The Return Trip

Funny how it's so much faster to get home than going out.  Of course, not stopping saves a lot of time!  We spent almost two days at sea.  I did finally get a colorful sunrise outside my balcony, and I took full advantage of it!  Bruce said I missed those few seconds with the most color, but a girl's gotta do more than take pictures sometimes!

I also found a sport on this sports oriented ship that I could do in spite of my health issues! One of the performers put on a juggling class!! I got up to two balls! Look at that form! Catching with my face!

 

And you would know that the one time I left the stateroom without my camera, there would be whales close enough to get good shots of! They were humpbacks, and there were a couple of nice heads up and several lovely tale flukes. No big breaches, but still. And what did my phone focus on? The debris on the window! As far as I know, there is no manual focus on the phone to override it! While eating lunch, we turned into the Strait of Juan de Fuca, signalling our return to the Washington area. I recognized Cape Flattery, but still, no camera. When I went back down to the room, I went out on the balcony and got some shots of the traffic line in the shipping channel which makes the Strait easily identifiable!  Our balcony was on the opposite side of the ship from Cape Flattery.

After several stops in the channel, waiting our turn to move, we finally pulled into Victoria, British Columbia. The ship was only staying in port for a few short hours, and we're slow walkers. While my foot was feeling better, it still hurt, too.  So we decided to eat supper on board and stay on the ship for this port. We can catch one of the ferries and stay however long we want anytime we choose. The view off the balcony was beautiful, and I spent the evening trying to get decent pictures of birds in flight. I need to keep working on that.

Unfortunately, the Southern Resident orcas didn't come by to say, "Hello," while we were in the Strait or the Sound so we could see them. But, maybe I'll see them later. The ship was docking in Seattle by daylight. We skipped the porter's assistance and just rolled our bags off the boat to the van that was waiting to take us to our car. My foot? Almost feeling good. By the time I'm writing this, I am back down to baseline pain level. I'm going to use this trip as evidence that I don't need to take the walking boot or my walker with me on the next one. 

I'm home now getting ready for the doozy - the epic trip. Next month, I'll be heading to Foz do Iguacu, Brazil, starting a trek down to Ushuaia/Tierra del Fuego and a cruise to Antarctica, then back up the Pacific side, flying home from Ecuador after visiting some friends down there. And I just upgraded to a balcony for the Antarctica cruise!  See ya' later!