Live from the Radiance of the Seas August 31, 2018 to Seward to Vancouver

[xpcdoojk]

Last port was Ketchikan.... tomorrow I will finish this up, then I will fly off to Barcelona to drive around the South of France and Monaco before boarding the Symphony of the Seas first TA.

 

jc

[John&LaLa]

43 minutes ago, xpcdoojk said:

Last port was Ketchikan.... tomorrow I will finish this up, then I will fly off to Barcelona to drive around the South of France and Monaco before boarding the Symphony of the Seas first TA.

 

jc

 

What are you driving?

[A&L_Ont]

On 10/19/2018 at 10:22 PM, xpcdoojk said:

4 timed out another view of the bridge and five....

 

Lisa and I were picked up here after we did a 5 mile hike and chopper ride. We were rewarded with beer, crackers and salmon patty.  After 5 miles that was reward enough. As for the bridge we too were told that it was an engineering marvel. No way you’d get me out there today, let alone back in 2004. 

[xpcdoojk]

16 hours ago, John&LaLa said:

 

What are you driving?

 

Originally when I booked Hertz had MINI Coopers, but I think they have replaced them in the Barcelona fleet with BMW X1s.

 

Of course, they will probably substitute a Yugo.

 

jc

[John&LaLa]

3 minutes ago, xpcdoojk said:

 

Originally when I booked Hertz had MINI Coopers, but I think they have replaced them in the Barcelona fleet with BMW X1s.

 

Of course, they will probably substitute a Yugo.

 

jc

 

Ask for a Trabant. 😁

[xpcdoojk]

Last real port of call Ketchikan we did the cruiseline Rainforest and Canopy Zipline at 9:30AM and then 1:30PM Bear Country and Wildlife tour.  Turns out they are the same place.  

 

The zipline was the same mechanism as the one Krystal and I did back in 2010 in Puerta Vallarta with Vallarta Adventures.  You are double lined at every station so you are never without at least one line holding you up in the trees.  Some of the trees were unbelievably tall.  It was Sally, Krystal and I and our entire bus load of about 18 people was split into two smaller groups.  The kids operating the tour were very competent (we were at the end of the season).  It was a good zipline adventure.  We had a couple of ladies who were terrified but they managed to finish the course, and were quite pleased with themselves.  I even took their picture and sent it to them to memorialize the moment.  Afterwards we repelled down into th visitor shop village.  Where they had a few animals they were rehabilitating, and a knife shop plus regular souvineers they offered us free coffee or hot chocolate.  Then we waited for the bus.  

 

When the bus took us back to town, we met up with Sue and Shelby on the bus to go to the next adventure after we had a round of  Halibut fish and chips at Alaska Fish House and an Alaskan beer   The fish and chips were yummy, and considering how long the line was to place an order the food came almost instantly.  Which was a good thing since we were tight on schedule.

 

The return ride quickly convinced me we were indeed going back to the same location where we had seen zero bears high up in the tree canopy.  We were given a quick orientation by our guide (young woman) when her friend (another young woman) came in and was excited to share her good news of a job at a National park in the lower 48.  They were both super excited.  There was a lot of end of season what are we doing this fall and winter on our entire trip.  Anyway, the two ladies took us out on to a deck about 15 to 20 feet above the creek.  We immediately were told that there were at least 4 bears and 2 cubs that we should be able to see.  Sure enough, a mother and a small cub were fishing around a tree over the river.  The cub was just playing with the fish that were already killed, but the mother was trying to catch some of the Salmon as far up this little creek that they could go.  We watched these two for about 30 minutes before we moved further along the deck.  Eventually we came up a mother fishing further down the river (close enough you could see the actual bay.  The salmon were thick, as the river was a series of rocks with small bodies of water the salmon forced themselves up the river over these rocks.  There were hundreds of deal salmon and the seagulls were going after these.  

 

I always envisioned this as the bears being skillful and expertly catching the fish.  This is completely not the way it actually was.  The mother bear was clearly bored with salmon, she would stand on a rock and when the salmon landed on it or jumped by her face she might catch it or put her paw on it because it was sort of laying there.  There was no skill in fact she looked clumsy.  After catching a fish, she would flop it on the rock, immediately put her paw on the stomach of the fish causing the eggs to squirt out on the rocks.  Then she would lick them up, after that she might pick up the fish and try to bite where the brains are.  Then she would dump the fish back into the puddle.  Finally her cub who was hiding about 20 feet up a tree came down to help her fish.  An effective helper the cub was not.  

 

After a couple of hours of watching this experience in total we moved further down the deck.  We were met with a bear on the deck.  One of our guides told us to stop and then she sort of stared down the bear who shortly turned and scampered off the deck into the woods.  Then as we were walking back to the gift shop area, I spotted a banana slug.  It was about five or six inches young and sort of pale yellow.  She picked it up and asked us if we wanted to lick it.  Nobody offered so she licked it for us.  Welcome to Alaska.

 

jc

[xpcdoojk]

20 minutes ago, John&LaLa said:

 

Ask for a Trabant. 😁

 

Hopefully Hertz has removed those from their fleet.

 

jc