Whale Watching

Today, the family would split up with the parents heading off the ship early for the "Whale, Wildlife & Bear Search" while Rebecca would hang out on the ship until late afternoon before heading to her "Teen Exclusive Scenic Mountain and World's Largest ZipRider" excursion, which would see her take a bus ride through Hoonah to the top of a mountain and zipline down to the shore. We all grabbed breakfast early and then Janie and J. R. disembarked at Icy Strait Point. This is a small port that only has a dock for a single cruise ship at a time. The area is owned by a native cooperative who manage all of the facilities and the tours. We boarded a large boat right at the dock and took up places by the windows to head off whale watching. Unlike the previous day's excursion, we quickly spotted a humpback whale and went upstairs to watch it. This was our "$100 whale photo" as the tour operator had promised a $100 refund if we didn't see a whale. Since we saw not only this whale, but several more, the excursion price was right just for this portion of the trip.

Orcas

But humpbacks were not all we saw as we were able to glimpse harbor seals along the shore, and then in a surprise even to the crew, a pod of orcas swam up along the boat. The naturalist onboard said they saw orcas very rarely on their excursions so it was a treat even for them.

Hoonah

We returned to the dock and waited for a few minutes before heading on a bus to the Spasski River in search of bears. We passed through the town of Hoonah and our guide talked to us about the local tribe and lifestyle. When we arrived at the starting point of our hike, we were joined by another guide armed with a flare gun, which got us hoping we might see some wildlife. But as we began hiking to our first observation point, it began to rain very hard. This likely drove the bears back under cover and we didn't see any at any of the three observation points, which was disappointing. But the scenery was very pretty.

Back on the Wonder

We took the bus back to the port and did a little shopping in the stores along the port. We thought about getting some Alaskan crab legs but the prices were outrageous -- twice as high as we can get crab legs here in Chicago, so we passed. We were going to take the nature hike along the island but it was still raining and we were pretty wet so we went back to the ship, changed, and got some food on deck 9 and watched as Rebecca and her group return to the boat from the zipline, which she said was a lot of fun.

Trivia and Dinner

Since tonight was John Charles' variety show in the theater, we went to Crown and Fin to do some Disney Trivia with Jo. Jo was our favorite Disney CM on this cruise (our server Sofia being a close second). On our last cruise in December, we had David as club host and he was smarmy and arrogant and sometimes downright rude. It seemed every adult activity involved trying to get women to take their bras off. But Jo was witty and friendly and recognized you outside the clubs which David never did. Alas, we didn't win anything at trivia but had a good time drinking and guessing. Janie had another Rekorderlig, which was a cider our son Alex had turned her onto in Scotland and Europe the previous year and we had just found available locally a few months earlier. She had been excited when J. R. had brought her one from Azure earlier in the week. J. R. had a Dalwhinnie scotch, which was a distillery we had visited the previous summer in Scotland.

We hung around for Villains Quotes Trivia, which we were equally bad at before going to dinner at Triton's. Our tablemates didn't show up that night. They had been having issues with the late night dining with younger children so we figured they had decided to try an early buffet dinner. Rebecca ditched her parents to sit with a friend whose parents were dining at Palo, so the adults had a private dinner service for two at a table set for eight. Janie started her night with a Key Lime Margarita and calamari while J. R. went with the crab cakes and clam chowder. For dinner, it was a strip loin for J. R. and pork tenderloin in pastry for Janie. She finished off the night with a dark chocolate bombe.

After dinner, we went to Azure to see the adult show from David Gatti. This was different than his variety show in the theater and focused on a lot of card tricks, which were fun to watch. We were tired from our early morning so we headed off to bed after the magic show.

Dinner Menus