Jen’s Journal – September 3, 2019

Day 66: AMHS Columbia, Inside Passage

Foggy and cool.

Bonus trip to Sitka!!

We weren’t aware that our ferry was going to stop at the towns Sitka, or Petersburg, or Wrangell when we booked our passage. We had nearly two hours in Sitka. The ferry terminal, however, was some seven miles from town.

No problem! A school-type bus pulled up and the driver assured us, almost individually fifty of us, that he would have us to town and back before the ferry left port.

The fog lifted from the port town as we arrived and it became a beautiful morning.

We walked around the small town and a half mile or so to the Sitka National Historic Park and back. We learned how the Russians took over and commandeered the sea otter trade from the Tlingits, like they did from the Alutiiq on Kodiak.

A brisk walk back to the bus stop and back in our way.

The only problem was, with Tom not having to do any driving, we just didn’t leave enough time for a Bloody Mary in town.

It was a super-beautiful afternoon boat ride on the ferry. Apparently we were ahead of schedule, so we spent two hours hardly moving as humpback whales surfaced all around us. We saw lots of spouting and tails as the whales completed their dives.

The ship has quite a nice dining room and we had dinner at sunset, with an occasional view of a humpback behind the boat.