Earlier this year Liz started trying to plan a family vacation. We keep thinking that we are doing one last vacation together before one or the other or both of our daughters gets married. Turns out this time the thinking was right. Anyway, Liz has always wanted to cruise to Alaska, so she started checking to see if we could make that happen. She was originally looking at the end of August between when Erin finishes her internship and she starts back to school at BYU. Problem was it looked like it was too expensive then, but she discovered that the rates are quite a bit cheaper in May, so that's what she ended up booking for us. It turns out that was a good thing since Anna now plans to get married at the end of August. She ended up getting a good price on a mini-suite with a balcony on the Norwegian Pearl, leaving Seattle on Sunday the 23rd, cruising up through the Inside Passage, and returning to Seattle on Sunday the 30th.
Erin and Anna flew up from Salt Lake in the evening on Friday the 21st. Liz picked them up and they went almost directly to a friend's wedding reception that was happening that evening. I went to the reception from work and met them there. Unfortunately, I had to go back to work after the reception to try and finish up some stuff that was supposed to be done before we left on vacation. I ended up not getting home until after midnight, and found Liz still up packing. We probably didn't get to bed until 1:30 or so.
Saturday morning we headed out on the drive to Seattle. We had an uneventful trip and got to our hotel in Bellevue around 5:00 in the evening. Of course, it started raining around the time we got there. After checking in we headed on down to downtown Seattle and ate at a sushi restaurant there, and then road the elevator up to the top of the Space Needle to check out the sights. By then it was around dusk, so we got to watch all the lights coming on downtown. It was also apparently prom night for a bunch of Seattle high schools, so we were sharing the evening with hordes of teenagers all dressed up in their fancy dresses and tuxes.
Sunday morning we attended sacrament meeting at a ward close to our hotel, and then went back to the hotel to change and check out, and then it was back to downtown Seattle to the cruise port. We parked our car at a parking garage across the street that has a special area for cruise passengers, and they actually transported all of our luggage to the ship, which was nice. There was quite a line of people waiting to check in for the cruise, but it kept moving fairly quickly, so the wait wasn't too terrible. We got on the ship around 1:00, and headed up to the buffet for some lunch. One thing that was new this cruise that we hadn't experienced on our one other cruise experience (Disney Cruise many years ago) is that they are big on having everyone use hand sanitizer. We were greeted at the doors of the restaurant by a smiling young Phillipino man with a spray bottle of sanitizer saying "Washy, washy, happy, happy!" This got to be a familiar routine every time we went to eat, and also whenever we re-boarded the ship after being on shore. I think the ship finally left the dock around 4:00 and headed out into Puget Sound. We went out through the Juan de Fuca Strait and headed north up the west side of Vancouver Island. The weather alternated between blue skies and gray clouds as we headed up the coast. That evening we went to an event in the theater that they dubbed their welcome aboard show. They basically had short performances from several of the performers that would be performing throughout the week, so Liz and Erin and I went to see what was worth going to later on.
Most of the day Monday was spent cruising out in more open waters going up the Canadian coast, so it was the rocking-est day. That morning we were eating breakfast in the restaurant at the back of the ship, and had a table right by the windows at the stern. Before our food arrived, Anna spotted some dolphins swimming around in the wake of the ship. I never did see them, but Liz and Erin did. At one point later in the day the ship cut to the east of an island called Banks Island, so for that stretch the sea was quite a bit calmer, and it was fun to go up on deck and watch the scenery going by at a fairly close distance on both sides of the ship. It was mostly cloudy and drizzly all that day, but not too cold. Liz, Erin, and Anna all decided to splurge on a spa pass for the week, and they enjoyed spending time there in the sauna, hydrotherapy pools, and whatever. I think they made it there for at least a little time every day of the week. That night was "formal" night on the ship. Norwegian has this concept they call "Freestyle Cruising," which means you aren't assigned specific times to eat like on other cruises. Instead, they have 4 dining rooms that are open at various times during the day that you can go and eat at any time they are open. Then they have several specialty restaurants that they charge a "cover fee" to eat at. We avoided those for the rest of the cruise, but the girls wanted to dress up fancy that night, so we splurged a bit and went to the Italian restaurant, which had the smallest cover fee for dinner. The food was generally pretty good at all of the restaurants, but I didn't think it was quite as good as what we had on the Disney Cruise. After dinner we went to see a comedian named Buzz Sutherland in one of the lounges. The good thing about him is that he does clean humor. He apparently worked for Disney doing Donald Duck voice acting at some point, and he used that voice in his act some. He was pretty funny. After that we headed down to the theater for the main entertainment that night: four guys doing a "Franky Valli and the Four Seasons" tribute concert called "Oh What a Night." They were quite good and very energetic. Liz and I enjoyed the show, but the girls opted to hang out in the room instead.
Tuesday morning we were finally into the inside passage area of southeastern Alaska. I spent most of the morning up on the sundeck watching the scenery and taking pictures. The weather improved that morning, with only partly cloudy skies, and warmer temperatures. We pulled into Juneau right on time at 2:00. Before the trip, Liz and Erin did a lot of research on the internet regarding the various shore excursions available at each of our stops, both through the cruise line and otherwise. In Juneau we opted to rent a car from Rent-a-Wreck and drive ourselves out to the Mendenhall Glacier, less than 20 miles outside of Juneau. The Mendenhall Glacier comes down out of the mountains and ends at the edge of Mendenhall Lake (what a coincidence). There's also a waterfall, Nugget Falls, coming out of the mountains to the right of the Glacier. We took the short hike to the falls, and took lots of pictures of the glacier and the falls, and also went into the visitors center which is maintained by the U.S. Forest Service there. After that we headed back into town and had dinner at a place that Liz had read about on the internet. The girls all shared some king crab legs, and I had some seafood lasagna. We had a little time after that to do some shopping, and then had to be back on the ship by 9:30. Since we had an early morning the next day, we just went to bed at that point.
Wednesday morning we were already docked in Skagway by the time we woke up. We had to get up early that morning because we had booked a shore excursion that started with a 7:45 am train ride. Our tour guide, James, met us at the dock and took us on a little mini-bus to where we boarded the train -- the White Pass & Yukon line. The train route paralleled the route the gold miners took back in 1898 to get from Skagway up to the gold fields in the Yukon. It was a pretty amazing ride with lots of great scenery. We got off the train a little ways over the Canadian border in Fraser. Our guide had driven up to meet us there, and then took us on up the road into the Yukon Territory. Along the way we got to stop several times and watch bears eating dandelions. Who knew that bears love dandelions? This time of year the dandelion are plentiful right along the road, so it makes it easy to see bear. We drove up past some more amazing scenery to the town of Carcross, where we stopped for a yummy barbecue lunch at a place that is also a training camp for Alaskan Husky sled dogs. The girls had fun petting some of the puppies there. If you paid extra, you could take a ride on a sled (a wheeled cart really, since there was no snow there) pulled by the dogs. We didn't do that but we watched some other people do it. The amazing thing was when they were loading up the cart, all the dogs were going crazy barking. It was like they were all saying "Pick me! Pick me!" because all they want to do is run and pull heavy things. As soon as the cart left, all the dogs who were left behind stopped barking and settled down. From there our guide drove us all the way back down to Skagway. We had left the ship prepared for cold weather, but even up at the highest points of the trip it really wasn't that bad. By the time we got back to Skagway at around 3 in the afternoon it was close to 80 degrees and I ended up carrying all of our coats and stuff back to the ship because it was too hot to carry them around while we were shopping. I think all-aboard time was around 7:30 that night, so we had dinner back on the ship. The main entertainment that night was a comedy/juggling duo called Sharkbait. They both used to be Ringling Bros. clowns, and they put on a pretty entertaining show.
When we woke up Thursday morning we were just starting to head into Glacier Bay. I got up early and went up on the sun deck to take pictures and enjoy the scenery. The weather was great again. Every once in a while we hit places where the wind came up and it was a little chilly, but other than that it was sunny and not too cold. At one point we saw a bunch of seagulls on the water, and when we looked closer we could see that there was a seal swimming around amongst them. I got a new digital SLR camera for Christmas (well, actually after Christmas, but it was a Christmas present) and I got a second longer telephoto zoom lens with it. That came in handy for the bear pictures on Wednesday, as well as for trying to get shots of the marine wildlife. It also helped on many of the scenic shots as well. I was barely able to get a couple of pictures of the seal, even zoomed in all the way to 300 mm. Anyway, the scenery was amazing all the way through the Bay, but when we got up to the glaciers it was truly amazing. The first stop was Margerie Glacier way up at the end of the bay in Tarr Inlet. The ship spent quite a bit of time up there. We didn't get to see any huge pieces calve off, but we did see several small chunks come off, and they were all accompanied by huge cracking sounds, kind of like lightning sounds when it's close by. I wonder how it sounds when big chunks come off? After almost an hour there, we headed back south and then to the west up the Johns Hopkins inlet to the Johns Hopkins Glacier. This is the only glacier in the bay that is still advancing. We didn't spend as much time here, or get as close, but it was still amazing, then we passed the Lamplugh Glacier on the way out of the inlet. Also impressive. Right after we left the Johns Hopkins Inlet, the Park Ranger (one of several who came on board as we entered the bay, and who was making announcements over the ship's loudspeaker) announced that he had spotted a bear on the shore. He said to look in a certain place, and you would see bear tracks leading from the beach through the snow halfway up a hill, and the bear was at the edge of the snow. I found the tracks, but couldn't see the bear. I went ahead and took a picture anyway, and when I looked at it later, sure enough, there the bear was. Oh, we also saw some mountain goats on the way into the bay.
By the time we started heading out of the bay at 2 or 3 in the afternoon, it was warm enough that there were a lot of women in bikinis sunbathing on the sun deck. Crazy! Glaciers and bikinis -- never thought I'd see that combination. We spotted several whales later in the afternoon, and right after we got out of the bay we went through a stretch of water where there were tons of marine animals splashing around not too far from the ship. We thought they were dolphins, and maybe some of them were, but at dinner that night someone mentioned that the park rangers had told them they were baby orcas. I had tried to snap some pictures of all the action, but mostly just got the splashes, but I got lucky on one shot and you could definitely see what looked like a baby orca jumping above the water. Cool stuff!
That night after dinner we went and did Karaoke in one of the lounges. That was actually the first time I ever did that in public. After that we went to see Buzz Sutherland do a different routine in the Spinnaker Lounge, and then went to the big theater for a Second City comedy show, but we only lasted 10 or 15 minutes before we decided it wasn't our kind of humor. Nothing super terrible, but just a little iffy and not really very funny.
Friday morning we were docked in Ketchikan when we woke up. We had gotten tickets ahead of time to a Lumberjack show they do there. We had scheduled the 10:30 show, but wished we had have gone for the earlier show, because we had to be back on the ship at 12:30, so with the show plopped right in the middle of that we didn't have time to go to any of the other sights there that we wished we could have seen -- specifically a couple of totem pole exhibitions. Oh well, the lumberjack show was fun, and we spent the rest of the time shopping. It was a cute little town, so we wished we had more time there, but I guess we had to get started on the trip back down to the lower 48. That night we attended the big theater production, which in this case was put on by a dance company. It was called something like "The Journey of the Geisha," but it really only loosely followed any plot, and was mostly just some dances strung together. The amazing part of it was the two soloists who did these routines while hanging from various apparatus and flying around above the stage and the first few rows of the audience. It's pretty hard to describe, but they were pretty amazing.
Saturday we were at sea most of the day, and docked at Victoria on Vancouver Island around 6:00 in the evening. Because of that they did there big entertainment for that day in the afternoon, and it was a joint show bringing back Sharkbait, and the Oh What a Night guys. It was a good show. Later in the afternoon they did another show which was basically a talent show put on by some of the crew. Most of it was actually pretty good, but the finale was a group of about 10 of the crew, including the cruise director, dressed up in toga-like costumes, drinking swigs of water out of carafes they were carrying on their shoulders, and then artistically spitting the water at each other like they were fountains. It was actually pretty funny when you saw it.
When we got to Victoria, we weren't sure what we were going to do. We wanted to go to Butchart Gardens, but we didn't want to pay the big shore excursion prices to do it. We ended up hiring a taxi to drive us out there (about a 15 minute drive), wait for us, and bring us back. It wasn't cheap, but it it's an amazing place, so we decided to go ahead and do it. We had the taxi driver take us past the Empress Hotel and the Provincial Assembly building on the way back to the ship, so we got to see a little of downtown Victoria. After we got back to our room, it was time to start packing up. We had to have any luggage we wanted them to take off the ship packed, tagged, and out in the hall by 2:00 am. We just kept small bags to keep our overnight stuff in, and got the rest of it out for pickup and then went to bed.
Sunday morning we had breakfast and then disembarked. We found our luggage, and had a porter help us get it out to the street, and the parking garage had vans coming periodically to shuttle folks and their luggage back to their cars. We got back to our car fairly quickly, but we quickly discovered that we must have left a light on inside, because the battery was dead. We were able to flag down the van driver before he got away, and we were able to jump start the car and get headed out. Since we were in Washington, Liz couldn't resist trying to make it out to a tide pool, so she had reserved a hotel room (a suite actually) in Forks, Washington. For those who don't know (I didn't), that is the setting for the Twilight novels that are all the rage these days. It was pretty funny because they now have a company there with a fancy van that does Twilight tours showing you the sites mentioned in the books. But, I'm getting ahead of myself. On the way to Forks we took a ferry from downtown Seattle to Bainbridge Island, and from there crossed a bridge (or two) to get to the Olympic Peninsula. We stopped at the visitors center for Olympic National Park in Port Angeles, and they told us that the drive up Hurricane Ridge was probably not worth it due to foggy conditions, so we drove down the road a ways and took the road up to Sol Duc Hot Springs and past to the trail head for Sol Duc Falls. It was a nice hike through some beautiful woods and past several small waterfalls to get out to the main falls, which were very impressive. After that we headed on out to Forks.
Monday morning we took longer than we wanted to get on the road, and it was, of course, raining. We were hoping to get to the tide pool at the creatively named Beach 4 at low tide, but we missed it by a half an hour or so. Between the rain, having to go across a small creek that emptied into the ocean between the trail and the tide pools, and the waves at the tide pools, we were all pretty soaked by the time we got back to the car. That made for a fun drive for several hours until we got dried out. We took a route to go past Mt. Ranier on the way home, but it was covered by clouds (a not uncommon occurrence), so we didn't get to see much of it at all. We ended up not getting home until around midnight. Anna had to do some laundry after we got here, so it was early morning before we got to bed, and then the girls had to be at the airport around 6:30 on Tuesday to catch their flight back to Salt Lake.
All in all, it was an awesome trip. We wonder if our daughters will ever stop teasing each other so much (or at least not be so noisy about it), but we are glad that they enjoy being together, and we are glad that we got to enjoy some time with them as well.
If you want to see pictures, got to http://gallery.me.com/thepews and click on the two photo albums labelled Alaska Cruise.
I hope there aren't too many spelling or grammatical errors in this, because I'm too lazy to go back and proofread!
2 comments:
wow! sounds amazing!
I did some research, and I decided that what we saw wasn't baby orcas, but was really Dall's porpoises. I think.
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