A Larger Ship, Strange stains on carpet, Cars strapped down & Barf Bags

Well Hello! It feels like it's been a long time since I posted last.... The last time was before we boarded in Juneau.

John again boarded the ship first, that is the Kennicott (the largest ship in the Alaska Marine Highway). I boarded next with the dogs and Tahoe. Now when I first drove into the car bay I was SHOCKED, the attendants in the car bay were strapping down the cars, trucks, rv's and such with 6 inch wide straps. Eeeekkkk! Was the first thought that crossed my mind. With such a large ship, (twice as big as the first ship we were on, the Columbia) why would you need to strap down vehicles? Well, let me tell you. When I finally got my items from the car and came into the first hallway there were barf bags every few feet on handrails. Handrails you say? Yes, all hallways had handrails. :( My first thought, this isn't going to be good. I will get back to this.

I went directly to the purser to get the keys to the berth that Greg had reserved for us (I was really curious now.) The berth is 5ft x 7ft. John and I couldn't walk anywhere without asking the other if they could climb back into their bunk to get by. John and I called it our cabinet. "So hey, ya wanna go back to the cabinet?" "The cabinet is looking mighty good about now" (this was said when the ship was rocking to and fro.) NO JOKE! Our cabinet became our sanctuary to lay down when the boat started to rock.

Now one thing I forgot to mention. When I boarded the ship I noticed very clean areas on the carpeting, everywhere. I didn't think too much of this until later when the attendant in the Gift shop told me he had seen 30 to 60 foot swells while this ship was in the Gulf. Now remember what I said? The Kennicott crosses the Gulf of Alaska from Juneau to Whittier, John and I were on that ship and the attendant says he's seen 30 to 60 ft swells, NOT GOOD!!!!! My eyes must have bulged out of my head hard because the next thing he says is, oh but as I hear it we're not supposed to see or FEEL anything like that on this trip. I HOPE TO HELL NOT! I'm going to be one of those people holding the handrail going down the hallways with a barf bag in the other hand. Watch Out! 30 to 60ft swells would create large stains on the carpeting, wouldn't you think? The boat wasn't even out of port when I over heard another attendant say that he remembered a week ago when the boat was rocking so hard that Bonine/Dramamine was just candy and he had to jump over large spills, of you know what as he was maneuvering to get to and from his quarters. I'm hearing this when we're not even in the Gulf yet! NOT GOOD! I decided I would go up to the main observation room and try to relax, the rocking wasn't supposed to even start until midnight when we finally got out into open waters of the Gulf. Thank god. I HOPEFULLY would be asleep by then. Well, I did sleep through that part of it, because that morning John was asking me (in our cabinet) if I had felt the rocking. I proudly said, "Nope". Most of the days were spent reading, talking to old friends from the Columbia, spying on porpoises, whales, people, eagles and the likes through my binoculars, checking out cool new birds in the bird book, trying to stay away from an older man from England who loved to talk so much you would feel sleepy, eating, hanging out with John and going back to the cabinet. Yes, these are the activities I did, there was nothing else to do! There was no cell service so I couldn't even say Happy Birthday to Greg or ask questions about our house, but that came later. I will tell you, John and I had fun and did some bonding in our Cabinet. John fell asleep back in the cabinet on the 2nd day and missed 4 humpback whales feeding on fish in a circle 15 feet from portside. Sorry John but it was fabulous. I have never seen whales so close. They were spying, (when their heads come out to look around) fluking (tails only above water) and generally swimming. Amazing. I was in deed a tourist. At one point I thought I felt the ship list when all of the tourists came running over to our side of the boat yelling, Oooohhhh, aaahhh, let me in there to get a look, Harry take the picture and so on. It was all pretty comical. Until the boat started to rock. It rocked so bad that if I walked that way all the time police would hall me off to jail. When the boat rocked you walked in a zig-zag pattern bumping into people and so on. NO JOKE! And the only thing that was comforting was to go back to the cabinet and lay down in the bunk. I tried ignoring the rocking. Ya know by reading, sitting upright in a chair but none of this worked. I think the Bonine helped but to a certain point. So all of you that thought you would see me on "Deadliest Catch", NOT!

I am going to end this blog by posting some pictures of the trip. Let's see how well I do with dial up here. Love ya, M.