Alaska 2012:
Day 5 - Inside Passage

	Sunday, August 5, 2012: We slept in and awoke to fog being burned away by sunshine.
	We ran into Bob and Becky shortly before noon and made plans for Bob to meet us at the beer tasting later in the day.
	Out on our balcony, our new time-lapse camera was capturing the scenery with one photo every five minutes, all day long.
	Scenery like this.
	Back in the cabin, Tom and Jill were having one of their hand-slapping competitions. Can't take those two anywhere.
	It was time to open our Kinder Surprise Eggs while we were technically still outside of the US, lest we be busted for importing illegal goods. Kinder Eggs contain small toys inside of candy, so they are a potential choking hazard.
	We unwrapped the milk chocolate/white chocolate eggs to find toys encased in smaller plastic eggs.
	We scored a Madagascar circus train piece and two of the worst-flying gliders ever made. The chocolate was delicious. We had tried Kinder Joy eggs a few months earlier in Asia, which were slightly different.
	And now, back to the scenery. Cruising the Inside Passage is very beautiful and relaxing. Sometimes the shore is farther away, ...
	... and sometimes it is significantly closer.
	Stewart stopped by in the afternoon to hang out with us for awhile.
	Then, he went off to play bingo with his family while the three of us joined Bob at the Alaskan Brewing Company beer tasting.
	Tables were set up poolside on the Lido deck ...
	... with four glasses at each place setting, paper placemats to identify the different beers, and slices of oranges and pizza to taste with the different beer samples.
	Cheers! Each beer was introduced by the announcer, and then we tasted it. After each tasting, we answered some trivia questions. At the end of the tasting, we all picked our favorite beer, and all four of us had picked a different beer, with Jill choosing the Summer Ale, Tom choosing the Amber, Bob choosing the Pale Ale, and Debbie choosing the White Ale.
	The trivia answers were scored by people at other tables, and the winners were announced. It wasn't until afterward that we realized that we had the high score, but the people scoring our card hadn't added up the points correctly. Oh, well, we will always know who the real winners were.
	We were just a little bit hammered after the tasting and a good time was had by all. Thanks, Alaska Brewing Company!
	Meanwhile, the scenery outside was still beautiful, with snow-topped mountains becoming the norm rather than the exception.
	Dinner was at 5:45 every night, and we had a table for eight near the entrance to the dining room. We were all looking our very best on our first of two formal nights.
	Someone dared Jill to touch the ice sculpture, so she did.
	After dinner, we posed for family portraits. Here are the three of us, ...
	... and here are the Eight Who Dared.
	After dinner, there was lots to see from our balcony. Here's a pilot boat either loading or unloading a pilot.
	Here are birds on a log. Those logs were the bane of our existence, since it was easy to confuse a bobbing log with actual wildlife.
	Wildlife such as this. This otter. Or seal. Or something. But it was definitely wildlife. We had also seen whale spouts shortly after coming out on deck, but you'll have to take our word for it.
	There's no wildlife in this photo -- just pure beauty.
	It's starting to look very Alaska-y but we're not quite there yet.
	Soon. Very soon. Day 6 >