After Skagway, it's an almost 24 hour long cruise to Prince Rupert, Canada. Not much to see since our cabin was on the sea side of the ship now. We did see this lighthouse though, yay!
Looks like we're turning. Must be heading toward Canada now.
Hey look, the person on that boat is taking a picture of US!
We arrive in Prince Rupert at 4 PM and it's right off the ship and on to the "Ancient Village, Petroglyphs and Rain Forest Discovery" tour. We safely made it through the border security even though our passport renewals hadn't arrived in the mail in time to bring with us. I hope that going back through is just as easy! We found our way to the right dock and climbed on the local water taxi (at that hour it was acting as our tour boat) for our tour and ride out to the island.
On our way out we got a little history of the natives of Canada. We float past some of the outlying villages on nearby islands and their newest totem pole. It's the first pole raised by the local natives for a really long time. They were forbidden to do it for a while, but I can't remember whether it was political or religious reasons. Anyway, you can tell that this totem pole is pretty new by the fresh wood color--I think they raised it just last year.
It was a pretty bumpy ride and we soon found out that the swells were too big for us to safely dock at the island. This is the closest we got to the ancient village, petroglyphs and rain forest.
So it's back to the mainland.
We got some extra time to explore the town of Prince Rupert. This was my first step onto Canadian soil.
As we were walking along the row of shops and restaurants we stumbled upon this guy:
There just "happened" to be some fresh fish just sitting on the wall. What luck!
We then realized that the huge pine tree behind us was FULL of eagles! If you enlarge the photo you can pick them out by their white heads.
It didn't take long for the other ones to catch on and soon we had quite the eagle show.
I think this little guy would like some of the grub, but the old guy doesn't look like he has any intention of sharing.
Not sure what this guy was saying, but I don't think he was very happy.
So he left.
I could have stayed and watched the eagles all day, but it's time to go back to the ship.
As we head back to the ship we saw one of the other tour groups coming back. The weather must have calmed down enough for them to go out.
No hiccups going back through security. Back on the ship we have a whole day on the open sea so there was lots of time to kill--lots of games of cards, trips to the nearest restaurant for Mountain Dew refills and wildlife watching. It's hard to tell, but we think these three were orcas.
And a lone whale of some kind.
Late that night there was a huge dessert buffet party. The whole buffet area was full of all kinds of deserts, chocolates, chocolate fountains and a bunch of chocolate/candy statues. Needless to say, I felt pretty sick after that little outing.
We saw another ship passing by at one point. The ship is so much prettier at night all lit up against the black ocean/sky behind it. We were like . . . two ships passing in the night . . . sorry, couldn't help it.
We pulled into Seattle at 8 am the next morning. It was fun to watch the sun rise behind the city.
Here's a view of the Public Market from the other side.
A cab to the airport and we're on our way home. By the way, I had sea legs for a week!
1 comment:
Oh, very pretty! I love the picture of the ship passing in the night :) and great pic's of seattle as well. I just assumed that it is raining 24/7 there, nice picture of it not!
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