Bonus materials

I quite often try to include pictures with my writings to help the reader visualize what I struggle to describe.

During the three day trip on the Alaska Maritime Highway Ferry I was usually without WiFi availability. So as to keep things fresher in my mind (kind of like a mental crisper for my head) I was trying to write each night without the benefit of the pictures I lean on for support. Each time we were in a port or I had an inkling that there might be a signal of sufficient strength to upload pictures from my phone I attempted to do so. Most often it did not work so I utilized pictures taken on my IPad to augment the script.

Because the phone upload attempts were unsuccessful they went into Electronic Never Never Land. There ended up being so many photos attempting to squeeze their way out of my little phone antenna that a problem developed with bandwidth (this is my theory based on minutes of grueling research). When a WiFi signal was finally available at the Aspen Suites Hotel my phone tried to dump all the photos at once and created a situation I refer to as digital constipation. (Too descriptive?)

When data eventually started to, uh, flow, it kept coming. All afternoon my photo mailbox has been receiving batches of pictures, in random order. I have now successfully uploaded 73 sets of prints to 71 different folders. Ugh,  like Noah said when he finally got the animals off the ark and looked in the bottom of the boat, "who's going to clean up this mess"?

So here are a few bonus pictures, most without description or any hope of ever figuring out what it was!

A few of us got up at 4 a.m. to see the 49th capitol, only to discover the ship docks miles outside of town at a nondescript parking lot that was a $35.00 taxi ride away from all the businesses that would have been closed anyway.

Our position 24 hours after leaving Bellingham

Our position 49 hours after leaving Bellingham. I'd like to say the choice of "49" hours was deliberate but, alas, it wasn't. I fell asleep!

Bald Eagles have been populous. This one floated down as we waited to go ashore at Ketchikan, landing on the ship. Bobbi caught it on video but I got this poor quality picture.

Statistical comparison of ships in the AMH fleet. I was bumped from the Columbia, the flagship of the fleet, to the smaller, slower, older Malispina. The story was that the Columbia had been in the shipyards in Portland undergoing repairs. When they headed toward Bellingham, they were to replace the Malispina, which was then to go to Portland for repairs and upgrades. 

The Columbia made it about three hours out to sea when a problem, that no one seemed willing to discuss, developed and it was towed back to Portland. The Malispina picked up many of the crew from the Malispina but did not load the usual "stores" for a trip. This resulted in the shortage of numerous items on the menu at each meal and serious overbooking, creating a shortage of cabin space as well as long lines in the dining hall. This morning, for example, we stood in line for 1.25 hours to get breakfast! This was an extreme because most people were getting off this morning (either at Haines or Skagway) and headed to breakfast about the same time.

I left Strava running for three days to see how it would handle the large numbers. It didn't do so well (but remember, it was intended for use during training runs/rides, not for use by Florence Chadwick in the water), when I tried to upload the file it could not accomplish the final task. I was hoping to see how accurately it recorded the Inner Passage passage!

Final Lat/long for Haines arrival. I would have enjoyed seeing what the declination is here!

Tomorrow begins phase 2 of the trip. When I was checking in to the hotel today the young lady looked up the weather forecast. "You did good arriving today. Tomorrow should be beautiful weather, but rain is expected Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. Oh, and Saturday and Sunday. But tomorrow looks nice."

You have to love the optimism.