Let's see, if I start where I think I left off on the last entry, we were just wrapping up our evening in Seattle and getting ready to depart for Alaska. After spending the night in Seattle, our time for boarding the ship was not to be until a few hours later. As a result, Myrna and Pam decided to walk into town to do a little shoe shopping and I took off back to the Pike's Market to get a few more pictures.
I was so impressed with the amount of flowers etc. that I just had to get 
some photos. After returning to the hotel, it was getting close to time to check out. As usual, Grandma and Grandpa had gone down to the lobby early to wait for our rides. Shortly after they got to the lobby, some of the rest of the family began showing up. Once we had all checked out, we began preparing for the trip to the ship. The trip from our hotel was rather amusing if I do say so myself. 
I guess the plan had been to have Myrna's brother Deryl come with his family to help shuttle us to the ship. While waiting for them to show up, someone noticed that there was a promotional table set up in the lobby for the Accura car company; they had offered to take anyone for a ride in and around town in order to demonstrate their cars. Someone in the group decided to see if they would take us to the pier along with Deryl so we ended up splitting up the family in I believe three different cars to get us to the pier. After a short ride and after filling out some customer surveys, we all arrived at the pier. I seemed to me that we went through a lot of hassle just to save a few dollars. Anyway, we all were able to get on the ship without much more trouble.The ship finally left port somewhere around 4:00 that afternoon and we were on our way. For the rest of the day, we pretty much just sat around and ate dinner.
Sunday saw us traveling up the west coast of Canada toward the Inner passage of Alaska. Just as has been my experience in the past, those days when the ship is just traveling, without any stops become rather long and tiresome for me. It just seems that there is nothing of interest to occupy my time so I end up just feeling bored. Fortunately, because it was Sunday, we decided to hold a little family devotional service. The service lasted about an hour and was held in Lonnie and Claudia's cabin. These cabins are quite small and are definitely not designed to hold 11 full grown adults, but we made due with what we had. The meeting was a nice diversion from the materialistic attitudes that prevail on ship and I appreciated the opportunity. Lonnie spoke to us about symbols in the church and the role they play in helping to remind us of the important parts of the gospel. We all had an opportunity to share out thoughts and thus we sort of were able to share a little of our testimonies with each other.Other than the devotional, the day was pretty much filled with chatting with each other, eating and napping. This all might sound good to some, but I just am too nervous to do much of that. Maybe, I am just an undiagnosed ADD :-).
We did catch the opening welcome show that night and got to hear a short monolog from a comedian named Steve Moris who is also a pretty good musician. I guess he has performed with the likes of the Beach Boys, Cat Stevens and others. Anyway, he was quite good and we decided to see his full show on Monday night (more on that latter).
Once Monday morning rolled around, after stuffing myself with breakfast, we pretty much just hung around preparing to arrive in Juneau. We had been experiencing some pretty rough seas up until we actually entered the Inner Passage of Alaska so it was now a pleasant feeling for all of us to not have our stomachs trying to figure out which direction was up. We all got nauseous to some degree, but I think Deryl probably had the most trouble. Now that we are on calmer water, I think we are all OK. Once we had docked in Juneau, I think the people on the ship we in a mad dash to exit the ship. We were all looking for some solid ground to get our feet on. Most of us went ashore and spent a few hours look around in Juneau.
While it was nice to get off for a while, I was a little disappointed that most of what we saw was geared to the tourists. Just tons of gift shops etc. 
We split up and went our separate ways so as not to encumber other members of the family with everyone want to go different directions. Myrna, Curt and I went together and started walking the streets. 
We hiked up a few blocks and were able to visit a Russian Orthodox Church that is supposed to be the oldest one in the state of Alaska. It was very small, but we went inside and got to speak with the Priest who runs the place. It was rather interesting and I would consider it the highlight of the day.After Monday had come to a close we pretty much went to dinner and followed that up with the comedian show that I mention a few paragraphs back. This guy Steve Moris is really funny, His humor was a little irreverent, but I enjoyed it just the same. I kept looking down at Grandma and Grandpa to see if they were enjoying the show, but I kept seeing unemotional faces for the most part. I think his type of humor just didn't suit them much. Myrna was so impressed with him that she bought a DVD of the show and had him autograph it for her. We will have it available for the kids to watch when we get home.
Well we are now docked in Skagway, and will be going out in a few hours to see the area again. Later we will be taking a train ride from Skagway to what they say is the top of the world. I am looking forward to the trip since it will take us away from much of the commercial confusion that is a tourist city. All in all, we are having an enjoyable time bu miss our kids and grandkids. I'll try and get another post out this evening before we depart skagway, but if I don't, It'll have to wait until we get to Ketchikan.
