Sat, June 28, 2008

This is Phyllis dictating to Ila. This was a day to relax and get caught up with laundry, grocery shopping, bear hunting (animals). We didn't leave our motel until around 10 am. We drove out and got our tickets for the ferry ride which wasn't until 10 PM. We heard of a park where we might see bears and did see one grizzly bear, who we think might have been crippled. We saw an eagle catching fish and then we drove back to town, where we went grocery shopping, ate supper at Bamboo Restaurant. It sounds Chinese but actually not. Then we went back to the park hoping to see more bear but there wasn't anything. Couldn't even find any fishermen who were catching fish. We had three hours to kill before the ferry ride. So we sat and watched the water at a couple places and figured out the tide was coming in. The reason we figured this out wasn't because we were so smart but there was a little boat that had looked land-locked in the afternoon and was now floating. DUH! Drove back to the terminal where we sat -- some of us read and Linda was just "being" and trying to be warm. About 9 pm, we saw the ferry coming. Ila thought it looked like the Titanic and was relieved it wasn't a flat-bottomed raft since there were mega cars and campers waiting to be loaded. We drove into what looked like the "belly of the whale" but found it wasn't really all that scarey. We then went upstairs to the lounge. We climbed two flights of stairs before we found out there was an elevator. That helped a lot! We had front row seats in the lounge and could see the whole spectrum in front of us as the ship proceeded to Skagway. Oh, yes, it was still daylight when we arrived at 11 pm. When we docked and got our vehicle on dry land again, we had no trouble finding our bed and breakfast. It was very nice and they had left the light on and key out for us. We wasted no time climbing into bed. Climbing was an important word because the beds were so high off the floor and for short people, that presents a challenge. Now, imagine this -- a running jump took care of the problem. Good night.