What a Great Excursion!

We took a ride on the Aleutian Ballard (pictured above) today for our Ketchikan excursion. What a super trip it was! This ship was on early seasons of The Deadliest Catch and has been converted into a tourist ship. Not only did they show how Long Line fishing works, but they pulled three kinds of crab pots while telling their stories about fishing on the Bearing Sea. They had some great stories about fishing and surviving over their many years of experience on the waters. All that was expected.
What was quite unexpected was an Eagle Show! It turns out that the ship has a deal with a neighboring indian tribe to pull crab pots from their waters.
Since indian reserves are not subject to state or federal law, they can legally feed the eagles. Both Mary and I got some great pictures and I took some short videos of the eagles swooping in about 20' from our ship to pick up the fish tossed out by the crew. Once I can find a suitable internet connection I hope to upload some to google videos. It's a bit too expensive to use the ship's internet for that.
Our 3 1/2 hour excursion flew by. After we docked, we had 2 hours to collect free-bees and do some shopping. Mary got a nice topaz ring today and I got two polo shirts (among other things). But we accomplished what we needed and made it back to the ship by 1:00, well before the 1:30 "all aboard" time. We relaxed this afternoon, had a great surf 'n turn dinner and are planning our day in Juneau tomorrow.