-----We’d reached Petersburg at 1:00 in the morning, and Wrangell at 5:00 in the morning, but I slept throughout. There is something calming about sleeping on a ship—the dull, interminable roar of the engines far away, murmuring through steel, the gentle rocking to and fro, enough to feel but not interfere, etc. My dad is a much lighter sleeper than I ever recall him being, having been awoken that morning by kids running around in the lounge area directly above our heads—as it turns out, spurred on by a distant whale. He explored the ship in the morning as my mom and I, one after the other, figured out how to get showers in an extremely narrow area, and how to dry off with towels only a hair larger than a standard hand towel. (Ill-advisedly, as it turned out.)

-----11:45 was our expected arrival time in Ketchikan, the most promising port of call for those who wished to venture on terra firma. The downtown area is two miles from the port, and lo and behold, when we disembarked, various taxis were lined up! We grabbed one in order to maximize our precious time in the downtown, and our driver gave us restaurant recommendations while reminiscing about the days when Ketchikan wasn’t amongst the largest population centers in the state. The highway now runs a good ways around its island and features suburbs of mansions with wonderful views. He dropped us off at noon outside Annabelle’s, a seafood restaurant he highly recommended. My parents, who ate breakfast aboard the ship, each got the crab cake appetizer, while I got massive king crab tacos. I wouldn’t say that they were better than the halibut tacos of the Denali Park Salmon Bake, but they were certainly different and much easier to eat in a somewhat dignified way.

-----The service was quite slow, so it took an while between entering and leaving, but we still had an hour to explore downtown Ketchikan. Tourists were everywhere, meandering around sidewalks and streets slowly, chatting loudly, and with no concern for the fact that yes, there were others there too. The cruise ships had docked, several end to end, right outside downtown, and they were hulks—like skyscrapers tipped over—who spewed endless numbers of people onto the already congested streets. Eagles could be seen soaring high overhead, not even having to flap their wings, as they hunted for their next fishy meal.

-----Throngs of humanity aside, Ketchikan is a cute little town. Everything’s basically lined up on one road, and the further you go away from the harbor, the less crowded things get. There are a lot of shops, especially high-end ones; I was shocked by the sheer number of jewelry stores around the area. They definitely know the specific subset of tourists they attract.

-----It was overcast, as it seemingly always is in the Alaskan Panhandle, but it wasn’t raining as we walked past the rows of shops, lush greenery, and totem poles, for which Ketchikan is highly regarded. My dad got a mighty chuckle out of several signs too bawdy for BZPower.

-----With time to spare returning to the main street, where our taxi driver was scheduled to pick us up at 2:00, we ducked into several stores in an eventually successful pursuit of a Christmas ornament as well as a very fancy establishment that dealt in fine artistic imports from Russia, including large hand-painted wooden dolls that went for $6,000. Each item was intricately carved and colorfully painted, and it was a treat to be able to see them. (They even had Matryoshka dolls of professional sports teams that went five players deep.) One younger fellow who worked there followed us around the store and I’m inclined to think that he was keeping an eye on us given our wild beards.

-----Ketchikan’s revitalization as a hub of tourist activity is a relatively recent phenomenon, as we got an impromptu history of the region from our cab driver, who hails from nearby Prince of Wales Island and who has been in Ketchikan since January 1989. The pulp mill that had dominated the economy for years finally shuttered its doors, and in 1997, it was thought that Ketchikan had no future. But they invested in one, and they got it, as the endless cruise ship tourists attest.

-----Upon our return to the Malaspina, we went to the observation deck as we shoved off for international waters. To comply with the law, announcements came over the public address system calling for medically trained professionals to volunteer in the case of an emergency, as well as a general “what-to-do-if-something-should-befall-the-ship” talk. Somewhat disconcerting in the moment, but overall par for the course. The only wildlife we saw were birds, of which there were plenty of eagles. Others thought they caught sight of porpoises, but these unfailingly turned up to be either mirages of the surf or simply driftwood.

-----It was once again nap time aboard the Malaspina, and my dad and I slept soundly as my mom—generally speaking, the preeminent taker of naps—stayed awake, taking pictures of lighthouses and potential critters, but while asleep, we missed very little. As the route between Ketchikan and Bellingham passes by Prince Rupert, British Columbia, my dad sleepily asked if we’d “seen the Tim Hortons sign yet” so we could “say goodbye to maple donuts.” We told him that we’d not yet caught sight of that community, and we passed it while snoozing.

-----At close to 8:30, we decided that it was a good idea to go get something to eat. There is a yin and a yang to going to the galley late—on the one hand, they’re usually out of at least something by that point, but what’s left is usually given in enormous proportions. We’ve gotten to know the cooks, one of whom bears a striking resemblance to Dom DeLuise, and he’s one of these big fellows who likes to exaggerate and poke fun at a lot of stuff and generally doesn’t take things too seriously … so when he said that he’d go two-for-one on the Hawaiian chicken burger special, I assumed that he was joking.

-----He was not joking. Fortunately, the burgers—though served on truly immense buns—weren’t actually all that big, and my mom helped me dispatch them. My dad had cereal without milk, and—strange as it is to say—he seemed quite pleased with his dry crunching.