Days 2-4

Day 2....

After getting dressed we decided to go up to the buffet for breakfast. The whole time I was so thankful that I hadn't got seasick. The boat was still rocking and rolling pretty darn good. It made it difficult to walk in a straight line and I kept hearing people comment that they had never felt rocking like this before.
Once we got to the buffet and grabbed some breakfast we went looking for a place to sit. Let me tell you wobbling and carrying a tray of food and a cup of coffee is not an easy thing.
We had to walk around several areas that were roped off due to people being sick. Seriously if you feel sea sick maybe the best place for you is not in the front of the ship with the rocking and the smell of food everywhere. There were these roped off areas all over the ship and all you had to do was look around to see green people. Again I said thank you that I didn't get sea sick!
After breakfast we went to the smoking area and just as we sat down BOOM!! CRACK! the whole ship shuddered. The honey and I looked at each other like OMG we just hit something. Of course there were many other people looking at each other the same way. Turns out we hit a giant swell that actually went over the top of the ship.
Think about that.. over the TOP of the front of the ship!! The people in the buffet had a nice view of water rushing down the windows.
We took a lttle more time to explore the ship and noticed that over half of the people on board had these little circles behind their ears. We learned later that it was for sea sickness. We made a game of seeing who could count the most circles on their side.
Today was the first day and we were going to go meet our roll call group at tea at 3:30. I was looking forward to it.
However.... because we hadn't slept the night before we decided to go lay down for a few minutes at 1:30. We didn't wake up until 4:30 so we totally missed the tea.
We got ready for dinner and went down to the dining room. As a table we were more talkative. Turns out that the Al Bundy/Kramer type dude was actually pretty darn nice. Poor guy and his wife both had those circles behind their ears....*snort.. ahem....
What amazed me was two of the couples all ready remembered everyone's names! I am soo bad at that so it amazed me.
And can someone tell me how a dinner can last that long? Over 2 hours! Did I mention they had creme brulie and I ate 2 LMAO!!
After dinner I wanted to go to the casino for a bit. The honey HATES gambling with a passion but he went up for a little while with me. What a small casino. I was really shocked at how little machines there were on board. I guess in my head I was expecting more then 30 machines. It was kind of disappointing since I like to gamble. However I did win $30 during the short time we were there.
We walked down the stairs and found this little area with a piano in it. No one was really there so we plunked ourselves down and looked out the window for a while. Then a piano man showed up. (Larry)
This guy was funny as hell. We laughed and laughed. At one point a kid walked by and Larry says "Where are you going you wretched boy?" The honey and I laughed out loud at that. Larry kept telling people who were walking by. "SIT down!"
There was a large family group and it's members kept showing up. After about 5 of them showing up at odd times Larry stops playing and asks them how many more are coming. They said something I didn't hear and he said "good god are you people mormans?"
The honey and I looked at each other with giant eyes and open mouths and didn't know if we should laugh or be offended for the morman people. We chose to laugh. (sorry morman people!)
There came a point when about 5 woman with walkers decided to walk in front of the piano when Larry was singing. He stops playing, looks at them, says "Good God" and starts playing Chariots of fire. Funny stuff there!
However... it was at this point when we realized that we couldn't leave without getting some kind of a comment. It was late and we were pretty tired. We whispered back and forth for a bit and waited until he just started to sing and ran. LMAO!! Seriously we ran to the elevator that he couldn't see, went down a floor, walked back to our side, went up a floor and totally avoided him. Such cowards aren't we.
Actually we are because we totally did the same thing every time we saw him playing from that point on lol.
After a nice (OMG I AM FROZEN TO DEATH) smoke we went back to the room for the night.

Day 3..... at sea still

Around this day I could see the honey beginning to fidget a bit. He is used to being busy constantly so this relaxing few days at sea were beginning to take it's toll on him.
But!! It was finally sunny and finally the ship stopped rocking so much!
Today we decided to try a few of the activities on board. We started out with a jeopordy game. We met a really nice couple and they joined our team. Again they were older. Turns out this Alaska cruise was mostly older people although they did say there was 300 children and teens on board. We totally sucked at jeopordy by the way lol.
We then went upstairs to watch a movie under the stars... although technically it was a movie under the sun. It was still cold and I noticed peope had these blankets so off I went to grab us two. I brought them back to the chairs and proceeded to unfold them. What in the heck kind of blankets are those anyway. The stupid thing was a 3 foot by 3 foot square. So either your feet were warm and your top was cold or your top was cold and your feet were warm. We made a mental note to grab two blankets each the next time we watched a movie.
When the movie was over I took a look at the honey. oh oh.. Bright red. I looked at myself and I was pretty darn red too. We laughed and turned in the blankets.
Around this time we could see some whale spouts off in the distance. It was kind of cool to see.
We looked at the paper and noticed we had time to play bingo before dinner. So off we went. We purchased the cards and two daubers only to realize when we got in to the bingo lounge we didn't actually need the darn daubers. Live and learn right. We lost at bingo. Seems like we are losing at everything we try on this ship... well except me and the one casino trip.
It was formal night so we went upstairs to go get dressed. I showered first since it takes me longer to get ready. I slipped my dress on to quite a few comments of ummm can you close the top a bit more.... that's a lot of cleavage... Typical but irritating at the same time.
At this point he grabs his suit pants and proceeds to try to put them on. Fail. See for the last three months I have been telling him to try on his suit. The last time he wore it was almost a year ago and he has been out of work for the last 8 months. I don't know about anyone else but when you have 24 hour a day access to a fridge and all the snacks in the house you tend to gain a bit of weight. Well he had never tried them on and now here it was formal night, with me all dressed up and him trying in vein to button those pants. I admit to being disappointed while at the same time highly amused. I knew we had to tell the tablemates we weren't coming so I headed off to the elevator to let them know. Lucky for me I ran into one of the woman at the elevator. I let her know we wouldn't be at dinner so they wouldn't have to wait and went back to the room.
Once there I changed into something more comfy and we headed off to have pizza. I have to admit it felt kind of strange walking around in comfy clothes while everyone else was all spiffy and having their pictures taken. We did have a really good view of the champagne fountain though.
Pizza was excellent even though we did have to wait a bit. By the time we were done it was fairly late and the paper said that the clock would be changed back an hour that evening. So even though we gained an hour we decided to head upstairs to bed. After all tomorrow was Ketchikan and the honey's dream of fishing in Alaska for salmon.

Day 4.... Ketchikan

Woke up super early since we had a fishing excursion and had to be on dock at 7:50 in the morning. We skipped breakfast since there was going to be drinks and a light snack on the boat.
When we reached the dock we looked around at one of the most beautiful places I have seen. Everything was olden style and the mountains were wonderful. We had dressed for Alaska. I had on a teeshirt, turtleneck, sweater and a jacket. Standing on the dock we realized our mistake though. It was all ready 70 degrees! So I ended up stripping off everything but the teeshirt.
We met a man from the boat on the dock as we waited for our excursion people to come get us. He was fully decked out in fishing attire with two fishing poles. You could see by his eyes that he was totally excited to go fishing. The honey chatted with him until they came and got us. We all walked down to the smaller dock and waited for the fishing boats to line up for us.
There were salmon just jumping out of water everywhere. It was incredible.
We got onto the fishing boat and were greeted by the captains dog. A really pretty springer spaniel. There was a group of 6 of us on the boat and we all settled in as we drove... errr floated.... err...sailed??? out into the ocean to start our fishing trip. We filled out fishing licences on the way.
Off the side of the boat we would see whale spouts. Each time one would blow the dog would start barking. The captain told us that he hated whales and could smell their spouts. We saw a few whale tails and some of the most beautiful scenery I have ever seen in my life.
Finally it was time to fish. The captain's wife came out with 6 playing cards and had us each draw one. The honey got the ace so he got to go first and I drew the 3 card.
They set up 4 fishing poles on the back of the boat and started trolling for salmon. When the first pole bent over the honey's eyeballs lit up like Christmas bulbs and he ran to the pole. He grabbed it, yanked it back to hook the fish and WHAM there was no more fish on the line. You could just see his whole body sag in disappointment. However they allowed each of us two times if you miss your fish so when the second pole bent he ran over again. YANK.... no fish. The poor guy was devastated.
The next lady took her turn and pulled in a salmon. Then it was my turn.
Now I have fished in lakes and streams before but never have I been on a fishing boat like this. The pole bent over and everyone started yelling "Fish on" I walked up to the front and thought "ok here is where I make a fool out of myself". I looked at the captain and asked him to hand me the pole. So the captain hooked the fish and handed me the pole.
I had watched the last two people fishing so I tried to copy them by putting the pole on my stomach but I couldn't get the leverage I needed so I put it where my leg connects to my middle. Then I tried to reel in the fish. Ummm hello! Who knew it was so damn hard to reel in a fish. I struggled and struggled to move that little handle around. I pulled and pulled and began to sweat to death. Finally I could see the fish jumping around in the water. I got it to the boat and the captain reached out with the net and grabbed it. It was a freaking MONSTER fish. Everyone started clapping and I turned around to the honey who had this look like UGH on his face.
See we have this thing where when ever we go fishing I tell him I am going to catch the biggest fish.... and normally I do LMAO!!
My fish made the other womans fish look tiny. After the next group of peoples turns went it was finally the honey's time again. He looked like a little boy he was so excited.
FISH ON! He ran to that pole so fast, yanked it back, started to reel it in and Bam the fish got loose. I swear to you that poor guy looked so horrified that I wanted to pat him on the head. Here we were in Alaska on his dream and he was the only one who hadn't caught a fish.
At the next fish on shout you could see it in his eyes that he wanted that fish bad. He yanked and started reeling it in. You could see it off the boat and everyone was cheering. I had my fingers crossed that it wouldn't fall off and SUCESS!!!! He caught his first Alaskan salmon. A nice beautiful small salmon. Did I mention small? But he did it! He was living his dream and I couldn't be happier for him.
We each caught about 4 more fish and after each fish everyone would check the catch. I still had the biggest fish. The honey was jazzed with the sizes of his fish but he really wanted that bigger fish then me. On the second to the last fish (we were each allowed 6) He finally hooked one that made him struggle a bit. He reeled and reeled and I could see him break out into a sweat. That fish was jumping and pulling and the honey was grinning from ear to ear.
When it finally got close enough for the captain to net I grabbed the camera and waited for his catch to come up. It was HUGE! He actually laughed out loud turned around and gave me a high five he was so excited about his fish. Of course I pretended to be so disappointed that he had the biggest fish when in reality you know I was so happy for him. His dream not mine. He needed that biggest fish.
I missed my next fish so when it was down to the last few people who needed the last fish I let him take my turn.
After we caught 6 fish apiece we were done for the day. About now it was 1:00. We were starving. We went inside to see what kind of "light snacks" were provided.
Guess what they were.
Tootsie rolls. Yup the light snack after a day of fishing with no breakfast was a basket filled with tootsie rolls. You could see the bear coming out of everyone due to hunger.
When we got back on dock we wanted to go into the shops before we went back on the ship to eat. We only had a limited time in Ketchikan and wanted to buy something. I bought a wonderful pink jacket for only $20! This was a steal for me since I don't own a jacket.
After that we ran back to the ship and had lunch. I swear to you I cannot remember being that hungry in a long time.
After eating we went up to the top deck and I had a smoke. During this time a giant blast of wind happened and blew the cherry off my smoke and into my nose. No seriously it did. Something like that would probably never happen again in a million years.
So there I am smashing my nose with my hand trying to make the ember go out while burning the crap out of the inside of my nose. My eyes are watering. All I smell is burned hair and on top of that I shocked myself into a coughing fit. Needless to say I had a big owie in my nose.
Stupid!
We wandered around for a while and looked at the art. Some of that stuff is UGLY!! There were a few good pieces though. Not anything that I would buy but it was fun to look at.
We got ready for dinner and this time the table was super animated. We all talked about our days and had a really great time. I had some really nasty food that I sent back and traded in for something different but dinner was so much fun. And I was finally beginning to remember names.
When dinner was over we went back to the cabin and I grabbed a bottle of desert wine I had brought on board. The honey got a few beers and I drank my wine while we sat on the upstairs deck. We were both totally beat from the fishing and the day. After we finished drinking we went back to the cabin to get ready for bed.
It was at this point that I saw it for the first time. A huge bruise the size of a grapefruit on my leg where I was holding the fishing pole. It was bright red and purple. It is a darn good thing I didn't bring a swimsuit because that thing was UGLY!!