Alaska Cruise - Day 6:Ketchikan Lumberjack Show

The night before, I had this INSANE idea that while in Alaska, we should watch the sunrise. Each night, we got a schedule of everything for the next day which included the time of the sunrise and sunset. It said that the sun would rise at 4:45, so we set our wake up alarm call for 4:30. Amazing, when the phone rang, we woke right up, put on our hoodies and headed outside.

Two things.

1) It was already light outside.

2) It was cloudy so we couldn't actually see the sun.

Watching the sunrise at 4:30 in the morning!

After first we were bummed because it was cloudy. Then we remembered that in Juneau, they told us the sun only shines 44 days of the year. And we realized that since leaving Vancouver, we really hadn't seen a lot of the sun. So we concluded that we did, indeed, experience a typical Alasakan sunrise.

Arriving in Ketchikan.

Ketchikan was by far, the prettiest town we stopped at in Alaska.

This was the day that the guys were going Halibut fishing and the girls were going to oogle the guys at the Lumberjack show. The guys had to be off the ship two hours earlier then us for their excursion. So I kissed Josh for good luck and then decided to walk around the deck of the ship a few times. After making almost 4 laps, I looked up to see Josh walking towards me.

When the guys got off the ship, their guide met them. We had booked this excursion privately so he was holding a sign that said "O'dell, Ercanbrack, Christensen." When they walked up to him, the guide told them he had bad news, they weren't going halibut fishing today. Josh said that Andrew said "So, we're going salmon fishing instead?" The guide then told them that the weather on the ocean was to rough. The winds were sustained at 60 miles an hour with gusts up to 80. It wasn't safe and they wouldn't catch anything anyways. He told them he would refund their money and the guys headed back to the ship.

Josh said as they were walking back, he could hear other passengers from the cruise ship arguing with their tour guides. They had paid money to fish and/or see wildlife and by golly, that is what they were going to do.

It was hard to see them have to cancel because right in Ketchikan, the weather was nice. But later a few things happened that helped us know they made the right decision.

1) That night, Randi overheard someone on the spa complaining. They had gone an a wildlife sightseeing excursion. The sea was rough and they all ended up sick and there was inlets they couldn't even get up to look for wildlife.

2) That night, once our ship sailed out of port and back into the ocean, we hit rough water and nearly became sea sick again.

3) The next day, Josh over heard a few guys talking. One guy aksed the other how the fishing was. The guy went on and on about how horrid it was. The water was so rough they never even got there fishing lines in the water. He was mad because the ship wouldn't refund his money. So the first guy asked, "Didn't they offer you a refund before going, but you refused it?" The second guy stammered for a minute and then declared that it didn't matter. He should get his money back because he didn't catch anything.

Since the guys now had nothing to do, we added them to our excursion, The Lumberjack Show/Rainforest Sanctuary.

Josh and I, along with Randi and Todd, decided to sit on the very front row. When they start the show, they explain that it is two different teams and half of the bleachers cheers for one side and the other half for the other side. Josh and I shouted ourselves hoarse from all our cheering.

One of the lumberjacks carved a bunny with his chainsaw. There was some dramatics when he "accidently" cut the ears off.

While pouting, he used the ears as a chair.

Then they choose a boy from the audience to take the chair home. He told the lumberjack he had a brother, so they found a second chair for him.

When each team one an event, they kept score by taking a wood chip to their side of the audience. All my loud cheering paid off because I got to hold the first chip for our team.

Getting a picture with my favorite lumberjack and my wood chip.

Josh saw this shirt and told me to get it.

The show was awesome and even the guys enjoyed it, even though it wasn't fishing.