Saturday, September 7, 2013
So, we got another early start. I think we were up around
4am instead of 5am today. Not good! We have a very long day ahead of us. Anyway, we were up for the sail into the
channel at Sitka. We were told we were going to dock at Petro Marine, but we
didn’t figure out where we were until crossing the bridge on a bus and saw the
ship. It was well down the channel away from town past the Shee Atika Totem Square Inn. Shortly after we were tied up, the Alaskan Dream, our sister ship tied up
right behind us. The crew was busy trying to get rid of us while preparing for
their last cruise of the season, which was a Road Scholars charter. Lee told us
yesterday that their itinerary was going up to Skagway and taking the White
Pass railroad into Canada among other differences.
We were informed this
morning after breakfast that the afternoon flight out of Sitka had been
canceled. That left only the 11:55am. (We were originally booked on an earlier
direct flight to Seattle that was also canceled and when we were placed on this one,
we could not sit next to one another, but one behind the other was the best they
could do.) They were going to transfer everyone who was scheduled to fly out
today directly to the airport with their luggage in the hopes that everyone
would be able to get a seat on that 11:55am flight. We got to the airport about
3 hours early and before the Alaska Airlines counter opened or TSA. We self-checked in
at the kiosk and got our boarding passes since we were still only flying with
carry-on luggage. As far as I could tell everyone did get on the flight. It was
a very full flight. It had originated in Anchorage with a stop in Juneau, then
Sitka and Ketchikan before finally arriving in Seattle.
We made good time
though and had little wait for our flight to LAX in Seattle. That flight was also
pretty full. In LAX, we walked back through the tunnel between Terminals 5 and
6. We found our gate and went to Skewers by Morimoto for something to eat. We
were finishing up by 9pm as they were closing. It felt like a long day already
and we weren’t even halfway home. We returned to our gate and it was just
mobbed. There were no 2 empty seats together. We sat across the hall. Clay went
back over to get in line to ask what boarding group we were since it was not
printed on our Alaska Air-printed boarding passes. While he was over there in
line, the boards changed and said our gate had been changed to 54A (I think)
from 53B (I think). Anyway it was beside where we had just eaten. Clay did not
believe me because the people manning the gate were telling everyone that the
flight would still depart from there, they just had another flight turning
around there first now because the plane we were waiting for was delayed coming
from Salt Lake City. All the departure monitors had now been updated to the new
gate though, so we walked over there and got seats. About 30 minutes later, all
the people who had been mobbed at the first gate showed up. It looked like it
would be another full flight. We were in boarding group 1 because we had paid
for the Economy Plus seats on these long cross-country flights. The really good
news is that we had the good fortune of having an empty aisle seat on our row,
so as soon as they shut the door, Clay moved over to it. That gave us a nice
row to ourselves and I was very relieved because I was getting very twitchy and
cramping by then and Clay let me lay down across the 2 seats and put my head on
his lap a couple of times overnight. We did not have the attentive service we
had on the first flight over, but then maybe they just expected everyone to be
asleep. We got home about an hour late which was close to the delay in starting
out. We saw Dean Cain get off that flight we were waiting for in LAX.
As we were waiting for our dinner at Skewers, Clay asked if
I had any cough drops. I gave him a handful of Fox’s Glacier Mints. He told me
he thought he was getting a sore throat. (There were a lot of sick people on
our cruise, including Lee, our Tlingit guide.) I was feeling a little raspy and
headachy myself. The bad news is that we both came home sick. The good news is
that we weren’t sick on the trip!
We both had head colds for a week that then settled into nasty coughs in our chests. We had to delay getting our flu shots to recover. I am feeling about 100% now, but Clay's cough continues to plague him.
I found Clay's movies today. I will only post this one from embarkation day. These are the Sheet'ka Kwaan Naa Kahidi Tlingit dancers in Sitka. Click here to view the video.
