July 5, 2023

Yesterday was a great July 4 on the ship. It started out with a special breakfast for the members of the President’s Circle in the Oceania Club. We were joined by our cruise directors for the voyage, our general manager and our around the world host and hostess. We ordered from the menu and after having our mimosas, we also had special muffins for the occasion. There were three tables and only a few of the members didn’t attend.

In mid afternoon, there was a guest “Rising Stars” comedy show hosted by Tom Drake. Five passengers did their routines. Some funnier than others but I do admire them for doing it.

We were at sea and scheduled to cruise the Hubbard Glacier, but the weather got quite foggy and there was a lot of ice in the sea, so the captain couldn’t get any closer than 7 miles from the glacier. There was a lot of other nice scenery though. As I did my deck walk, I stopped to take the occasional picture.

We had a great July 4 lunch with all of the typical foods – great job by the culinary team.

All of the 374 world cruise guests were asked to wear our jackets and pose on deck for a group picture. You can imagine trying to get THAT set up! Well here it is. Can you spot us? Like looking for Waldo.

After the last show by the entertainment team, Showdown, (Robbie won) Ray and Dottie gave flowers to the whole group since this is the last show they will perform together. Robbie leaves in a few days for a wedding in his home town in Scotland – he will be back – and most of the rest of the team will leave in San Francisco. There were many tears shed on the stage.

Later, in Horizons late night, we had our July 4 celebration with cake, music and of course, the national anthem sung by Laura.

Now on to Sitka. I took these shots as we sailed in. It is a beautiful place! It is the only Inside Passage community that fronts the Pacific Ocean. It is a city of about 8500 people but the land mass makes it the biggest city area wise in the United States. Much of the land is inaccessible and there are many islands. Russia sold Alaska to the United States on October 18, 1867 with a transfer ceremony held here in Sitka on the Baranof Castle State Historic Site.

We arrived at 11:30 and were anchored. There is a cruise dock at the other end of town but other ships were already docked there. The Viking Orion was also anchored near us. Once the tenders got ready, we went to shore and browsed around the town before our tour. It is a very charming main street and we enjoyed the shops. We also visited St. Michael’s Russian Orthodox Cathedral which seemed more like a museum. There are no pews in the church. People who attend the mass stand through the whole thing unless they are disabled in which case a chair is brought in for them.

Our tour today was Fin Island Lodge and Zodiac Adventure. We got our life jackets and had a brief safety talk, then we split into two groups with two guides for each zodiac.

Our other guide was a recent graduate in marine biology and she gave us lots of information about the sea otters, sea lions and bald eagles. The largest population of bald eagles is here in Alaska and we saw many of them. The sea otters eat this kelp and they also use it to wrap their babies to secure them when they are away as well as to secure groups when the seas are rough. Their fur has one million strands per inch! A typical house cat has that many on their whole body! They live in the water and never come on land. They are pretty quick so I didn’t get very good pictures. But here is a patch of their fur.

The scenery is really hard to show in pictures – simply spectacular.

After about a 90 minute cruise around the area, we went to Fin Island for our dinner. This small island has a wooden building made from the local wood. It is open 6 months a year during the tourist/cruise ship season. In the winter, they actually take the whole pier down. The lodge is totallu run by a generator and the solar panels. We had a delicious meal of snow crab, coho salmon, salmon chowder and all of the fixings. And s’mores made over the open fire outside.

We learned that the main health system for the area is here in Sitka and it is the largest employer. It is the biggest system between Anchorage and Seattle. They have lots of housing for the staff.

We raced the other zodiac back to the pier and headed back to the ship by tender to depart at 7:30. A great day.

We are in Ketchikan tomorrow, our last port in Alaska.