a” key and the “o” key are particularly prone to not typing. So while we try to catch those, we cnt alwys!

Mike at work on the blog

Mike also found a great gadget to transfer pictures directly from the camera’s SD card to the iPad- slick!
So now we sit on the uppermost deck by a huge picture window, watching the sea as we steam towards our first stop tomorrow, Juneau. We passed along the west shore of Haida Gwaii earlier this evening. We spotted splashes by some sort of sea creature. No idea what that was, so we like to imagine it was something exciting. We are hopeful that we will see some whales on this trip- ’tis the season.
The natural history lecture was, well, kind of weird. It seemed to be more of a motivational speech about taking on seemingly impossible feats. The speaker is a self-proclaimed naturalist who lives on a small remote island somewhere in Alaska. He moved there years ago knowing nothing about wilderness living and somehow managed to survive. That seems to be his qualification as a naturalist. Not a lot of talk about the flora and fauna, so we will view future lectures with skepticism.
The wine tasting was thoroughly enjoyable with a nice selection of 6 wines and very tasty appetizers to accompany them. Our table mates at the tasting were also very enjoyable. Sharon and Shannon are both from Minnesota and we gathered that they don’t drink much wine. They were having one heck of a good time, though, even if they really didn’t seem to like many of the wines. Hard to stop oneself from reaching over and grabbing the glass before the waiter takes away that sample of $100/bottle wine that they don’t like because it’s too dry. But we exercised restraint and expressed joy along with them over the delectable chocolate truffles that were served.
Tonight was Formal Night. No, Tami did not wear a dress, but she did change out of her Sounders shirt for the event. As Mike was dressing, a loud and heartfelt “UH OH” was heard in the cabin. Turns out that Mike hasn’t worn his suit in a very long time and had forgotten that he always wore a different pair of slacks with the suit and that the suit slacks were too small, by a good margin (not even close to buttoning). Good thing he had a belt he could hold them up with, and by keeping his jacket buttoned no one was the wiser or embarrassed or shocked by a more serious wardrobe malfunction.
Dinner was delicious again, including smoked duck breast and asparagus soup with salmon dumplings. Tonight we passed on dessert to the shock of the waiter (it seems that not many pass on dessert). We are now enjoying the calm seas and grey skies, hoping that the clouds lift a little higher by tomorrow.