Stephanie and I began our Alaska cruise vacation this morning at her house, where we got a Lyft ride through light traffic to the airport. The airport was busy, of course, as expected on a holiday weekend, but we sped through a TSA Precheck line in record time and emerged on the other side of security harried and hurried but with all our clothes still on and our gear intact.
Our flight left roughly on time and it was a short one hour and 45 minutes in the air. But I made a mistake of opening my water bottle spout without thinking and was treated to a fountain of water under higher pressure in the bottle than outside of it, spilling all over my shirt and pants. It made the flight a little uncomfortable but I was happy to see that by the time the plane landed, it had nearly all dried thanks to the dry warm air inside the plane.
We deboarded via a roll-up ramp, walking into cloudy Sitka. Inside the small airport, we were met by an Alaskan Dream Cruises representative. She took Stephanie and I and 4 other people to our various hotels in a company van.
At our hotel, the Eagle Bay Inn, nobody was home so the cruise employee called the hotel owner/manager while we waited. We were soon let in by a young man and another employee joined him to check us in.
There another employee from the cruise company who met us to take us to The Fortress of the Bears, a place that has 6 brown bears. They provide a home to orphaned bears, since Alaska has no law or assistance providing rehabilitation of bear cubs. We learned from our driver that at least two brown bear mothers with cubs have been seen repeatedly in town this year. That gave us pause about our plans to walk through a wooded park tomorrow morning on the way into town.
After spending some time watching the bears being fed, our driver gave us a ride back into town, where we walked around, saw many ravens and bald eagles, visited an old Russian cemetery, and then ate dinner.
We ate dinner at a restaurant downtown called Mean Queen, where I enjoyed a great veggie burger and salad. Then we walked about 30 minutes through town to our hotel. The weather had been off and on showery, and it continued that way during our walk to the hotel.
Lori's Travels 