Inside Passage, Sitka
Trip Start
Jul 02, 2008
1
15
21
Trip End
Jul 21, 2008
Sitka,
Alaska,
United States
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
July 15, 2008
Inside Passage, Sitka
To start things off with, last night was an early night for me, I took a nap after being docked in Haines for about an hour. Mom and I went off the ship long enough to catch a geocache and then reboarded. I decided to lay down for a bit and fell asleep to get woken up at 10:30 pm to which I took a shower and put my PJ's on and then went back to sleep. I got up this morning about 6:30 this morning and went to the deck to see what I could see. Grabbed some breakfast and went back to my watch post and soon began seeing humback whales.
We saw about 5 or 6 humpbacks by the time we got to Sitka. Once in Sitka, we got off the boat and had a cab waiting for us to take us into town and show us around. We stopped at the Russion Orthodox church to look around but it was closed so we just checked it out from outside. The next stop was the Sitka National Historical Park where we toured the park and hiked one of the trails through the totem forest. We saw old totems still standing that told of the story of Sitka. Sitka was once a Russian town and a war broke out between the Tlingets and the Russians
Frederick Sound, Alaska- scenery
. The Tlingets took back the town of Sitka, but during the time frame, Sitka had become part of Russia and today still has alot of Russian history. We then went to the Raptor Rehabilitation Center, where mom picked up a geocache and then we went and toured the facility. This was really facinating as they had a pen which had real plants with a stream and fish and everything. These were the bird in which were learning to fly again and to be able to take care of themselves over after inuries that resulted in broken legs, amputation of wing tips and other injuries. They do have some raptors that will be unable to return to the wild and they are permantent residents that may eventually be well enough to go to a zoo or some other facility since they will not be able to be returned to the wild due to lost legs or parts of wings, blindness etc.We reboarded the boat and left shortly there after, spending most of the time sitting on the deck watching the scenery pass by and occasionally spotting wildlife. Todays wildlife sightings consist of:
Bald Eagles:
Humpback whales:
Dalls Porpoise
Stellar Sea Lions:
Jelly Fish:
Of these sightings I can officially say that 2 of the 5 animals are in double digits to the point I lost count. That which would be the bald eagles and humback whales. It I am correct the Humpbacks are in the count of around 15 with the bald eagles easily being around 30. We did see 2 pods of Dalls Porpoise and a group of Stellar sea Lions along with about a 10 jelly fish
How many eagles can you find?
. Of these, the neatest thing was in the cabin. We were making hot tea to take out deck and I spotted a humpback right outside our cabin window, cool, but the thing was in all the excitement I spilled the tea and then as we were cleaning that up another humpback appeared so we left the mess and went to watch to return later and finish cleaaning up the mess.All in all, it wasn't a bad day. I saw Chris breifly for about 10 minutes today while we were ashore in Sitka, although we was working we did talk for a brief period of time. The Jr Engineer I am truely hoping didn't recognize me when we bumped into each other as he was more of a pain and I really don't want to have to deal with him much.
We are currently winding down for the day and it is almost 10pm Alaskan Standard Time which is 2 am. I am not feeling the best as the cold and wind has gotten to me. It has been in the 50's today and misting and or cloudy most of the day, but I am optomistic that soon we will see sun as it shone on the mountains for a bit. Most of the chill and wiind comes from the boat moving and being outside, but like I said all in all, a good day.
Tomorrow we disembark in Ketchikan at 11:30am and then reboard onto the Columbia for the last leg of the trip to Bellingham. I have registered with the purser as a medical personell on board in the event of any medical emergencies, which in all truthfullness, lets hope there aren't any. While in Ketchikan we have to get the van off to switch vessels and will drive out to totem bight state historical park and maybe saxman and possibly even down town Ketchikan to creek street again- aka the red light district.
