Day 12 – June 26

We pulled into Ketchikan about 10:00AM this morning with a Coast Guard escort. Looks weird to have a Coast Guard boat on both sides of the ship with a guy standing in front of their boat with an M-16. I guess they had M-16s. Anyway, it was a rifle of some kind. Makes you wonder if the people in this town are mean to the tourists. Ketchikan has some distinctions of note. Their average rainfall is about 162 inches a year and it rains 240 days a year. Basically, it is a rainforest. It is the salmon capital of the world. It is Alaska’s first city. This could mean it was Alaska’s first “real” city. Or it can mean it is the first city in Alaska when coming from the south northbound. Ketchikan is an island and the whole island is considered the city limits. Anyway, there are only 13,000 people living here. Ketchikan is also the totem pole capital of the world. I actually do listen to the guides. :)

Our tour today was going out on the George Inlet which is a glacier fjord. We learned how Dungeness crabs are caught and the different characteristics between them. Our guide today went to CU and worked in Longmont for a few years; small world. When we got to the cove where they had set the crap traps, we pulled them up out of the water to find about six crabs in each one, alive and well. They throw the female crabs back and keep the males if the are at least 6-1/2 inches wide. Today, they did not keep any of them. The males still had to stay in the cage though. After the boat trip, we went back to the lodge and had an all you can eat crab feast. For desert, we had cheesecake with blueberries. That’s two great lunches in a row. For dinner we had shrimp and lobster tonight. I know, shut-up.

We left Ketchikan about 6:30 this evening in route to Vancouver. At the moment, we are in Canadian waters and it is a bit rough tonight. Oh well, I need to go before the captain puts the fasten seat belt sign up. Later.

Day 11 – June 25

It’s kind of cool to wake-up in the morning and be sitting in another town. So here we are in Juneau, Alaska the state capital. Our adventure today is called “The Best of Juneau”. Today we took a bus ride through Juneau to get to another catamaran which left from Auke Bay and into Favorite Channel to look for wildlife, mostly whales. We saw steller sea lions (bigger than “normal” sea lions), lots of bald eagles (more than yesterday), and humpback whales. Cindy has wanted to see a humpback whale ever since I met her. So I handed her the camera and put it on continuous shoot. This means the camera can take about three pictures a second. OMG, 521 pictures!! Not all of the pictures were whale pictures, but I would have to say two thirds were. Over 2GB of pictures!! Good thing I brought the 4GB disk. She did get some pretty cool pictures of the whales we saw. After the whale and wildlife tour, we took a bus ride to Tongass National Park and Forest. Within the Park is one of the largest glaciers in the US, Mendenhall Glacier. We did not have time to walk over to the glacier, but we could see there were people over there and there were some folks walking on it. They looked like ants, even through our binoculars. After we hung-out at the Park for an hour, we were bused over to a salmon bake for lunch. It was an all you can eat outdoor buffet and the salmon was cooked on an open fire. The food was excellent. Blueberry cake for desert. Yum!

Tonight was another formal night. Yes, another night in the penguin suit. I think I can go another thirty years before I have to wear one of those again. Oh well, I survived it and Cindy was a happy camper. I have to say; today it was all about Cindy. It’s all good though. Tomorrow we will be in Ketchikan.

Day 10 – June 24

We pulled into Skagway this morning about 5:00AM. Before our adventure for the day, we walked around downtown Skagway. It was a pretty cool little town. There were a lot of tourists running the streets though. I think there were two other ships docked there too. You can imagine at least 2000 people per ship hitting a town with a population of about 2500. Our adventure today was to go to a bald eagle preserve. From Skagway, we took a 45 minutes catamaran ride to the small town of Haines. From Haines, we took a school bus to the preserve. I don’t think some of these tours have figured out that school buses are made for children, not adults. Very cramped seating for some of us. When we got there, we were greeted with hot dogs on skewers and we roasted hot dogs. The chili was pretty good too. After lunch we boarded a flat bottom river boat with two engines in the back for speed. The boat seated about ten people. This part of the Chilkat River looked more like a swamp land. There were different little islands with lots of trees. During the trip, we saw one bald eagle in a tree, a moose and her month old twins, and another moose by herself. We stopped the boat pretty close to the single moose and took a bunch of pictures. She didn’t seem to care we were around and just kept eating. I think the moose was really a mechanical moose or a trained moose for the tourist to look at. J

I actually spent more time looking at the mountains and the glaciers during the trip. Overall, it was a good trip. Feels like the ship just pulled away from the dock. Next stop, Juneau.

Day 9 – June 23

We got to Glacier Bay National Park very early this morning. When we got here, a boat carrying a couple park rangers pulled along the ship. For them to board the ship, our ship needed to match the speed of their boat. They would pull up to the side of the ship and they would hop aboard. It was a pretty cool transition. When they left the ship, it was the same way they got here. During the tour of the park, one of the rangers gave us descriptions of what we were seeing through the loud speakers around the deck. The ship went very slow and even stopped at various places around the park. The highlight of the day was when we stopped in front of Margerie Glacier and Grand Pacific Glacier. They are next to each other. The wall of Margerie Glacier is about 280 feet high. We were able to witness the Margerie calving chunks of glacier ice into the sea. At one point, a huge wall of ice came down. The Grand Pacific Glacier was by far the larger of the two glaciers but it was very different from the Margerie because it is what they call an earth moving glacier. It pushes a wall of dirt and stone in front of it. We spent most of today out on one of the lower decks below the bridge.

Day 8 – June 22

Today was a day of sailing out of Whittier. We went by College Fjord and through Prince William Sound then back out into the Gulf of Alaska in route to Glacier Bay National Park. Cindy was feeling much better today. In fact she was quite hungry. I wonder why. Anyway, we met a group of folks on the ride from Copper River Lodge to Valdez. It turns out; we are neighbors on the ship of one of the couples who we talked to the most. They are doing this vacation with her parents to celebrate their 50^th wedding anniversary. Pretty cool. Anyway, Cindy and I spent the day walking around the ship and hanging out on our balcony. Tonight was the Captain’s welcome night. It was a formal affair. We could not get into a restaurant without wearing formal attire. Yes folks, I was wearing a tux. Cindy however was the good looking one. She had a lot of complements about her dress. She made her dress. Anyway, it is getting late. Big outdoor day tomorrow at Glacier Bay National Park.

Day 7 – June 21

Today we left Copper River Lodge about 7:30AM and bused it to Valdez. The country side was pretty cool to Valdez. Lots of pictures were taken from the bus. Cindy was able to get a couple of pictures of a bald eagle just taking off. The pictures are not too bad considering she was not expecting it. We got into Valdez about noon and caught a catamaran to Whittier were the ship was docked. The catamaran ride was about two and half hours long. Unfortunately, about thirty minutes out of Whittier, Cindy’s vertigo struck. This was worst time during the whole trip for it to strike. After about an hour hanging around the restroom, I was able to get a wheelchair for her and some help from someone who I got the wheelchair from to get us through sign-in, three security checks, and up to our room. I don’t remember his name, but he was a HUGE help. Anyway, as I type this, she is snoozing. Needless to say, I did not get any pictures of the ship yet. From what I have seen, this ship is pretty big and quite nice inside.

Day 6 - June 20

I typed June 20 and 21 on those days, but internet access is sketchy at best. Stay tuned for pics and more posts from the ship part of the vacation.

Today we took about a thirty minute van ride to a little airstrip to catch a plane to the town of McCarthy. It was about a thirty minute flight. Neither of us had ever been on a small plane like that. There were five of us on board, including the pilot. On the way over to McCarthy, the pilot took a little detour to show us an abandoned mine structure on the side of a mountain. It amazes me how they were able to get up there and then build a structure. After we landed in McCarthy, we took another van ride to a little mining town called Kennicott which is about five miles away. We took a tour through the old copper processing plant in Kennicott. What this plant did was separate the copper from any other minerals like limestone from the rocks that were taken from the mines above. The plant tour started pretty far up a hill where the copper cars used a tram system to get to the plant from the mines. The tour worked its way back down to the street. Cindy did good considering the height of the plant and the steep angle of the stairs.