Our 3rd Alaskan Cruise

We enjoyed another Alaskan cruise this year.  We left on July 4, embarking in Vancouver, Canada.  Here are some of the highlights....

DAY 1

We flew to Vancouver early in the morning.  This time we were on Delta and were impressed with the staff both on the ground and in the air.  All were very helpful to our needs.  Once in Vancouver, we found the "Princess People" and were escorted to customs and the bus to the cruise terminal.  We were so impressed with the quick service and found ourselves in our stateroom in no time.

We were in stateroom B627,  on the right side of the ship.  We had a nice view of the port.  We left pretty much on time (after muster drill of course...we pretty much have that down to memory).  Here are some views of inside the ship and our first lunch on board.

Some view of the harbor as we were leaving ...

DAY 2

Day 2 was a sea day and we love them.  Great way to relax, watch some favorite DVD's that we brought along and eat way too much in the buffets.  We ate dinner with 3 other couples and Princess always seems to seat us with great people.

DAY 3

Day 3 was in Ketchikan, a little seaside town we love to explore.  It rained (sometimes hard) most of the day but we ventured out anyway.  Some of our favorite pictures from Ketchikan.

We saw the first of many bald eagles on this trip.  The first one was on the top of a cross on a local church.  For some odd reason, we decided not to try getting us up this hill.  Wouldn't want to drive down it in Winter either.

We escaped from the rain a bit when we found a local museum to explore.

Thought it was interesting to see this plane "depot" and boat garage on the way out.  Air travel is the most preferred way of getting around in Alaska.

DAY 4

Day 4 was in Juneau.  We took a ship sponsored tour to Mendenhall Glacier.  Despite the fact the glacier is receding with each passing year, it's still quite a beautiful site to see.  Nice walking trails, a visitor's center that has big viewing windows, and best of all, we were treated in seeing a young black bear munching grass by the bridge.

Leaving Juneau we saw small humpbacks whales.  Always a breathtaking site!

DAY 5

Day 5 was in Skagway.  We found a independent tour that took us up into Canada and where we saw more beautiful sites of Alaska....and another bear!

As part of the trip, we had a lunch at a little place that has a dog sled camp.  The food was "interesting," and they had a little museum, but the dogsled ride was the highlight (although getting into the sled was a little tricky.)

We were on our way back to the ship when a fellow bus passenger spotted a bear.  Our cute driver turned around and we spent about a half hour watching this beautiful cinnamon brown bear eating dandelions and pretty much ignoring his audience.

As we left Skagway, we were treated to some dolphins off our balcony, unfortunately they are fast little critters so was hard to get a good picture of them.

Day 6 & 7

Our last 2 ship days were at sea, but going through Glacier National Park.  The glaciers were very pretty but it was foggy and rainy some of the time so we didn't get the best of views.  Still, no complaints. 

Kent was all deck out for our last formal night.

The last morning on board found us in Whittier, Alaska where we boarded the Princess Train to Denali National Park.  It was a 9 hour trip but great scenery and an elevator for DeeAnn to finally get to be in the "dome" section of a train.

We arrived at Princess Lodge in early evening and it was just about dark so didn't get to explore that first night.  The lodge is made up of several buildings of guest rooms, shops and restaurants.  All hard to get to from a wheelchair point of view but still fun.  Our room was really pretty with a woodsy theme.

DAY 8

That afternoon it was back on a bus for a ride to Fairbanks.  The ADA room we were given was far from perfect (a Murphy bed...not comfortable) but other than that, we enjoyed Fairbanks and the Riverboat tour was in many ways the highlight of the trip.  It was relaxing and we learned so much about the early Native Americans in that part of Alaska.

After the Riverboat tour, we all went into this big dining hall and had a wonderful lunch of delicious beef stew, salad, rolls, etc...  It was all very well organized.

After lunch, another quick bus ride  to the Gold Dredging history and tour.  Pretty fascinating actually.  We rode on this cute little train (and were entertained) as we learned about all that gold mining.  We even panned for our own gold and together got about $31 worth....

 (down payment on our next cruise?)

DAY 11

We had quite some time to spend in Fairbanks before our plane trip home (9:30pm) so we rented a car and went exploring Fairbanks.  We met another couple on ship and invited them to come with us. First stop, the Fairbanks curling club, then to the museum.

We were only 20 minutes to the city of "North Pole" so we drove their to see what it was all about.  The small city is pure Christmas.  Almost every building and street has a Christmas name and the light poles and street signs poles are painted like candy canes.  We stopped at Christmas Village and had our picture taken with the big guy himself.

Our flight home began at 9:30pm so it was an overnighter.  Had a quick layover in Minneapolis and were in SLC by 9:00am and home by 10:00ish.  The cats were all very happy to see us and I think they secretly hid all our future travel material.  It was a great trip and yes, we would go back to Alaska in a heartbeat.