I had a wonderful time in Alaska. Here’s a brief rundown on our time there and some pictures.
Saturday: visited beautiful Stanley Park in Vancouver. The park has beautiful gardens, harbors and totem poles. The weather was perfect! In the afternoon we boarded the Summit and set sail for Alaska.
Sunday: cruising Alaska’s Inside Passage. I also had to attend a seminar during the day. In the evening was the first ‘formal’ evening of the cruise.
Monday: Juneau. We got off around noon and got a taxi to Auk Bay Harbor. There we were prepped for our kayaking experience in Mendenhall Lake. Mendenhall Glacier feeds into this lake. Other than one other canoe boat, we were the ONLY people on the lake. It was AMAZING! We kayaked right to the face of the glacier (keeping some distance in case of calving). We probably kayaked 3-4 miles. It was an incredible experience. We met several people throughout the cruise who said ‘that was YOU we saw out there? How did you get all the way there?’, after we told them what ‘excursion’ we did in Juneau. After kayaking, we visited with Rachel and Carly Phelps at their home in Juneau. We enjoyed dinner down in the main harbor, in a restaurant overlooking the three cruise ships docked in Juneau. It was so wonderful to spend some time with Shawn and Rachel and to meet Carly. She’s a cutie! Shawn is a police officer in Juneau so we had a brief (outside) tour of his workplace. In Juneau, we also saw the salmon trying to swim upstream to spawn. It is so amazing…the river is just FULL of salmon! This is something we saw in every stream and river while in Alaska.
Tuesday: Skagway was probably my most favorite port of call. Juneau was a winner because of our kayaking adventure and seeing the Phelps. But Skagway was just beautiful. It is a very quaint and historical town. This was also our most perfect weather day. It was warm and sunny and in the distance we could clearly see Glacier Bay National Park. We hiked to lower Dewey Lake, saw bear tracks (ok…maybe not bear. Wolf? Dog? Whatever they were, they freaked me out!), shopped and road the White Pass Yukon Railroad to Yukon Canada. The views were spectacular. And we were even treated to the train guide jumping into the lake (35 degrees F)! It was her last day and this is apparantely the tradition. I’d be leaving without notice!!!
Wednesday: Sitka. The cloudly skies returned on Wednesday but it did not stop us from getting out and enjoying another neat little town along the Inside Passage. We did some more hiking in Sitka…saw more salmon and just enjoyed town. We saw a bald eagle playing down by the river. It was a slower day but enjoyable. In the evening we watched a 30 minute Cirque du Soleil performance. If you have never seen one, I highly recommend it! It is even more amazing that they can do this on a moving vessel!
Thursday: Icy Strait Point. This is pretty much a private island, which is visited just 4 days a week by 3 different cruise lines. The town of Hoonah used to have a thriving canning industry. It is no longer operating, but there is a display showing the ins and outs of salmon canning, shops at the pier and beautiful rainforest walking trails. We walked through the rainforest, the stores, and into downtown Hoonah. There is absolutely nothing to the downtown area except 2 small stores and a bar style restaurant that sells crab. Being the seafood lover that I am, I treated myself to ½ a crab for just 8 bucks! What a deal! On both Wednesday and Thursday, our ports of call required us to tender in (versus dock and be able to walk off the ship and into town) on smaller vessels. This was a first for me and I was really impressed how smooth Celebrity operated the whole process. Tonight was our 2nd formal dining experience. We were not going to the main dining room every night since our dining time was 8:30pm…but I was not going to miss lobster! It was delicious, of course…and I was always SO impressed by the service of Joseph and Chardie. All the service people on board truly make the cruise! It is amazing to me that they can remember our names, and what we like and so on. Tonight was also the Celebrity Midnight Gala Buffett!
Friday: Hubbard Glacier. This was a real highlight for me. The ship was able to get so close to the glacier. It is a huge glacier and calved a lot while we were out there. It sounds like thunder….it is incredible to watch and hear. The ship spent a couple of hours there and had a naturalist on board. After leaving the Glacier, we sailed for about 17 hours to Seward, Alaska. I had my last ½ day seminar in the afternoon. We played Celebrity (cruise lines…not ‘Hollywood celebrities’) Jeopardy and our team one! Whoohoo! It was entertaining to say the least to watch adults whine about the rules!!!
Saturday: Arrival in Seward. We walked into town (with all our luggage...I don't think too many people do this!) and went to the sea life center which is where they rehabilitate injured sea life. I then boarded a bus for Anchorage (about 3 hours). I arrived in Anchorage around 2pm and am now waiting for my flight to Memphis at 9:40pm tonight. It feels like I am on the ship still as everything is moving…I remember after just a 3 night Bahamas cruise, that feeling lasted one week. I hope it won’t last longer than a week this time…
Alaska was the trip of a lifetime. I am sorry that Jason could not make it but we look forward to time together in Jamaica in October. And it was fun to spend some time with Christi. Thanks to her, I did more than I would have done alone. She is the hiking/see-it-all/kayak nazi, no doubt about it! At least we worked off all the extra food we ate! And we always came back with stories to entertain the other travel agents (and ourselves)!
