Prince Rupert, BC

Our arrival at Prince Rupert wasn't scheduled until1:00 pm so that gave us the morning to sleep in a bit and relax. I mentioned it before, but I loved having the breaks in between ports whether it be a sea day, a glacier viewing day, or just a late arrival. 

Bob and I went to breakfast at the buffet and met Kent and Laurel arriving as we left. At 10 am the two of us went to "Battle of the Cake Masters"...sort of a cooking demonstration/comedy routine held in the Dazzles lounge. Cruise Director, David Klooster, competed against the hotel director, Brian Walters, and also a 12 year old girl from the audience to see who could decorate a cake the best. Things got quite messy before it was over! Samples of some pre-made cake were shared afterwards. 

Our route from Sitka to Prince Rupert took us close to land. 

One of the BC ferries sailed by us and also a little tug pulling a barge.

 

This boat (Grizzly #7) brought back memories of a book I used to read
to my boys when they were little..."Scuffy the Tugboat."

Prince Rupert, BC is the deepest port in North America and Canada's wettest city with an average of 2552 mm (~100 inches!) of precipitation per year. But...Prince Rupert was also the one port where we had absolutely nothing planned. Not many excursions were offered through the ship and most were the expensive type (sea planes, jetboat tours, kayaking, etc.) I had read about a carving shed nearby where you could watch totem poles being carved so that is where we headed when we got off the ship. (Free shuttle buses were available but waiting for them to fill up probably took as much time as just walking to town!)

Visiting the carving shed was a good idea and close by...but it was closed.

A totem pole next to the carving shed. You can see the cruise ship in the background.

Across the street from the carving shed was the Sunken Gardens. This "hole" was to have been the site of the community court house, but plans changed. The tunnels leading into the gardens were used for storing munitions during the world wars. 

From signs we saw around town, volunteers would be planting all of the summer annuals the next day. Even without the flowers, the gardens were beautiful!

Without a plan, our little group was struggling to figure out what to do for the day. I hate being in the situation where everyone says "what do you want to do?"..."I don't care, what do you want to do?" and so on and so on...

The guys were talking about trying to find some totem poles and I was not in the mood to wander aimlessly AND I was pretty "totem-poled out" from yesterday. So I decided to head back to the ship by myself. 

On the way I walked through this little area on a hill overlooking the ship. There was a wall with engraved bricks in memory of those who had "live by and loved the sea." 

It was such a gorgeous day, that I sat down on a bench and just enjoyed the warm sunshine.

Since I intended to go back to the ship, Bob had given me his binoculars that he decided he didn't want to carry. I also had my big camera, a purse and my jacket that I had shed because I was too warm. A lot of junk, but as I was walking down the hill to return to the ship, I noticed some shops (off to the right in this next photo) and remembered reading about the Cow Bay area of Prince Rupert. It looked very picturesque and even though I didn't want to lug so much stuff around, I decided it wasn't worth a trip back to the cabin to unload.

I walked around a bit and then stopped into a visitor's center (next photo). There was free (and fast) wifi and a great view of the marina. So...I sat down and enjoyed both! (One of the perks we got when booking this cruise was 250 minutes of free internet on the ship, but it was pretty slow. At the end of the cruise I still had over 2 hours of time left!!) 

After catching up on Facebook, I continued my walk down the street enjoying the beautiful sunshine and stopping to look at the gift shops. I was surprised when I ran into Laurel in one of them!! She had ditched the guys as well!!

The two of us roamed around the Cow Bay area together and then headed back to the ship. It was quite a long time before the guys returned. They had found a map with a walking tour to see the totem poles. Bob swears the map wasn't correct and they had walked several miles before finding all of the totem poles. He enjoyed the exercise and I'm sure saw parts of Prince Rupert that the average tourist never sees...such as the Royal Canadian Mounted Police office!

Our balcony was facing west and the perfect spot to catch the sunset.

At 10:00 pm there was a Lumberjack Party in Dazzles. Once I realized it was really just a chance for people to do the line dances they had been learning during the cruise, I didn't stick around...just not my thing. Instead I went back to the cabin and watched the sail away from the balcony.

From our port side balcony, we had a great view of a shipping facility as we were leaving Prince Rupert. So colorful! The longest train I have ever seen was coming into this place to either load or unload.