By Bob Van Leer

  (VANCOUVER, B. C., Sunday, July 20, 1997) - Our cruise ship, Ryndam, Holland America Line, just left Vancouver enroute to Ketchikan, Alaska.

  After Betty and I retired and turned the operation of the Curry County Reporter over to daughter and son-in-law, Molly and Jim Walker, we thought it would be a good idea to get out of town for a few weeks.

  We had considered a number of times a trip to Alaska, but somehow never got around to doing it and this seemed to be the time. After this trip we will really be able to say we have seen America, for this is the last of the 50 states we haven't visited. Tuesday we will complete the list when we dock at Ketchikan.

   We arrived here by Canadian Air in early afternoon after a short flight (hour and five minutes) from Portland. We actually started the trip Thursday by attending the annual Oregon Newspaper Publishers Association annual convention held this year at Ashland. Thursday evening a dinner was held for past presidents of the association, of which I'm one. Us old timers can get together and swap stories about past years, some of which might even be true. We left Friday morning and left Molly and Jim to take care of the business part of the meeting.

  We drove north to Portland to visit our children and grandchildren who live there, but on the way stopped at Rogue Valley Manor to visit Ralph and Earla Priestly, recently of Gold Beach, who moved there after Ralph suffered a broken hip. Ralph passed his test to live in their cottage while we were visiting, even taking the therapist for a drive.

  In Portland we visited with our three daughters and their husbands: Sherry and Scott Wills; Amy and Doug Bornemeier and son Jon; and Sally and Dave Shuey and son Jordan and daughter Maya.

  We did not have much of a tour of Vancouver, but have been here before. It is a bustling city with 1.5-2 million people in the metro area, and an extremely busy port. The Ryndam was tied up to a dock about a hundred yards from where I and grandsons Rob and Chris Johnson took off in a float plane a couple of years ago to take an air tour around Vancouver. There are a lot of float planes taking off and landing and at least two seemed to be commercial commuter lines.

  About two piers down from where the Ryndam was docked I could see the superstructure of another cruise ship, the Legend of the Seas, the ship we were on when we cruised through the Panama Canal last winter.

  The newspapers here are filled with stories and pictures of a State of Alaska ferry being blocked from leaving Prince Rupert, B. C. by several hundred Canadian commercial fishing boats. The demonstration is part of a salmon war going on now between the U.S. and Canada. Our ship is Dutch, so we shouldn't have a problem.

  The main fish war is between British Columbia and Alaska, but the spillover effect may be felt on the southern Oregon coast. The Canadians say Alaska fishermen are catching hundreds of thousands more sockeye salmon than allowed by treaty, nominally as incidental catch when Alaskans are fishing for pink salmon. From what I have read in the U.S. and Canadian newspapers, the Canadians have more of the right on their side.

  A note in the ship's newspaper said, after leaving Vancouver, we sailed through the Seymour Narrows, a narrow passage between the mainland and Vancouver Island, with tidal currents of up to 16 knots, so it is necessary to pass it during slack tide.

  At 4:30 p.m. we had a lifeboat drill, mandatory on passenger ships. This one was conducted more seriously than some others we have been through.

  Tomorrow will be a full day at sea as we head through the inland passage to Alaska.