2007 Recap Cruise to Alaska - Sitka

Sitka Alaska

Sitka was a beautiful little town that had a bunch of little islands surrounding it. We docked out in the bay and were ferried back and forth from boat to land on the tender(?). When we hit land in Sitka, it was pretty early in the morning and a lot of the shops weren't open yet, so my dad and I walked around to see what was there. Such a cute little stinkin' town, kinda like a small town right out of the movies. I didn't think those existed. Well as shops and museums started opening up, we got some information about the Totem Pole park at the other end of town. We had time to kill before our excursion of the day (more on the in a little bit), so we walked on down to the Totem Pole park and explored around in there.

Here are a few of those quaint little islands outside Sitka. This picture was taken by my dad with my camera while I was "sleeping the day away". I think he said he saw whales that morning too! Can't see whales with out my beauty sleep, this is a vacation right??

This was a pretty little church in the center of town, I think it was St. Andrews or something like that. Edit: Google says is a Russian Orthodox Church called St. Michael's. I love google!

See how pretty the landscaping was, and everything was so green!

This was a Pioneer Statue outside of a big building that we thought was a museum, nope turns out it was an old folks home. Pretty cool looking,

My dad and a totem pole, they were huge!

That's me next to a totem pole.

That there is our ship, if you look hard you can see a couple of the tenders. I think that's an inactive volcano in the background, the mountain covered in snow.

Can you see the two Bald Eagles? One has a white head, tho other does not. Eagles fly around Alaska like pigeons here on the south side! It was crazy!

Can you say sexy? Ha!

This is kinda what snorkeling in Alaska looks like. You see, that water is super duper cold and you are gonna be in it, so you gotta put jammies over your existing clothes and then plop yourself into a suffocation device, or otherwise known as a dry suit. The neck of this rubber/neoprene suit has to be tight enough to not let any water in, so they prefer your face to be a nice shade of pinkish red, just not quite purple, before they zip you up and hope for no leaks! Fun times! My dad wouldn't have done this unless I begged him to. How can two scuba divers go to Alaska and not support a scuba shop to snorkel with the ice cubes? We saw all kinds of sea stars and little octopi (?) and salmon fry or is it frie - whatever it is, baby salmon. The guide said I could have a free shirt if I could dive down completely under the water, yeah didn't happen, I had to buy a shirt! It ended up being a really cool (no pun intended) experience. Only thing that got cold were my lips. We wore gloves, a mask and a scuba hood to protect us. Our guides were the crazy ones who wore regular wet suits. I asked how long the snorkeling would last and one of them said, until one of us gets cold! Brave souls!