Noon position: N 25º 42′ 11.99″ – W 113º 40′ 53.98″

So we’re back at sea again. We’ve got a 2 day stretch before we dock in LA.

Also, today is the monthly Crew Emergency Drill at 10:00 so the morning lecture isn’t happening. Result? We slept in, had a lazy breakfast, and exercised.

The weather is definitely cooler as we’re now in the Alaska current, and the sea is a bit more exciting. In his noon briefing the captain commented that we are riding 14′ swells head on. That makes walking on the deck 2 track quite interesting. You spend half the time climbing up and the other half running down. passing thru the ‘bow tunnel’ is an adventure as well as you are tossed from side to side.

We met back at the stateroom shortly before 10:00 and decided that we would take advantage of the optional guest participation in the Emergency Drill – so at the appropriate time we showed up at our muster station. We must be the only people in history do to that. They really didn’t know what to do with us. But it gave them a chance to remember so it was all good. They finally said, “Go sit there.” so we sat, and read, until the overhead announcement declared the drill concluded.

From there we headed down to the Theatre for the 11:15 lecture on the pre-Spanish history of California.

It was a great lecture that covered a lot of interpretation of pictographs and petroglyphs. Very interesting stuff!

The weather was cool and breezy but the sun was nicely warming. It was hard to leave the lunch table.

But leave we eventually did, heading back to our stateroom for a relaxing afternoon of reading, blogging, and catching up on finances a reminder that life goes on, even when we’re on an extended “vacation”.

4:30 found us back in the Theatre for a lecture on Navigation.

The 6:30 lecture reviewed what we’ve learned about the history of space exploration and looked at next steps including missions to Mars and possibly moons of Jupiter and Saturn.

We also looked at some of the amazing images being sent from the James Webb telescope and were introduced to the concept of using rockets for travel among distant cities – basically anywhere in the world in under an hour.

Following dinner we stretched our brains once again. Tonight we scored 15 our of a possible 22. We felt pretty good about that. Sadly one of our team is leaving at Los Angeles so we’re going to have to up our games to fill in the gap.

After Brain Busters we hustled down to the Theatre for the Captain’s Farewell – for the 300+ passengers who are leaving at LA.

Immediately following the farewell the production team took to the stage for a tribute to Motown.

So that’s today. We’re getting better at taking time to relax and spend time doing nothing during sea days. The front of this cruise is ‘sea day heavy’ and I’m sure we’ll fondly remember these halcyon days when we get to the part where we stack 4, 5, 6 port days in a row.

For now we rest, R