August 5, 2013 Monday
Day 29

We ran to town for coffee, tea and pastry at Java Hus, picked up a cool shirt for Michael, then back to camp to hook up the camper and check out of Frogs RV Park. We parked at South Harbor and walked the docks looking at boats and their names. Some boat names are so clever, it's fun to check them out. There are so many boats here. Also watched a couple of harbor seals swimming in the harbor. Nice morning, our last in Petersburg, which we have come to love. Walked to town, grabbed a halibut sandwich at Inga's, went to Clausen Museum till it was time to check into the ferry.

Today we are on the Taku for the second time. The ferry portion of our trip has been such fun. So far we have travelled on the Matanuska, the Columbia and twice on the Taku. It is such a relaxing way to travel. All vehicles remain on the car deck and passengers get the luxury of several places to sit or stand on any of several other levels of the vessel, to watch the beauty of Alaska's Inside Passage float by.

Since our trip today was going to be 13 1/2 hours long, we decided we wanted a cabin, but unfortunately, we hadn't reserved one several months ago when we booked all our ferry travel (what were we thinking?)
We had been checking daily with the ferry the past few days to see if anything opened up but so far, no luck. They told us that as soon as we boarded, we should hightail it to the Purser's office to get on a wait list for any last minute cancellations or no-shows, so that's what we did. Luckily we were first on the wait list, and soon after we departed Petersburg, it was fantastic to here our names called over the loudspeaker. Yay! We were not going to have to sleep in recliner chairs, we had gotten the only available cabin and it had a window, woo-hoo! We stored our stuff in the cabin, had a beer in the cocktail lounge, then dinner in the cafeteria. Our dinner entertainment included several whales putting on a show right outside the windows of the ferry cafeteria, so cool!

After dinner we went on deck to watch a beautiful sunset, then at 9:30pm the ferry made an hour stop in Kake, so we got off for a few minutes just to say we were in Kake. Went to our cabin to sleep from 11:00pm till 4:30am. Awwww, restful sleep with the smooth sailing of Taku.

Wildlife Sightings
Harbor Seals
Whales
Bald Eagles