Our first breakfast that wasn’t room service! Thankfully, we scheduled our whale watch a little later than o’dark early this morning. Our room service breakfasts have been wonderful but we were ready for a change this morning. Our big day today included a whale watch in the morning and bear viewing this afternoon. We tendered at Icy Straight Point at 7am this morning and had to take a boat to the pier for the excursions. After meeting in the theater and assigned a group number we boarded our shuttle boat. Our Whale Watch part of the tour ran over a half an hour late leaving – which pushed the bear watch part of the tour short. This watch promised you’d see whales or each person would be refunded $100, so you know the captain was going to make sure we saw whales. This was one of the few things Bob and I have done in a larger group setting. We didn’t like it – one more lesson learned. It was raining (which meant my camera wasn’t out any more than it had to be and what I did take wasn’t going to be awesome) and people had no problem getting in front of you – and staying there.

Just like fishing in Ketchikan when the salmon stated biting right before we had to go in, we started seeing all kinds of whale pods right before we needed to head back. It was so frustrating! There were whales all over the place – a pod of 5 in one direction, 3 more in another direction and yet 6 more another spot. We could’ve stayed there all day watching them. It was awesome! I clicked away but they really weren’t close and through the rain I knew the images weren’t going to be what I had hoped but they were better than nothing.

Since we had gone over on the whale watch we had no time to even go to the bathroom after docking. They immediately corralled us onto a bus to go to the bear viewing. After a 40-minute bumpy bus ride we arrived. Half of the bus stood in line for one of the two port-a-potties, which took up even more time. Bob went but I didn’t – I can hold it, uh huh. (The last boat shuttle leaves the pier at 3:30 – we were getting worried.) Our guide was entertaining in the beginning but I think most of us were getting irritated at her moseying along stalling for time (waiting for the group ahead of us to move along). When we finally made it to the first viewing deck (there were three of them), the view was beautiful but no bears. Not even a hint. Still she kept talking. After ten minutes of watching the stream go by we moseyed to the next viewing platform (which we could see from the first one). Nope no bears there either. At this point most of us were getting even more concerned about the time issue and I heard one woman say, “They won’t leave without him (her husband). He’s the hotel director.” Apparently there were a couple of crew on this tour – thank goodness. We relaxed a little more after that – of course I still hadn’t gone to the bathroom yet so I didn’t relax but so much. Bottom line is we didn’t see even a hint of a bear and we felt like this whole part of the “tour” was a rip-off. Nowhere in the description of the bear viewing did it say there was a 40-minutes bus ride (one way) in this two-hour part of the tour. We were hustled back onto a shuttle and finally I got to go pee once we were back on board the ship.

By 4pm Bob and I were both just done. We hadn’t had any lunch either. So we grabbed some pizza in the café and went back to our room and chilled out a little and ordered a fruit and cheese tray to hold us over until dinner. I was really tired tonight and my eyes were killing me. I made it through dinner and the show – Louis Johnson comedian – and was done. He was okay. We laughed some but not someone I’d pay to go see on my own.

Bob was dying to go to the casino. He really hadn’t had time to go since we boarded. I didn’t have the energy to even play slots so came back to the room and got ready for bed. He was back in about an hour up $275! Good job!