SitkAlaska, whales, otters and Eagles

sitkaJournal 082610

http://alaska14days2010.blogspot.com/2010/08/cruise-journal.html

Sitka was the only port we had to use Tenders, "shuttle boats" to arrive at the town's docks.

We joined an offshore excursion boat that carried what appeared to be about 50 people

While on the excursion boat we spotted Otters

And several occurrences of whales

And eagle

Sitka Alaska 082610 B

We signed up to join a shore excursion today: Sea Otter and Wildlife Quest for 3

hours. We arrived at Sitka dock from the Amsterdam tender. This shore excursion description

is "explore a comfortable catamaran for whales, sea otter, bears,eagles, and

more.


9:29 AM 8/26/2010
Texas time..5:30 Alaska time..
The gym opens at 6am and I purposed walking on treadmill this morning before

breakfast, but as I write this I am at an enclosed large area called the crow's

nest, deck 9. Deck 8 below me is the gym and Larie is still snoozing as we do

not go ashore on the tender until about 11:00 am.. On way back to our

stateroom I will bring Larie a cup of coffee. But, as of this moment as the

ship is preparing to anchor at Sitka I see a large high mountain range with

very high snow covered peaks. I left our stateroom with only a light wind

breaker. Next time I will have a little bit warmer jacket : )

The ship is now making a very slow turn and I see Sitka nestled at the bottom

of the mountains.. Really mountains, not hills!
What a sight -- all of God's handiwork. Thank the Lord that the world he has

made is so full of variety and is so amazingly beautiful. The Lord gave man

dominion over the earth. Such a wonderful gift that man needs to be a good

stewart of what the Lord has made.!


9:43 AM 8/26/2010
At 6:43 the crow's nest access is at 54 mps and signal strength is strong..BTW

the ship provides Internet access via satellite that does not come close to

high speed access.

It appears we are headed straight for Sitka, but the ship

will anchor in the bay and we will board tenders, small boats about 40

passenger capacity, as transport to Sitka.

9:59 AM 8/26/2010
In Lido Restaurant mid ship signal strength is deteriorated somewhat.
12:32 PM 8/26/2010
at 9:37 local time I decided to set the computer clock accordingly
9:34 PM 8/26/2010
That's more like it. When we enter another time zone I hope to think about
adjusting the acer accordingly.

Our breakfast at the Lido consisted to two omelet's and fruit with some bread
and coffee. We initially sat with a couple from LA, but they left before Larie
returned to the table.

Larie went to the stateroom for walk around our deck. After I showered Larie
returned from walk of 2 1/3 miles. We have about an hour before we board the
tender to take us in to Sitka. We will board a tender about noon to take us
on a 3 hour wildlife tour. More about that later.


3:41 AM
Just returned to our ship from out to sea excursion, observing eagles, sea

otters, puffin, a rare sighting. Much to our enlightenment we had several

sightings including several sightings of humpback whales feeding and we also

saw a grey whale. Hopefully some photos and videos will be good enough to

illustrate here. Yes. I missed some good shots because I failed to remove the

cover from the lens. : ) Being unable to see images in view finder, I aimed

the camera like a rifle, hoping that whatever is captured on video would be

what was expected. Prior to the Sea Otter and Wildlife quest we visited a

Russian orthodox church with what Larie described as beautiful icons (a lot of

gold images)

Overall, Sitka was our favorite anchorage and we would have preferred

to see whales at other stops just to visit the town with all of it's Russian History.