We slept in again and were already docked at Old Sitka dock about 7 miles from town. Oceania provided a half-hourly complimentary shuttle to and from the Centennial Center. It wasn't quite as bad or time consuming as tendering. We were here from 7am to 4pm but since we're so far from town the last shuttle was at 3pm and we sailed a bit before 4pm.
We spent about 4 days in Sitka around our Alaskan Dream cruise and only had one thing left undone/unseen here. The Fortress of the Bear. We took the shuttle, caught the blue line of The Ride public bus and went out to the last stop at Gary Paxton Industrial Park. From there you walk uphill on Sawmill Creek Rd. about 100 yards or less than 10 minutes and cross the road around the bend from Silver Bay Seafood Processing to Fortress of the Bear. The fare was $1 each way for Clay and $2 each way for me. The only downside of public transit is that it only runs once an hour but we had a timetable for the stops I had printed from online and it was accurate and we never really waited. We did barely make the return bus that we walked back down to Whale Park to catch. I'd have been happy spending an hour there exploring and whale watching but I guess Clay wanted lunch.
So we caught the 9:45am bus out and paid our $10pp to enter the Fortress of the Bear. They house rescued bears and had 4 brown bears and 3 black bears that we saw. It turns out we had seen both types in the wild on our last visit to SE Alaska. Since we had seen and the bus driver pointed out that there were humpback whales in Silver Bay/Sawmill Cove, I really wanted to stop at Whale Park. It is a point of land that is a whale watching park. I had thought about stopping on the way out but didn't want to pay extra bus fare in a day pass so we didn't. When the bus driver pointed out the whales on our approach after I had pointed one out and we saw the distance and mostly downhill walk we decided to leave the bears pretty quickly and walked along the waterfront back to Whale Park. We spotted a female bald eagle as close as we've ever seen one in the wild. As we approached the first parking lot/photo spot we heard a big noise and it was a prodigious humpback exhale! We'd been watching for 20 minutes and had only seen seals/sea lions. We saw maybe a half dozen humpbacks breaching/breathing and maybe 4 tails all told. We also saw one or more big seals/sea lions catching and thrashing and eating big salmon. It was very dramatic and very close to us ashore. We did not see any whales near Whale Park but we didn't enter the park to look or linger as we caught the bus as it arrived at 12:09pm.
We had lunch at BayView Pub. We had eaten there the last time we were in Sitka too. We shared a BLT with fries and a carnitas taco plate with chips. Not very Alaskan, but Clay had an Alaskan Amber Ale. It was all very good with great harbor views. We walked up and down the main street and did some final Alaskan shopping. It appeared that St. Michael's was closed for restoration. In any event we never saw it with eagles atop the crosses this visit which seemed sad but we also did not have any rain today so a good trade off I suppose.
We caught the shuttle back about 2:15pm. We walked through the shops at the dock then used their Internet to Skype a call to Mom. The power is still out at her house after Hurricane Irma. The good news is that Mom & Matt both had no flooding or house damage in the storm. Matt got his electric back after about 3 days and Mom relocated over there for now. She has been advised by her power provider that they expect to restore power by 22nd. Fingers crossed for sooner. But they got by Irma pretty lucky.
Things I love about Oceania. The Illy frozen coffee and the daily caneles at Baristas. But is that enough?
Destination Services reopens today at 5pm. Since we slept in we missed them this morning. We will either try to replace our canceled Astoria excursion with one in Guatemala or with the $100 pp nonrefundable shipboard credit assuming it is good past San Francisco onward to Miami. If they won't do either, I guess we're just out of luck. Back and they say won't know until the 19th if we can book a Guatemala excursion to Antigua. If not, they will apply the $100 pp shipboard credit then.
We have dinner at 6:30pm at Toscana. I will go ahead and try to post this now assuming nothing else of note will happen today.
Internet was down for a while. Back now and it looks like we may be in for a rough outside passage southbound. Tomorrow is a sea day. Sunday is Victoria, BC.
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