vacation Tuesday (Aug 16): Ketchikan

We woke up pulling into Ketchikan. Alaska was pretty much just as I pictured it: mountains with pine

trees. It was beautiful, although foggy with a light rain.

Our tour was Totem Bring State Park and a lumberjack show. If I remember correctly, we booked this

tour as one of our smaller tours and as something to do to get off the boat. It started with a short bus

ride around the city. There are a lot of staircase houses, where there are massive staircases to either

get to the house or to get to the front door. These are here just because it is a very steep area and it’s

easier to climb stairs than hills. There was also a salmon ladder that we didn’t get to see but probably

could have walked to…if we ever come back I’d like to see it.

We went on to Totem Bright state park, where there are a bunch of recreated totem poles from the

area. While neither Ben or I are really into totem poles, and still aren’t after the tour, it was still

interesting. The time and effort it would take to even make a small totem pole was rather amazing. We

also got to walk in a little forest…there’s not much top soil so there ends up being a lot of exposed roots

due to rain over 200 days per year. There was a light rain while we were there, but nothing too bad.

We put up our umbrellas for a bit, but it was mostly super light rain or no rain.

After the state park we went to a lumber jack show. It was fun. It’s amazing how quickly they can chop

and saw through a thick piece of wood. There was a bit too much crowd participation for my taste, but

oh well. We needed to walk back to the boat after this and it would have been nice if they could have

communicated this better. There was a half hour between the end of the show and all-aboard time.

Ben and I could do it no problem, but it probably took about ten minutes. Most of the people with us

were pretty mobile, but I could see that being a small problem for some of the people.

After dinner we went to see the comedian. He was pretty funny and did a nice job. We then played a

game of cribbage (I finally won a game) and went to sleep. 

vacation Monday (Aug 15): day at sea

 Today was a day at sea. We didn’t think any of the planned activities were all that interesting, so we just
took it easy. We did a lot of reading, played some games, watched a movie, and ate a lot of food. The
food was all good today. The best thing was a special dark chocolate and lime dessert. There were also
some hazelnuts for crunch.

The weather was foggy. The captain said the fog would leave by noon, but it came and went all day. I
also thought I saw a whale spout and perhaps a flick of a tale, but my guess is that it’s only a 30% chance
that I actually saw it. I’ll give it a strong maybe, and there was a lot of excitement on my end.

These signs kept showing up on the smart screens, but dinner tonight was the first time I was actually able to get a picture with one.  Usually I just saw them out of the corner of my eye or they didn't come up when I was ready to get a picture.

Saturday: lazy

It was a lazy day today.  We all did stuff in the basement for a while in the morning.  (Isaac brought his game down to join us; I wasn't sure he would.)

I read a lot.  I wasn't feeling bad, but I also wasn't feeling quite right.  There were a lot of things I should have been doing, but I got a few things crossed off the list, several things added to the list, and decided that it was fine to chill more than normal.

Vacation Sunday (Aug 14): on the boat

 It took us a bit to get to sleep, even though it was late and we were super tired. Of course, we also
woke up early due to the time change. We lazed around for a while, got a muffin from the lobby,
pretended to take a nap, and were finally on our way.

Our Uber driver was a bit scary. If I had been the drivers around us I would have been rather upset.
That being said, he got us there safely and easily on time. We drove through the port area of Seattle
and while it was a whirl wind and poor tour, it was still fun to see. Coming up from the south Ben and I
were both surprised at how small the Sky Needle looked compared to the other buildings, but once we
were on the boat we saw that it was much farther north and that looking at it from the west made it
look set apart and taller.

Check-in went so smoothly. The only small issue was that an airport agent had ripped off a luggage tag
and the signage for getting new luggage tags wasn’t great. Then Ben had to go through two staplers
because the first didn’t actually have any staples. We had preordered our medallions that let them track
our every movement, and so got to skip a ton of lines.

Now, the app that they use is terrible. I’ll return to this later, but it wouldn’t let me (or Ben) upload my
vaccination card or proof of negative test. Ben was able to upload his stuff. Anyway, that put us in the
“blue” lane instead of the “green” lane. Well, this actually worked out to our advantage because the
blue lane had two groups of people and the green lane looked like it would take about a half-hour. So in
this case the bad app helped us. They verified all our info and said we could get on the boat!

We had lunch right away. I had a calzone with half an apple tart. They were both good, but not
amazing. We tried to watch our safety video through the app but it wouldn’t load. We finally got to our
room (in the very front of the boat) and the beds were twins because the app didn’t submit our
preference for a queen. (Now, we knew this could easily be changed, but again, the dumb app.)
We dropped off the backpack and went to explore. We were both surprised (quite literally) to see Mt.
Rainer. We weren’t expecting to see mountains and then there one was! We enjoyed finding other
mountains around the boat after that.

I ended up taking a nap after our tour. It’s also when Ben realized that our dinner reservations hadn’t
been saved and the person on the phone was very unhelpful. We decided to walk to guest services, and
a nice lady there found us a table at our desired time and we were able to get a reservation at one of
the nice restaurants, which had been completely booked when Ben talked to the person on the phone.
While we wouldn’t have gone hungry, it’s nice to have a reservation.

Dinner…was a bit interesting. The couple two tables down from us was obnoxious. As we sat down they were bickering with each other and then a manager came over and they complained about the wine for twenty minutes. A couple finally sat down between us and things got back to normal. The four of them talked about a lot of things but it was normal conversation topics. The food itself was delicious. A cold pineapple soup and some cod with mashed potatoes, carrots and green beans.

We found a place to play a game while watching the coastline and sunset and headed back to our room
to read. We fell asleep fairly quickly…it had been a long day and we weren’t used to the time
change yet.

Friday: sort of last day of summer vacation

...then school comes along just to end it.  (We're watching Phineas and Ferb and there's no way I can say "of summer vacation" without singing more of the theme song.)

Anyway, we still have a weekend left but it's still kind of the last day of summer.  It was an excellent summer.  There were a lot of vacations and a lot of games and more time with friends than previous summers.  Definitely the best summer in a while, although the last two summers were completely empty or scaled back due to COVID.  This also meant that I did a lot of packing and unpacking, but since I ignored most chores (besides food, kitchen stuff, and laundry) it worked out.

So today.  We took a bike ride to a donut shop.  It was 1.5 miles from home which isn't that far, but Joshua isn't solid on his bike yet.  We did it anyway.  He did fall on the way home, but we had two Band-Aids and the fall wasn't really that bad.  He thought he wanted to walk the rest of the way, but we were still a ways out so I told him to get back on his bike and he could do it!  I wasn't sure what I'd do if he decided to refuse, but luckily he didn't.  He was pretty much back to normal a few minutes later.

I also played more games with both kids today than in a normal day.  They asked, I said yes.  It worked well.

Thursday: errands

 We had several errands today, but they didn't take up too much time.

*Get more kitty food because I had a great coupon.  The boys pretty much spent the coupon on a new cat toy.

*Get a new drain spout and garbage can with a step at Lowes.  Both boys wanted to try the garbage can.  Isaac did it; no problem.  Joshua tried, and it wouldn't work.  It turned out every time it needed a weird jiggle before it'd work again.  I moved up to the slightly more expensive model.  Joshua tried it; no problem.  Isaac tried it; it wouldn't work.  Needless to say, I wouldn't recommend a Rubbermaid step-opening garbage can right now.  We left without one.

*Peanut store.  What more can I say?

*Scrapyard, which is the rock climbing place Isaac's about to start lessons at.  We went so that Joshua could see it and maybe change his mind about lessons.  As we were looking, someone says hi to me...we know each other a bit from Hope and see each other in the most random places.  Well, it turns out he's actually the owner and therefore once I told him the purpose of the trip let the kids climb for a few minutes.  Joshua had a great time and changed his mind to yes, so we signed him up right away.  The kids talked my ear off on the way home about the different holds and the small amount that they learned in the ten minutes that they climbed.

*Meet the teacher night.  It was not really that fun.  It was too crowded.  However, both kids successfully met and interacted with their teachers and found their classrooms which I guess was the main point.  By the time we got out it was on the late side.  I was planning on picking up dinner anyway, but by the time we were done with dinner it was almost 7:30pm.

In other news, while we were prepping the school supplies Joshua cut open the clorox wipes wrapping and had me put it on my head.  It was a pretty good fit, so I was just wearing it around.  I stepped outside to shake something out, only to realize there were people walking by while I was wearing this awesome hat.  The kids got a kick out of my embarrassment. :s

Wednesday: empty calendar

There was nothing on the calendar today!  Not even a birthday or a bill to pay or anything.

The boys wanted a stay-at-home day and I kind of gave in.  I made them go on a bike ride with me.  This is the first bike ride that we've taken as a trio and I though it was going to be a disaster, honestly.  Joshua's bike is rather slow and he still isn't a great rider.  I was afraid Isaac would go way ahead of us and that Joshua would fall down and give up due to a scrape.

But it went really well!  Isaac didn't go too fast and Joshua, while a bit unstable at times, didn't fall down.  Both of their bike seats were too low, but they've now been adjusted for the next ride.

Joshua built with Legos most of the day.  He finished his X-wing and started on a golden dragon.  I got to make the neck and part of the wings for it.