July 7, 2011

Another great night of sleep, I think because of the fresh mountain and sea air up here.  We are sleeping long and hard!  Today we played like tourists most of the time.  How many libraries have a view like this? We returned our Alaska video and fishing book to the library and checked out our four items.  One item is a video on Petra to look at what we will be seeing there on our November cruise through the Suez Canal.  After our library stop we went to the check out the various options for fishing licenses.  We settled on the three day license to start with and the King salmon stamp as well as we aren’t really sure we can tell one salmon from another and we know what would happen to us if we had the wrong one, “Eash Factor” and all.  Anyway, our license will begin tomorrow at noon.  One picks a date and time it starts and the days are consecutive.  Our plan is to fish off the bank, rocks, docks, bridge or whatever.  If that is not successful we talked to the guy renting fishing poles over on Creek Street and he will give us a good deal to take us Sunday or Monday morning over to Herring Bay where they more or less “snag” a fish with a drag and triple hook.  That is not the way I want to do it but if I fish for 2 days with nothing I am sure I will not be particular by then!  Incidentally, the creek flowing into that bay has a lot of bears feeding on the salmon right now.  Unfortunately, the bus doesn’t go that far.  We haven’t decided yet if we will rent a car to drive over there.  Car rentals are pretty pricey up here.  They have these little electrical cars they rent for $40. an hour but really not sure one of those would make it where we want to go!  We also picked up a tide book, since the tides from high to low vary quite a bit here, it is interesting to see the complexity and intricacy of the world God created for us. 

After the library and licensing we headed along the berths, four ships today; two Princess and two Holland America. Today is quite different from yesterday with just one ship in port.  However, if you leave the immediate area right around the ship there aren’t too many people.  We ate like a tourist today at the Fish Pirates Saloon.  It was disappointing but there was live music and really what must one expect when eating looking at a cruise ship!  The small portion of the fresh cod fillet was delicious.  I had to laugh when the band played “North to Alaska”! After lunch we walked around to various shops and some interesting ones tucked out of the way or upstairs. The Golden Thimble was such a tempting place.  I might go back and get a quilt panel, a type I have not seen for years with blocks to embroider. I took photos of a lot of beautiful quilts.  On our walk we watched a couple of the cruise ships depart and observed people fishing, not catching, along the way.  We will scout out where we want to begin fishing tomorrow, not right by downtown for sure.  We have all the rules and instructions we need to go over as well. 

The sun was shining with just a few clouds today.  There was no rain today during our waking hours.  When I looked out at 5am the street was wet so it sprinkled in the night.  BTW, our “dark hours” are approximately 10:30pm to around 4am. Land of the midnight sun, but not this far south!  We can’t see the Northern Lights from here either.  Here is a view of our apt the building in the background, tan with blue trim.