Our first full-day of cruising through the Inside Passage began bright and early the next morning. Since H and I were still on Chicago Time, we naturally woke up around 5 am local time and at first were completely miserable about it. But then we stepped out onto our balcony and were greeted by one of the most magnificent sunrises we have ever seen! 
On one side of the ship, the mountains were bathed in fog and moonlight… 
On the other side, the forested hills were alight in a rainbow of color coming from the sunrise. 
One of the passengers on the stern of the ship commented that there was no way to take a bad photograph of that sunrise. I had to agree…
There was a quiet and magical beauty about that morning. Almost as if Nature intentionally put on a majestic show of colored-light all bathed in fog.
We even came across a mythical ‘Rubber Ducky’ fog formation (my technical name for the anomaly). Do you see it?
From the very stern of the ship you could see both the rainbow-colored sunrise to the east and the foggy mountains bathed in moonlight to the west.
It really was one of the most magnificent sunrises I have ever seen. I had no idea what the wild wilderness of the Pacific Northwest would be like but that sunrise had me pretty excited for our coming adventures.
The rest of our day was spent cruising towards Ketchikan, our first port of call. Parts of the day were bathed in fog so thick it almost hugged the little forested islands as we sailed past. 
Later in the day a pilot ship zoomed up to our cruise to drop off a navigator (at least that is what we assumed). Do you see the photographer shooting in the lower right? He was strapped to ropes on the side of the pilot ship and was shooting the entire time. He almost certainly got better shots than I did!
Until tomorrow!
More of our Alaskan adventures can be read here:
Part One
Part Three
Part Four
Part Five
Part Six
Part Seven
Part Eight
