Once the cruise ship left the Vancouver area, my mom and I headed back down to our cabin to grab the binoculars and sit on the balcony. We saw other cruise ships and ferry boats in the Strait of Georgia but sadly, no killer whales. Finally around 7pm, my mom decided she was hungry. This sparked a round-robin game of “what do you want to do”. You see, I did all of the planning for this trip and part of that deal is that I don’t make decisions about details like what we do for dinner. My mom however does not understand the rules of this agreement, nor did she care about shouldering her fair share of making decisions; and therefore, pretty much all decisions, large or small, fell on my shoulders.
I read to her the choices on the dining room menu. I could tell by the expression that she was making that none of those fit into her very narrow concept of acceptable dinner. So up to the buffet we went to scour for an open spot to sit. Once we grabbed a table, we took turns getting food. I let my mom go first. She came back with a salad, claiming that there wasn’t anything that looked better. Oh, there are six different food stations and that’s all you could find? Ok. I came back with a slice of prime rib. And I later discovered why the dessert station was so popular. The ice cream is awesome.
We walked around the ship a bit after dinner, checking out where the main stage was and generally getting acquainted with the layout of the Westerdam. I turned to ask my mom if she wanted to stay up for the entertainment starting at 9pm and saw her drooping eyelids. Tell you what mom, how about we go back to the cabin and get a good night’s sleep and start fresh in the morning?
For the first time in a very long time, I slept well. I woke up in the middle of the night to feel the ship rocking but the movement literally rocked me right back to sleep. Around 8am, I heard my mom get up and go to the bathroom. I had just dozed off again when she returned, exhaling loudly like my drunk friends in college did right before they threw up. My eyes snapped open to look at her climbing back into bed. What the heck, are you sick?? Yes, she moaned, I’m so seasick. Wait, what? I laid there for a second. OK, so the ship was moving a bit but it surely wasn’t moving enough to make you sick? Oh no, she was seasick and miserable. I tried to summon up some sympathy but was only barely able to say, “try to rest a little more and maybe it’ll calm down soon” before I fell straight back to sleep.
I finally got my ass up around 1pm. I was horrified I slept so long until I realized that I hadn’t gotten that much sleep at once in well over a year. My mom was still in bed, awake and looking worse for wear. Did you take any Dramamine? No… I had to cajole her into taking something. I have no idea why she didn’t earlier but suffice to say that her trying to gut this out wasn’t working. Of course, I felt terrible about being dead to the world for hours while she was obviously suffering and then I was like, I’m a terrible daughter for even suggesting a cruise. To make matters worse, I was absolutely fine. In fact, I was starving at that point. I tactfully tried to think of a way to say that I was going to get something to eat without rubbing it in.
While roaming the ship, I ran into a member of the crew who expressed sympathy for my mom’s plight and suggested I visit the sick bay to see if they could give her one of those seasickness patches. That was a great idea, except not all of the guest elevators went to that particular deck level. I ended up wandering aimlessly until I could find the stairs that would lead me down to the right deck and then walked an entire deck – where I wasn’t exactly sure I was allowed to be – to find the sick bay. Naturally, it was closed! Why the hell the sick bay was closed right when most people might have needed it is beyond me but needless to say, I spent a fruitless 30 minutes on that quest.
I grabbed lunch at the pool grill. Halfway through lunch, I decided to take some of the french fries back to our cabin and see if mom could stomach those. Because french fries really do cure everything. Mom was able to get a few of the fries down, which made me feel less guilty, although she spent most of the day in the cabin. It was grey and overcast outside so it wasn’t like either one of us were missing any scenery. Another crew member told me we had gone through a storm after we had gotten out into the open sea and that it would start getting calmer once we made it into more sheltered waters later in the day.
That evening, we had reservations in the main dining room for the first gala night. My mom insisted that she was feeling a tiny bit better and the ship was definitely rocking less. So we got ready and put on fancy clothes. At the dining room maitre d’ stand, I was glad I had called ahead for a reservation. Despite the “As You Wish” dining concept, if you showed up at a popular dinner time, you were stuck waiting for an open table. We were quickly whisked to a table right in the middle of the action. My mom read the menu for what seemed to me an extraordinarily long time. I grew anxious, thinking that she wasn’t going to find anything on the menu she wanted or even wanted to try. Finally, she ordered soup and the sea bass after asking me a million questions on what I thought the food was going to taste like.
I go out to dinner in nice places so it was a bit of a struggle for me to remember that my mom does not have the same life experiences that I do. And while I enjoyed my Caesar salad and beef tenderloin, my mom did not seem to relish her soup and sea bass – despite her cleaning her plate. I was only a third of the way through my meal when she was done. I mean, completely done, with her dinner. She’s also not used to lingering over her meal, I guess. We each got a dessert and split both of them. How did you like your first gala night Mom? She looked around the dining room… it was nice but I couldn’t imagine eating like this every night. Well, fair enough I guess.
After dinner, we walked to the main stage to grab seats for the show, only to realize that pretty much every other person on the ship was in there. There was nowhere to sit, thanks to the couples who sprawled out taking four seats. The dudes with their hands resting on the open seat next to them really irked me and I was about to go settle my happy ass on top of one egregious example of manspreading when my mom dragged me out of the theater. We ended up at the BB King’s Blues Club. My mom was smiling and kinda dancing to the music; I was glad we ended up in there. We stayed until the band wrapped up and then headed upstairs back to the cabin.
The next day, we were already docked in Ketchikan, Alaska when we woke up. We ran up to the buffet to scarf down some breakfast before heading down the gangway to shore. I was steps away from Alaskan soil and claiming my fiftieth state! We got on solid ground and I stomped my foot and took a deep breath. It was official, I had visited all fifty states. My mom looked at me quizzically for a second until she realized what I was doing. We took photos of the Welcome to Ketchikan sign by the pier and then picked our way through the maze of road construction towards Creek Street.
In Ketchikan, I opted not to purchase a shore excursion. The only one that held any interest for me was the flightseeing trip to Misty Fjords but there was a snowball’s chance in hell that I could ever get my mom on a float plane. To top it off, an accident involving a couple of those float planes had occurred only a few weeks ago, making doubly sure that it wasn’t even up for discussion. Our stop in port was only from 7am until 3pm so it didn’t lend itself to the super long boat ride either. Instead, I told my mom we would go to Creek Street, check out the houses on pilings hanging over the creek and just wander around.
Creek Street was once home to the brothels and houses for soiled doves (that’s what the old-timey folks called them). Nowadays, it’s filled with shops selling tourist knickknacks and a few restaurants. We took some photos and checked out a nearby waterfall before making our way back towards the ship.
Along the way, my mom decided to wander into some shops. I don’t really do much shopping in those kind of touristy shops because it seems like everything is made in China. Actual local-made stuff is really hard to find (and pretty expensive). But I humored my mom and followed her around like a sulking teenager while she looked at jewelry and postcards.
Not to knock Ketchikan because they do have a culture that’s wrapped in fishermen’s legacy; but for the daytripper from a cruise ship, the entire town near the pier is basically one big shopping center. I’m sure in the locals area of town, it’s not quite as commerce-driven. But for someone who wasn’t super keen on shopping until I dropped, Ketchikan didn’t hold much allure. We had overloaded on totem poles in Stanley Park and my mom wasn’t all that interested in getting a cab up to Totem Bight State Historical Park. So we ended up back on the ship early enough to grab lunch before the rush of people with shore excursions returned to the ship.
This port stop left me really conflicted. On one hand, I was super excited to finally set foot on Alaskan soil and cross off my fiftieth state. It’s not every day you get to accomplish a life goal. And had I maybe had more time and a mode of transportation that wasn’t my own two feet, I may have gotten to discover the real Ketchikan, rather than an overgrown shopping center. Obviously in this town, your mileage may vary. You may really enjoy poking around in the shops and buying mass-produced products. And if so, it’s not a knock on you. These sections of town near the cruise ship rely on tourist dollars. They need that summer influx of cash to sustain themselves through the Alaskan winter.
At 2:30pm, the gangway was raised and preparations were made for us to cast off. Mom and I originally thought we would hang out on our balcony and watch the scenery go by; but the loud group next door invited over some louder friends and after listening to the them yell over the top of each other for 10 minutes, we decided that the outdoor section of the Lido deck on top of the ship would probably be quieter. And it was. The ship slipped between Revillagigedo Island (where Ketchika is located) and Gravina Island opposite, heading north towards the next stop – Juneau.
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