We departed the hotel about 9:30 AM and it was raining. We stopped at the Alaska Wildlife Refuge which was just off the Seward Highway before the turn to Portage and Wittaker. We drove around and looked at animals in pens. These had all been orphaned or injured and could not be returned to the wild. The best part was a pen that was 14 acres that had coyotes and bears together. The coyotes were running around and harassing one of the bears. Unfortunately it was raining and they didn’t let us off the bus. We then did stop at the visitor center and I got some good photos of elk which are not native to Alaska and a black bear. They also had Black tailed Sitka deer and Wood Bison which were eliminated in Alaska and they are trying to reinstate them. We then drove on to Seward. The Kenai lake on the way was beautiful. We saw some trumpeter swans but not much other wildlife. We got in to Seward and boarded the ship. We stayed long enough to check in and they shuttled us off to lunch right away. On the bus they had given us a questionnaire where we had to state if we had had any flue symptoms in the last couple of days. Then they tried to squirt our hands with Purel everywhere we went and made us put purel on our hands as soon as we came on board. Shortly after we sat down for lunch the guy at the next table puked all over himself and the table. They then came and sprayed disinfectant that smelled terrible. The whole experience including the large buffet was pretty awful. The state room was smaller than any I’d been in a while. After our luggage was delivered we stayed long enough to put our carry-ons down and then Mom and I took the shuttle to downtown Seward which was two miles away. Seward was a small town but had some nice shops and an aquarium and a lovely harbor. We saw a guy in the Aquarium dressed like a vampire even down to having had his teeth altered. We walked the two miles back to the ship along the bike path on the harbor. We also saw a nice older man with a beautiful white husky dog with two blue eyes. It was nice and peaceful. We made our way back to the ship and settled in. I was up in the library trying to get internet access and saw LeStat and his girlfriend again so apparently they are on our cruise. When I talked to John he still hadn’t seen the vampire. We had a stern side table for dinner that had a great view and we shoved off from Seward during dinner.