Alaskan Cruise - Victoria

Our last stop on the cruise was Victoria, Canada. 

We didn't book an excursion in Victoria. We opted to just get off the ship and explore the town. We had hoped to rent a couple of e-bikes or scooters, but we did not find any. We wondered if electric bakes and scooters are not allowed on the streets there. We could have rented one of these guys to take us around town, but that seemed a little ridiculous to us, so we just walked.

We walked along the ocean for awhile on this paved bike path. Then we turned inland and explored this green space that we spotted on the map. It was really pretty with some water features, paths, flowers and plants, and benches. We even found a few peacocks in the park.

After the parked, we walked towards the downtown area. We stopped at a 7-11 and got some Canadian candies for the kids as well as slurpees for ourselves, Our goal, in town, was to find a place where we could get some poutine. We found a place with outdoor seating and ordered one dish to share (we really weren't that hungry)

There were some unique features and building while we walked through town. This archway was popular.

This palace looking building was impressive.

On the way back to the ship we walked through this cute little area with restaurants and homes built right out on the dock. The buildings were all painted very colorfully.

We had such an amazing trip to Alaska. Perfect weather, lots of wildlife. and good food. We looked for whales every time we sat on our balcony, but only caught a distant quick tail of one. The trip home didn't go as smoothly as we hoped as our pilot didn't show up, so they were scrambling to find another. Then they switched our gate only to switch us back to the original gate after we had all made the long trek to the other terminal. We were happy to finally get home and to see the kids. They survived well without us, especially with so many kind neighbors looking out for them.


 

Glacier Visit to Endcott Arm

Part of our cruise, like every Alaskan cruise, was a visit to a glacier. Our travel agent claimed that all of the glacier visits were similar, but after our visit to Endcott Arm, I was a little disappointed that we didn't do the cruise with a visit to glacier bay. However, with our sea plane excursion in Juneau, this glacier visit didn't stand a chance of impressing us. Our ship slowly creeped it's way up this narrow passage until finally stopping and then maneuvering back and forth to give both sides of the ship a view of the glacier. Then it turned around and headed back out to sea. It was kind of anticlimactic, but the water was this incredible turquoise color which contrasted well with the ice chunks floating around.

This is as close as we got to the glacier. 

We spotted these seals on the way back.

 We did not get to experience any glacier calving, but even if it had happened at Endcott Arm, I don't think we would have been close enough to notice. 

Alaska Cruise: Juneau

In Juneau, we decided to splurge on a sea plane excursion that included a salmon feast at the Taku Lodge. It was incredible. We got on our sea plane right next to the cruise ship. There were 10 seats in each plane and about 5 planes for the whole group. We were separated into groups of 10 and then loaded onto the planes.

Each seat had it's own little window to look out.

It was about a 20 minute flight to the lodge that included a flyover of 5 different glaciers. The glaciers were amazing up close. The pilot also gave us a little history behind Juneau and the surrounding area. One thing I learned is that Juneau is only accessible by plane or by boat. This is because the city sits between the ocean and an ice field. There are no roads in or out.

We landed on the Taku river next to the Taku Lodge. We got took our time heading into the Lodge and as a result, we ended up with the last 2 seats at our assigned table. We thought it was so weird that the other guests at our table didn't think to leave our 2 seats next to each other, so we were across this huge table from each other for the meal. 

The food was amazing. We had fresh salmon caught in the river next to the lodge, baked beans, cinnamon apples, and these incredible cheese biscuits.

After our meal, we had an hour to roam the grounds. We sat by the river for a bit and then took a short walk on this pathway through the trees. Their were a lot of mosquitos, though so we didn't last long on the walk.

As we got closer to the lodge, one of the employees informed us that there was a bear up on the grill, licking the salmon drippings. They left him there while the guests took pictures until they needed to start more salmon on the grill for the next guests. 

They chased him away from the grill and he ran up the tree.

We had about a half an hour to observe him and take pictures of him. He looked so cute up in the tree.

This is the glacier that is closest to the lodge. It was so pretty.

Our flight back had some more incredible views.

We took some pictures and walked around town and then headed back to the ship. It was a really fun day,

Alaskan Cruise: Skagway

I guess I lost motivation to update our blog halfway through telling about our Alaska trip. Now it has been 5 months, so the memories are not as fresh in my mind, but I will do my best to report on the rest of the cruise. 

Our second port day was in Skagway. We happened to be in Skagway, the furthest north our cruise would go on the same day as summer solstice. The sun rose around 3:30 am that day and set around 11pm. However, the night sky really did not get very dark. It was the weirdest thing to look out over the ocean around midnight and still be able to see pretty clearly, the outline of the shoreline in the distance. 

Anyways, back to Skagway. We decided to leave the most popular excursion is Skagway, the ride on the train up into Canada, for later on in life when we won't be able to do super active excursions. We opted for a zipline tour near Grizzly Falls through an Alaskan rainforest. The dock was closed because of rockslide, so they had to shuttle us from the exit of our ship to land. Since this was going to take longer than normal, we exited the boat nice and early. We got to shore about an hour before our excursion, so we decided to walk around town a bit. The town was similar to other Alaska towns we stopped in: about a thousand jewelry shops as well as souvenir stores and seafood restaurants. We did find this unique building, and later learned that it is one of the most photographed buildings in Alaska.

Here is the main drag of town. We did have a bit of excitement when the little theater in town decided to advertise as we walked past and actors started singing at all of the tourists from the second story window.

We didn't last long in town before getting bored, so we headed back to the location where all of the excursions meet up. We were a little early and did not see our excursion. As the time got closer, we started to worry that we had missed our tour guide. We tried to spot the other adventurous tourists around us and spotted a couple that could be in our group. Finally we asked another tour guide that was from the same company and she told us our guide was running late but would be there soon  When she arrived and after initial introductions, we learned that she grew up in Lehi and was in Alaska for the summer to work having been recruited at BYU. After the 30 minute bus ride, we learned that not only did she grow up in Lehi, but lived less than a mile from us and we knew a lot of the same people. She also served her mission in Brazil. It was fun to have so many connections. We got a picture with her to remember what she looks like in case we ever run into her around home.

Our tour started with a short ride up the mounting in a unimog (the green vehicle behind us). It was kind of like an oversized jeep. We were on a single lane, steep road up to the top and it was kind of crazy that this unimog could make it up such a steep incline.

There were a lot of husky dogs in the decor because this was also a base camp for a sled dog tour.

The rainforest was beautiful and our tour guides were fun. The ziplining was fun and they had us do some fun games along the way. We were grouped together with a family of 5. It wasn't nearly as cool as our Puerto Vallarta zipline tour, but it was still fun. 

On the bus ride back home, we came across a family of foxes. It was so cute. There was a mama and 4 little ones.

When we got back to the ship, we decided to get back on right away. We had early dining and we were trying to make it to dinner on time.

Alaskan Cruise: Ketchikan

The first port we came to on our Cruise was Ketchikan, Alaska. Months before the cruise, we booked an excursion in Ketchikan with a local excursion company. It was a jeep and canoe tour of the National forest there. Well, the day before we pulled into port, Danny received this random text at sea from the Ketchikan company telling us that due to some mechanical issues with their jeeps, our excursion is cancelled. Danny exchanged a few texts back in forth, trying to find out if it was legit. We also checked with the ships excursion group to see if the same excursion had been cancelled with them and they told us that it was still on. So we found out the hard way why it is beneficial to book excursions with the ship. Apparently if they are short on equipment, they cancel the non-ship excursions first. So we woke up in Ketchikan the next day, not really sure what we were going to do. We were able to walk off the ship early and got added last minute to a kayak excursion, one of the ones I had picked out before the cruise as an option that day. 

The excursion started with a short bus ride. Then we got on a motorized raft for a 20 minute ride out to a beach area with the kayaks. This was the coldest part of the day. I was glad I brought my beanie and mittens along. On the beach we had a short training on kayaking and then we were off in 2 man kayaks.

While kayaking, we stuck close to the shoreline and saw hundreds of orange and purple starfish, sea anenomes, and sea cucumbers. We also saw a lot of Bald Eagles in the trees and the sky.

It was so beautiful on the water.

We saw a deer on the shoreline. That was kind of cool. 

We kayaked along the shoreline and ended up in this lagoon. There was an eagle nest up in one of the trees that we were all looking at. Then Danny and I spotted a school of tiny fish and seal.

After hanging out in the lagoon for 5-10 minutes, we headed back to the beach where we had some delicious chocolate chip cookies and hot cocoa. then we got back on the catamaran and then back on to the bus. We still had to pay for our excursion, so we stopped in the gift shop to take care of that. We even got charged the excursion companies fee instead of the ships fee, so that was nice to save a little. By the time we came out of the shop, our Royal Carribean group had left already. So we loaded in the bus with the Carnival group.

We walked around town when we got back to the port. There was a nice souvenir shop on our way from the Carnival ship (where we got dropped off) and our ship, so we did some shopping for our kids. We also got me a sweatshirt. Danny didn't want anything. We got each of the kids a shirt or sweatshirt and a toy or trinket. Ketchikan had a lot of totem poles and the buildings were really colorful. It was different than I imagined it from the pictures I had seen, but it was probably my favorite town that we walked through on this trip. 

We sat outside the ship for a bit after walking around town and looked at the map. There was this area on the map that we had missed, so we decided to go check it out. We are so glad we did.  It had more restaurants and shops, but they were all over water and the walkways were made of wood. It was a cute little area.

We did not get fish and chips or fresh crab legs since the food on the ship was already paid for. Plus, the crab legs were almost $100. It turned out to be a nice day, even though we did not know what the day would look like when we woke up that morning.