ALASKA, Part III

After we left Juneau, we had two days at sea, which was pretty nice.  Not much of a schedule to stick to, and we could do the other stuff on the ship.  We began by doing their "mystery" game one morning, boys vs. girls.  Neither group quite finished, but the girls' team definitely had most of the clues figured out, whereas the boys had missed a major one, so I'm saying we won.  😁  And we had fun trying!

Could you have figured this out?

We went rock climbing again, where I remembered that I'm afraid of heights and the belaying systems sort of freaks me out.  I was going up, thinking to myself that the higher up I got the worse it was going to get, so I finally just let go before I even got very high.  I should have just practiced with the belay ropes for a bit, but then I was just rattled and wanted to leave.  Ah, well!  Everyone else was really good at it!

Bentley got all the way up, but this shot is cooler

Why did I think this would be a good idea...?  (Also, this picture kind of makes it look like I got higher than I did.  The ground is right out of frame here! 😂)

There goes Colton!

Then I headed to the solarium (the adult pools) at the front of the ship to read/nap/relax while everyone else went to try their hand at the flow-rider.  They had a GREAT time:

Ryder

I'm the worst mom ever, but this picture might have made me laugh...

But I love this picture so much.  Craig looks so happy here!

Here's a picture of Camille actually succeeding at the flow-rider!

Colton getting his hands up!

The instructors would show you what to do, and Craig said it was actually pretty helpful!

Love that smile!

Ryder liked this chandelier and had to take a selfie with it

Craig, Camille, and Ryder all did the indoor sky diving again.  Once again, Camille was super good at it!

Smiling as she floats!

Ryder might not have been a natural like Camille, but he was definitely having a great time!

Meanwhile, I was just getting comfy in the solarium when some guy came running up to the group next to me yelling, "Whales!"  The old lady sleeping next to me immediately woke up and everyone in the room hurried to the windows.  AND THERE WERE LOTS OF WHALES!  Humpback whales feeding in front of the ship, you could barely figure out that you were seeing mouths opening and there were so many birds flying all over the surface picking off the fish driven towards the surface.  I skittered back and forth across the front of the ship trying to see them all.  It was so cool.  I was so happy.  

Later in the day, we were all at the main pool when I saw that people were gathering at the windows and once again I ran back and saw two whales in the distance, and then two surfaced really close to the ship.  It was the best day ever.  I love humpback whales so much.

That evening, I persuaded Bentley and Kendra to try the lobster tail at dinner.  Why let my seafood aversion spoil everything for them, especially since it was already paid for?

Kendra was not a fan.  I'm not sure why Maya is hiding from the camera...?

This is Bentley's nervous face.  He didn't really like it, either.  But I was proud of them both for trying!

There are no whales in this picture, I just loved how the waves looked.  I could look at the ocean for forever.  Longer, if there are whales.

In the evening, after the shows and after the little kids had been tucked into bed, the older kids and the grown ups played card games out on the balcony.  It was so fun and lovely.

The next day for lunch, we got seated at the fancy chairs that look like they're for royalty!  They turned out to not be super comfortable, but they sure looked cool!!!!

We tried for a time to get a group picture all wearing our sweatshirts and finally managed to make it work!  Huzzah!!!

Party of 16!

And here's just our little family!

This is just adorable.  I have similar pictures of Kamryn giving Bentley and Lindsy giving Kendra piggyback rides here...

Then it was time to get off for one last shore excursion:

I can't even say "Canada" without wanting to sing it like the end of this Studio C...

We didn't have a lot of time and we didn't really want to pay to schlep 14 people all over Vancouver, so we just wandered around a bit.  We found this cool play sculpture:

Do you get it?  It's a straw being refracted by the water glass it's in!  Also, you can spin on it!

This park looked really pretty but our kids were not particularly interested in exploring it...

But at least they posed nicely for me!

Colton and Camille were tired of walking, so I stopped at a playground to let them play and the rest of the group went on to see if they could find some shopping.  I figured it couldn't be too hard to find the ship, but then as I was wandering around lost and my GPS told me to head to the Cruise Terminal in Seattle, I started to get kind of worried.  Fortunately Craig was able to send me a pin of where to head, and then I asked some woman who looked cruise-y which way to go and she assured me I was going the right direction.  So we got back to the ship just fine, and everything was fine.  

It wasn't until about an hour later that it hit me that I'd been wandering around with my two youngest children in a (technically) foreign country with absolutely no money, no ID, no credit cards and no real idea of where I was going.  And that was pretty stupid of me.  

All's well that ends well, as they like to say in Little House on the Prairie, but really, I need to be a little bit smarter than that going forward.

Sunset over Canada

That night the grown ups and teens played Chronology together and it was a blast!

We were back in Seattle when we woke up in the morning!  We enjoyed a very leisurely breakfast as we waited our turn to get off the ship.  And, of course, we all had to take pictures with the giant chair (which reminded me of Dr. Horrible, but bigger!).

This will be my album cover if I ever release a CD...

Our cruise was so wonderful.  I seriously loved every minute of it.  It was so awesome getting to see Alaska and all the whales.  All the whales!!!

Thank you, Tom and Donna, for an amazing vacation!!!