first port, Ketchikan

We woke up early Sunday morning to catch our flight from Seattle to Ketchikan, which takes about an hour and a half. The boys were exhausted so they slept most of the way. Oh and some how we got put in first class, so that was nice. As we start approaching Ketchikan, we are excited to see the ship in the port. (it's so massive, you can't help but see it!) We've missed 2 days of the cruise, so we are anxious to get there. turns out, there are 6 other people on this flight that also missed days. We kept running into them on the cruise after that, so it was kind of fun to see what they were up to.

Ketchikan is known as the salmon capitol of the world and also for its totem poles. i was hoping we would have enough time to check the town out once we got onto the ship and into our room, etc.

We finally get onto the ship and into our room. it's a good size with a balcony. it has 2 twins beds and then a berth bed that pulls down from the ceiling for the third bed. the boys are very excited and want to check out the ship and eat. we go to the Windjammer, which will be our hang out and eat a great lunch. its a buffet so you eat whatever and however much you want. dillon became addicted to the chocolate soft icecream and had a cone every 5 minutes it seemed! (and it is funny, because dillon doesn't eat ice cream when we are home).

after eating and walking around, we have about 1 1/2 hour left before the ship leaves port. i talk the boys into going into town. but as we are about to depart, we saw the line to get back on the ship is about 60 people deep. apparently one of the x-ray machines is down (all items are xrayed while everyone goes thru a metal detector). we were so tired that none of us could fathom standing in that line - so Ketchikan wasn't a go - which bummed me out because it was the port of was really looking forward to. i really wanted to walk around and photograph all the cool totems.

that night we had our first dinner in our dining room, Cascades. this is where you are assisgned to a table, have the same waiter every night, etc. We met our our tablemates, who were shocked to hear about us missing the 2 days and all we'd been through. One family was from Florida and the other family was from Tennessee, i believe. the family from Florida had a girl dillon and josh's age, Anna, so they were happy to all meet and she ended up introducing them to the other "kids" aboard the ship.

dinners were awesome! they would start off with killer sourdough bread, work into the appetizer, then your meal and then some scrumptious desert. our dinner was the second seating starting at 8:30, so by the time you get desert it's almost 10:00pm or so. we saw whales while eating, which was awesome. then it started to dawn on us that it was pretty late and yet it was still light outside. this is where we learned (or remembered that in the summer, Alaska has 18 hours of sunlight a day). this was a little weird!

after dinner, the guys went off with their new buds and i went to the room. the ship had a curfew of midnight for their age. i finally went to bed and they showed up a little while later. and it definitely was weird trying to sleep with it being so light outside. i kept our balcony door open while we slept.

next port - Juneau.