Prince Rupert

There are so many cool port towns in British Columbia. Prince Rupert is not one of them. I was a little miffed that we'd paid for express service on a passport for Jack just so we could get off the boat at this one port in Canada, once I'd sized up the port they chose. It's not just that there wasn't anything to do in the town (there wasn't), it's that they gave us five hours there, from 4 to 9pm, so even if we had wanted to get out of the podunk nothing town and see something in what I'm sure was some gorgeous countryside nearby, there wasn't really time. There was time to go out to dinner and not a whole lot else, in a town with two restaurants, a Safeway, a 7-11, and a few gas station to choose from. It was like if cruise ship had decided to stop in Fremont. Just sort of... why?

So we went out to dinner at the one restaurant that didn't look like someplace I could've found in Fremont, a nice little seafood place the locals appeared to like pretty well. I finally got my king crab, and we got to introduce Jack to crab for the first time (until now it's just been the thing he likes to watch in the tanks at Market Hall and on the tv on Blue Planet while he makes little pinching motions with his fingers), but he seemed to prefer the french fries.

(That may be because he immediately dunked the crab leg into the ketchup, which is not necessarily the recommended condiment for crab meat.)

How else did we kill time in Prince Whatshisname? There was a little playground and a toy store, both of which Jack enjoyed immensely and protested vociferously when we attempted to remove him from. Neither of which were things he couldn't have just enjoyed back at home without needing to go all the way to Alaska, but what can you do. They did have a pretty pier. Here is Jack right after we dragged him out of the toy store. Not so happy. But kind of a thoughtful, serene sort of photo, if you don't know that he'd just thrown a major temper tantrum.



Ooh, and there were eagles! That is the one thing this place had going for it. Lots of bald eagles.

Ok, you're saying. This is a photo of a tree. But there is an eagle perched on the very top of it, I promise! It was very frustrating because I have no zoom and actually I have a wide-angle lens on my camera that is even worse than having no zoom, so you'll have to imagine it was really actually much closer than this. Another one flew right by us while we were standing on the pier, but that one suffers from the same problem. My friend Carrie says that the best camera in the world is the one in your hands, but unless Mr. Eagle is posing nicely for you a few feet away, a wide-angle portrait lens is really not your ideal tool for capturing him.