Portland/Vancouver/Alaskan Cruise/Denali (Part 2 of 3)

If you'd like to skip my ramblings, here's all the Part 2 images.  Images are in order of the story.

August 17th - Vancouver
Finally a day where we were not stressed for time or had a list of things we needed to accomplish for the day.  We slept in, well 930 is sleeping in to me at least and Rebe was shocked that I woke her up so late, but like I said we didn’t have anything to do or anywhere to be.  It was now breakfast time and of course we had to score another great meal, and the internet led us to the Templeton. 

Templeton in Vancouver

It was tiny diner right around the corner from our hotel, and classic in the diner sense.  It was small, about 6 booths and 10 spaces at the counter, and there was one young lady running the entire diner with no notepad and just doing it without thinking.  She was serving, taking payments, and managing new patrons that walked in and had to wait in the non existent waiting area.  Food was good, we both had mangled eggs, which was scrambled eggs, bacon and some other things all inside a croissant (yummy).

Jukebox from Templeton

After eating a hearty meal, we walked back to our hotel and finished our packing to make our way to the cruise port.  Upon our arrival at the port we were ushered in to the nice building to meet with the security personnel and check in with the Princess Cruise officials.  Made our way to the boat and upon first glance I could tell this was going to be a different cruise than the one we had taken a little more than a month ago.  First, the boat was much much smaller than the giant monstrosity that we were on previously and actually holds about half as many people; second, I would guess the average age of the people on the boat would be somewhere around 62 but I could be off and the number might be higher.  Didn’t bother us one bit because everyone on the boat was very friendly, maybe a tad slow moving but who’s in a hurry on vacation anyways?

So we got to our room and it was nice with 2 TV’s and a deep balcony on deck 10, but the room had an unexpected feature for the typical guests and we got to experience it first hand when speaking to guest services while on board.  We were down at the counter discussing meal times and excursions, and the phone rang and our customer service rep immediately ignored us and picked up the phone to make a concerned call to a specific room.  Apparently the patron in the room had pulled the “I’ve fallen and can’t get up” cord, luckily it was a false alarm or maybe they were just testing the system to see how responsive the system was, either way it’s a great feature for the typical Alaska cruise patrons.

Shower alarm cord

In the evening we toured the boat to find all the eating spots and lounges that we could hang out in, and found the theater where we were able to watch the first show the week which was a comedic magician.  He was decent but no where as funny as the adult comics we saw on the previous cruise, Rebe and I chalk this up to him playing to his audience.  It was then time for dinner where we were greeted by our fabulous waiter Therrypong from Thailand and Anastasia his assistant waitress from Ukraine.  Food again was stupendous, and we were seated next to a couple from New Jersey (69 and 70) and were very friendly and we spoke about vacations, things we’re doing in Alaska and work.  She was a former NJ teacher and he is still working in NYC in the textile industry.  We happened to hang out with this couple a few other times later on the cruise.

Not much was happening as far as activities after dinner so we headed to the room to watch a movie and call it a day.

August 18th

First full day on the boat was a “Day at Sea” also known as trapped on the moving island, we got a late-ish start (9ish) and we up to the theater to see the Alaska Naturalist for the boat to tell us about the secrets of Alaska and what we could expect.  Yes, they have a person on the boat who’s only job is to talk about Alaska and to commentate as we see things on the water which is broadcast on the boat TV system.  Talk about living the dream, he said this was his 15th Alaska trip this year with 3 more to go.

After the presentation we went to breakfast and the back down to a lounge to play a bit of trivia, only to get trounced by the granny squad (actually the winner wasn’t a granny but it makes me feel a little better on the inside to think it was).  We then ran into our new NJ friends and invited them to another talk by the naturalist, as he was interesting, and this would give us a bit more time to ask him some detailed questions and a last chance to get more insight on things we should do or avoid while in Alaska.

We then watched a movie on people from Alaska and how they go about their daly routines and how they live a more rustic life than people in the lower 48. We then had lunch and did a bit of laundry as 17 days is a lot to pack for.  Watched another movie in the room before heading down to the theater for a show put on by the dance/sing crew.  They performed quite a few Motown hits which left me wishing they had better singers or just had lip synced over the real songs. Don’t get me wrong I enjoyed the show but listening to people butcher Motown classics is just rude.  This was our first formal night for dinner, formal night is where everyone sports their Sunday best and for me that’s a slacks and a tie and for Rebe… well she tries.  You know my lady hates dressing up so we give her a pass on her outfits.  Dinner in the dining room was a a bit disappointing, fish was over cooked, rice undercooked… just bad all around.  The service was good but it couldn’t help the food.

With dinner being so bad and we just called it a night in preparation for our day tomorrow.

August 19th - Ketchikan

Ketchikan, Alaska as seen from the boat

Welcome to Ketchikan, our first stop in Alaska.  You may have heard of this place, well not by name but it is the place that was scheduled to have the “Bridge to Nowhere” made famous by the gift that keeps on giving, Sarah Palin.  I had heard of this bridge and I thought it was a huge waste because it was going to connect two islands, one in which no one (I believe) lives on, little did I know that this 2nd island that no one lives on is actually where the local airport is.  Folks in this town have to take a ferry just to get to the airport and then to get out of town it’s a minimum $600 to get anywhere (Seattle or Anchorage) and then even more of course to go further.  Our tour guide told us the local sports teams have to travel 30-40 hours by boat to play a 2 hour game… geez I’ll never complain about Houston traffic.

Us in the Tribal House - note the poles holding the house up

We started our day off with a tour of replica totem pole park where our tour guide, a true local and part Alaskan native, gave us the history of the Alaskan natives and a few good stories about totem poles and native lifestyles.  From the totem pole park we were taken to the end of the road, literally, to hike through the rainforest.  Yes, Alaska has a coastal temperate rain forest, it’s not all just snow and mountains and the other weird part about the day was the weather.  They have a saying about Ketchikan, if you can see the mountains then it’s going rain shortly and if you can’t then well it’s probably already raining.  We got off the boat and it was bright and partly sunny, truly miracle weather for this town that gets about 13 feet (yes feet, not a typo) of rain a year.  We hiked through the rain forest and our tour guide (Wild Wolf Tours, had to give them a plug as it’s a family run business and they do a REALLY good job) gave us all sorts of history, nature facts and was just the nicest person on the planet.  At the end of the hike she gave us some smoked salmon dip, which was just soooooo amazing, it was smoked salmon, creme cheese, onions and something else but geez it was good.  Gonna have to whip some of that up when I get some time.

Ketchikan Rainforest

With Ketchikan being on an island, that isn’t flat, there is not a lot of flat land to build and to make up for some of this they built some things on stilts including the roads and buildings.  One of the famous sections is Creek Street, there even use to be a “ladies of the night” section.  But even better than the red light district was the giant salmon and seals playing under the stilted buildings.  

Creek Street

Of course I found a bar that had some local beer before we got back on the boat, but we had to get back on the boat quite early as our 19mph boat had a lot of miles to cover before getting to our next stop.  But one of the good things about leaving so early was that we were going to be going through Snow Passage, and this area was known to have humpback whales hanging out in it.  Remember I said the weather was nice in Ketchikan, well soon as we left the rain came and it was like a sleet, rain, snow, fog hybrid precipitation.  Which made our ride into Snow Passage a bit worrisome for seeing whales, but the water was so calm and it would be great for spotting whales that is if we could actually see them. For two hours we stood out on the front deck of the boat hoping we would see a whale and also hoping it would clear, and it finally did.  We spotted a few whales way off in the distance and as we slowly got closer we finally got a number of great views of the whales.

Dall's Porpoise 

Humpback Whale

Multiple whales surfacing (bubble net feeding)

Since we were soaked from the rain, well not that soaked because we had our rain gear on, and it was already 7pm we skipped the main dinner and went up to the buffet for dinner.  While in line, we were ambushed by an ornery older Western Australian lady.  I have no clue of why she decided to talk to me and then invited Rebecca and myself to have a seat at her table.  I’m glad she did because there were not many tables but this lady was dissing everyone on the boat, and her husband was the nicest man on the planet.  Great conversation with some great laughs, and everyone is SOOO fascinated by Rebe’s rig job and all the technology in oil and gas these days.  I guess it is cool and different, if you’re not from Houston you might not know about the industry.

After dinner we headed down for the show, which tonight was a comedian named Fred Klett, and he brought the house down.  It was a full theater and he really interacted with the crowed and at one point actually chased an Asian man out of the theater as he tried to leave.  Fred inquired why he was leaving his awesome show, the Asian man supposedly told him he doesn’t understand English, which I’m not sure is true but it had the theater laughing.  Then, two young women came in late and walked all the way to the front and he dogged them for making people stand up to get to their seats and being rude and not showing up on time like everyone else… another reason not to sit up front during comedy show. 

All in all, a great day in Ketchikan.

August 20th - Juneau

Juneau at dusk as we left

Going on this cruise has taught us many facts about the state of Alaska, like the capital of Alaska is Juneau, I already knew this, but what I didn’t know is that Juneau is on a coast of the mainland but surrounded and blocked in by mountains and the only bridge out of town is to an island which is less inhabited. Yes, you can’t drive into this city and the only way in as one of our tour guides rightly stated is “by ferry, by plane or by birth.”  

Enough facts for now, we were again lucky to have another BEAUTIFUL day in Juneau as this is another one of those cities where it’s rainy and cloudy all the time.  So to start the day off we met our tour guides right outside the boat so they could take us to the Mendenhall Glacier.  Yeah, that’s right it’s 65 outside and we’re just gonna go see the huge hunk of ice that they have in town that somehow refuses to melt, though it is receding at a rate of 30 feet a year.  

Mendenhall Glacier

The area around the glacier has a few streams where the salmon like to spawn and even the bears come through for some easy pickings, we weren’t lucky enough to see the bears.  After checking for bears we walked over to the glacier to get an upclose look but even from where we were one couldn’t really grasp the size of this chunk of ice.  Note the kayakers next to the glacier, yeah those specs are people IN BOATS.

Kayakers near the glacier

Waterfall right in front of the glacier, the waterfall used to be behind the glacier's front face

We spent 2 hours at the glacier, which is plenty of time to hike around and see just about everything else in the area.  We were picked up by our tour bus and taken to our next adventure which was whale watching.  This was their second trip out for the day, so they had a good idea on where the whales were but also it helps that the other whale tours (at least 4-5 other boats) were already out there when we showed up.  Not that any of that matters, the whales are too busy stuffing themselves with herring and krill.  Like the event we saw yesterday, “bubble net feeding” we were inquiring to our tour guides if the occurrence was happening out in the channel and he said this morning was pretty calm but that there had been no bubble net feeding.  We get to the spot where the whales have been seen and we wait, a whale would surface here and there and it was nice to see them off in the distance.  Then the whales disappeared but they tend to do this because they can go under for anywhere between 3-30 minutes between breathes.  While we’re waiting, everyone is getting impatient thinking the whales had swam away but if you keep your eyes on the seagulls (rats of the skies) you can tell where the whales are.  After about 10 minutes of everyone standing around, the seagulls, who are sitting the water just floating, all of a sudden hop up and fly toward another section and then POP UP 8 WHALES IN UNISON!  

That’s right we saw bubble net feeding again, and not only did they do it once but for the entire 2 hours we were out there and apparently they were not doing it in the morning so we got lucky again.  First the weather and then the afternoon whale watching, what a day.

Here’s a few more images from the whale watching.

My favorite image... but obviously someone's head is in the image

Have not being able to eat since breakfast (830am) because of the tour and after the whale cruise it was approaching 3pm, I was a bit hangry so we stopped to eat at a local pub for some fish and chips.  When in Alaska one must eat the fish.  Rebe and I discussed our further plans for the day, should we just go back to the boat and call it a day or do go on another hike.  Remember I was hauling 80% of my camera gear, plus the tripod and I’m guessing my backpack weighed close to 30lbs.  Yes, we had previously hiked 2 hours at the glacier and yes I was hauling the gear there too.

Yes, 2 cameras, 5 lenses and a tripod

We decided to continue our trek up on Mount Roberts, which is a local mountain that looms over Juneau but luckily it has a tram that takes passengers up the first 3000 feet to where the trails start.  We had decided to just do the mile long loop trail which really just goes around so you can see the lower section of the mountain and views of downtown Juneau.  Well as usual, Rebe and I thought we were superhuman and could make it to the summit, another 3+ miles up, and when I say up it was probably another 1500-2000+ up AFTER the tram.  We fought the good battle, yes still hauling my crazy amount of camera gear up this mountain and were making decent progress but after an hour and twenty five minutes we were dog tired and obviously not going to make to to the top and back down to be on time for boat departure.  We think we still had at least another 45 minutes up the rest of the mountain, and though we didn’t make it to the top the views from where were made it were just spectacular and if we would have known we probably would have tried to do this earlier…and with less camera gear. 

View from 3/4 up Mount Roberts

Waterway passage the boat took on the way further north

We did make it back to the boat with plenty of time and were close to the last few people on board for the day.  No shows and no fancy dinners to night as we hit up the buffet again (which is probably horrible for the waistline) and then back to the room for another good nights sleep before attacking the next day.

August 21st - Skagway

We landed in Skagway, the thriving metropolis of 950 people early in the morning and met our tour guides right outside the ship who were going to take us on a journey through the Yukon.  We were going to travel from the Pacific coast, through 15 miles of Alaska, then into British Columbia (Canada) and even further in the one of Canada’s northern provinces, the Yukon.

Another unusually nice weather day in Skagway, everyone keeps saying how lucky we’ve been.  Today really doesn’t deserve a commentary, I’ll let the pictures do the trip justice.

No I didn't photoshop the water, it really is that color from the glaciers

After all the driving we had a bite to eat at the local bar, which happened to be a brewery too :)  Good food and good beer too, they even had a Spruce Tip beer which was an old vitamin C trick for the miners who ate way too much meat and not enough fruit, which left them with scurvy.  The spruce tip was a bit too flowery for my taste but it was still part of a great selection from this tiny brewery.  We then walked through town, which was void of all the passengers who were already back on the boat and I took a few images.

Downtown Skagway

Island Princess and sun rays

August 22nd - Glacier Bay

This was a “Day at Sea” but the attraction was Glacier Bay National Park, this historic area was lived upon by the native Alaskans and visited by George Vancouver back in the 1700’s and mapped.  Back at this time Glacier Bay was not a bay but an entire glacier itself, but it has retreated much since this first mapping with a handful of glaciers still coming down to the water.  Not much else happened other than watching the ice go by, so again I’ll let the images do the talking.

Rebe and I trying to take a selfie and missing a large chunk of ice drop off the glacier

Marjorie Glacier

August 23rd - College Fjord

The last day on the boat was a visit to College Fjord, College Fjord is a long finger of a fjord previously carved about by glaciers.  The distance between College Fjord and Glacier Bay is very large, we left Glacier Bay at 6 or 7pm the previous day and didn’t really get to College Fjord until 3pm.  Cruise liners are not speed boats obviously, they top out at around 19-22mph while sucking 50 feet to the gallon.

The star of the show is Harvard Glacier (who didn’t see that coming), which is the glacier that formed the majority of College Fjord but there are many other glaciers in the fjord and all named for the Ivys such as Smith, Vasser, Wellesley, and Yale to name a few.  The discovers thought it would be funny to snub Princeton because, well it’s Princeton.

The day wasn’t too exciting besides seeing more ice and finally the weather finally reared its head by the way of fog.  No stories, just pics.

Harvard Glacier