It’s getting harder to tell the days apart. It’s light outside almost all of the time and most areas of the ship are open 24/7. This morning I had to check the computer to confirm both the date and the day. We are now in the Alaskan time zone, so it’s 3 hours earlier here than it is back home. Readjusting the other way going back home is going to be difficult.
Today has been the most scenic day of the trip so far. For much of the time yesterday, all you could see was ocean water all the way to the horizon. Early this morning we could see mountains off in the distance, but by the time we had lunch we were driving in a valley between two sets of mountains. I think they said the straight we were going through was a mile wide, but the distances are very deceiving and it seems much narrower than that. We sat out on our balcony for almost an hour, taking pictures of the scenery and the large chunks of ice floating past in the water. The ice is brilliant blue because it is condensed and contains little to no air bubbles.
Earlier today several whales swam within a couple hundred feet of our boat. We saw the tops of them and they blew water into the air a few times before swimming on. We also saw a bunch of seals hanging out on a peninsula. Some people with binoculars also saw some black bears on shore as well, but we missed them.
Today we participated in our second “trivia game”. The way the trivia games work is that an MC asks questions and everyone playing writes down their answers on little pieces of paper. After all the questions have been asked, people (using only the honor system) report their scores. I hate playing games like that. The same family has won twice now. Today, a thirteen-year-old kid “supposedly” beat Susan and I at general trivia. I won’t be playing any more trivia contests.
This evening while Susan and Morgan went swimming, Mason and I visited the sports bar on the boat and watched the Thunder massacre the Spurs. The TV in our room gets about 20 channels, 10 of which are dedicated to the boat itself. One of the channels we get is TNT so we could have watched the game here in our room but we thought it would be more fun in the sports bar, and it was. Susan and I each picked up a plate of sushi (the sushi station is right outside the sports bar) and had a few drinks while watching the game. There were three or four other groups also from Oklahoma and we all had a good time cheering for the Thunder together. Mason and I have been wearing our Thunder baseball caps all around the boat and we’ve had several people see us and shout, “Thunder UP!”
Tomorrow we dock for the first time in Alaska. I think we’re taking a train across the mountains and going on our “panning for gold” adventure.