2023 Alaska Cruise

We are staying at the Hotel Captain Cook overlooking the bay. The bay is very shallow so there is no port here. Goods are brought here by train from the deep water port in Seward. Our guide for the one hour Anchorage trolley tour was quite good. We stopped at earthquake park where it was amazing to see that the ground it just dropped 30 ft destroying all of the houses in the neighborhood. The houses were all demolished and this is all reverted to woodland. We spent an interesting afternoon at the Anchorage museum before heading to the airport around 6:00 p.m.

Another cool and damp morning but not raining at 7:40 as we left for "Doggoneit", our sled dog experience. It turned out to be quite a fun and informative experience.  It is owned and operated by Carlie and Mike Santos, raising and training sled dogs - they have an obvious passion for it.  Mike has raced in the Iditarod 3 times. We got to hold the puppies that are only about 6 weeks old - so cute! Carlie is a teacher in the cantwell school which only had 9 students in K - 12. We got to the Denali visitor center a little before noon where we ate our box lunches and had a very short visit before boarding our 12:30 train to Anchorage. The train follows rivers between the mountain ranges on both sides, passing over high gorges. Past Talkeetna it levels out with the river very wide in places. There are huge boggy areas caused by the water which can not penetrate the permafrost below. We saw two moose in these areas. The train went very slowly in some areas due to the unusually hea

A gray and drizzly morning with temperatures in the '50s. Fortunately the rain stopped and the clouds lifted enough to see the countryside but they never lifted enough to actually see Denali. We had a 4 and 1/2 hour tour that went about 40 mi into the park. It is colder here so the spruce trees are still surviving and not attacked by the spruce bark beetle.  We saw Caribou and sheep in the distance but they were mostly just little dots. On the way back we did see a grizzly bear on a patch of snow that was only a few hundred yards away which was pretty exciting. Alongside the road there were many beautiful tundra flowers. We saw a cute actic squirrel that almost scurried up to us.

I woke up at 3:00 a.m. to see a bright red orange sunrise through the window. Another beautiful morning, just a few light clouds.  A Norwegian cruise ship has just pulled in so it is pretty busy at the cruise terminal. Departing at 9:51 The bus ride to Anchorage was about 3 hours alongside steep mountains on one side and very shallow bays on the other.  We had an hour and a half for lunch and then got on another bus at 3:00 p.m. We passed through Wasilla, now famous as the former home of Sarah Palin. Most of the first hundred miles of travel was very flat with bogs stretching out long distances on both sides.  After Talkeetna, there are mountain ranges on both sides of a high plain. Almost all the spruce trees as far as you can see are dead from an invasive beetle. There was considerable road construction both from Seward to Anchorage and from Anchorage North where we had to stop and had to wait. We finally arrived at the Denali bluffs hotel around 9:30.

We arrived at Seward at the end of redemption Bay to a morning of perfectly clear skies the first time during this trip. The locals we spoke to said this is the best day of the year so far. 😊 Our first visit this morning was to the Alaska sea life center the only public aquarium in Alaska. It was fun to watch the seals sea lions and seabirds as well as touch various creatures in the touch tanks. It is a very nicely set up aquarium.  In the afternoon we went on a hike to view the Exit Glacier which is about a mile hike in from the visitor center in the national Park entrance. There are markers to show where the end of the glacier was at different years in the past 200 years. The end of the glacier was about a mile away from the viewpoint which is where the glacier extended in 2005 and the ice was about 200 ft or more deep at that point. Before dinner we were able to relax on our veranda with a bottle of champagne. We then had a nice farewell dinner with Scott and Jean in the restaurant

We sailed into Valdez harbor around 7:00 a.m. this morning under cloudy skies and temperatures in the 40s. There are mountains all about us, very spectacular. While eating breakfast we saw a seal in the harbor. It was chilly and misty when we got off the ship but it turned out to be a beautiful day with temperatures in the mid '50s. The Valdez museum was one of the nicest that we've visited with exhibits from ancient times through the Good Friday earthquake, The construction of the oil pipeline and the Valdez oil tanker disaster. 

After a very rocking and rolling evening, it is relatively calm this morning. Sunset was at 10:38pm and sunrise was at 3:56am but it was still light at 1am. It is calm because we have sailed into Disenchantment Bay with the Hubbard Glacier at the end. It is quite spectacular. After selling back out into the open ocean, the ship was really rocking and rolling. We went to an interesting lecture on the history of navigation but I had to leave a little bit early to take some Dramamine and rest in the room. We watched a number of the other recorded shipboard lectures which were quite interesting, especially the one about Jack London.

Icy Strait Point was created by the local Tlingit tribe as a cruise ship destination after the 1971 agreement between the state of Alaska and the indigenous people which resolve land ownership issues. This also included considerable funding for development projects.  This location used to be a major salmon canning facility but fell into disuse. They tried completely renovated this and added many facilities for experiencing the wildlife. As we were docking this morning we saw a bald eagle flying by. There is a gondola going to the top of a local mountain and a zip line for the people who want an exciting ride back down. We are having an Alaskan seafood cooking demonstration this morning.

We arrived in Sitka around 8:00 a.m. The cruise ship terminal is about 5 mi from town. Overcast and around 50°, but thankfully not raining. Our morning excursion included a performance of traditional and modern dance along with narration of the history of Sitka. It was very nice and well done.  We had a nice visit with a woman at the Lutheran Church which was originally founded in the 1840s by Finnish speaking Russians but was abandoned in 1888 after Alaska was sold to the US. It was rebuilt in the 1940s burnt down and was rebuilt in 1967 after a major fire. We walked about a mile along the waterfront to the Sitka national Park which had an interesting video and historical artifacts of the, Tlingit native Americans who have lived here for 9,000 years. While eating dinner we were again lucky to see a humpback whale spouting and swimming alongside the ship. Very exciting!

We are pulling in around 7:00 a.m. this morning cruising past snow covered peaks along the passageway. Heavily overcast but no rain. There are four other cruise ships here with 3 to 5,000 people each. The Viking ship that we are on is the smallest at about 900 people. We are anchored in the harbor and will tender back and forth to the shore. In the morning we went to the glacier gardens rainforest which is a temperate rainforest. The man who owns this has created beautiful gardens and a steep road up the mountain. One of the features is upside down trees - he has taken dead trees and stuck the base in the ground upside down with beautiful plantings on top.  We then went to the state museum which has many artifacts of the history of Alaska.  After lunch back at the ship we went back into Juneau just to wander around. Unlike many of the other Alaskan towns that were just staging points for the Gold Rush Juno actually had very large quantities of gold that were found in the early 1900s. T

We arrived in Port around 7:00 a.m. this morning.  What a change from Ketchikan. Wrangell is a sleepy town of about 2,000 people and not a tourist hot spot. At the dock there were a few people selling crafts and a number of children selling garnets. Only children are allowed to harvest the garnets that are in this area. I did buy one as a souvenir. We walked a short distance to a great museum that is packed with history and artifacts. On the way back it started to mist so we didn't do much more sightseeing in town.  In the afternoon it cleared up and we walked to the petroglyph historic site. There are numerous ancient petrographs although nobody knows who made them or exactly what the purpose was. We also saw three or four young bald eagles flying around in a nest near the shore. In the evening we watched the movie Call of the Wild with Harrison Ford on the pool deck. It would be "under the stars" except it was still light out at 10:00 p.m.

 When we woke up this morning we were in the inland passage so it was not very wavy. It is a clear morning and we can see snow on the mountains in the distance.  My computer is still dead this morning so I will be limited in what I can do.  We were supposed to dock right in downtown Ketchikan but there are four ships here today and we are docked about 20 minutes away. They are expecting about 12,000 people from the 6 cruise ships to unload into a town of 8,000 people.  Scott noticed in eagle's nest with two eagles that was just outside our stateroom window. We took the shuttle into town and walked along the boardwalk along the shore. Ketchikan is the first major city along the Alaskan panhandle.  The town is mostly restaurants, souvenir shops and jewelry shops catering to tourists. There are many interesting plaques documenting the history of Ketchikan from its founding in the late 1800s.  We walked along Creek Street which is the historic red light district. It is also known for t

 When we opened the curtains this morning we looked out at steep green hill rising up only a few hundred yards from the ship. At times in the distance we could see snow-covered peaks. It is a gray overcast morning with the temperature around 50. Carmen made coffee in the room and we relaxed with the Kingston Daily Freeman which we downloaded. The internet is spotty but surprisingly good considering the remoteness - I assume it is satellite-based. The area that we are passing through, between Vancouver Island and the British Columbia mainland is quite narrow, often less than a mile wide.  There is quite a ferocious wind so it isn't very pleasant to go out on the deck. The waves aren't very high as it is so protected but even so the ship steadily rocks back and forth. Once we passed into the open sea it became much more wavy and the ship was really rocking and rolling. Everyone is walking around like they've had a few too many drinks 😏 My laptop seems to have suffered a cata

 After a beautiful day yesterday, it is overcast this morning and rain is forecast. Thankfully, the rain held off until after we walked the 3 blocks to the cruise ship terminal. The check-in process was fairly involved with lots of walking, dropping off the luggage on one floor, checking in with Viking on another floor, going through customs on a different floor and finally boarding this ship on another floor. It was around noon by the time we were done and our stateroom wasn't ready yet so we went up for a buffet lunch. Soon after we got there, Scott and Jeanne also arrived and we were able to enjoy lunch together. During lunch, an announcement was made that our rooms were ready so we went down to our room #5080 to unpack and organize. At 6:30 we went to a lecture on the history of the north-west which wasn't exceptional, although it was interesting to learn that Fred Trump, established an inn in the Yukon during the gold rush and subsequently moved to NY to make his fortunate

 We got up a little before 5am and got the 5:30 hotel shuttle to the airport which is only about 5 minutes away. It was another 10 minutes on the airport monorail to get to the terminal A station and then another 5 minutes by bus to the actual terminal. The smoke from the Canada wildfires was so thick that the sun wasn't visible at sunrise and was just a dim to bright yellow-orange orb as it rose higher. Unfortunately, the photo doesn't show the intensity of the color. It only took a few minutes to check-in at the airport and go to the gate. Our flight took off almost on time at 8am and got into Vancouver about 20 minutes early. We breezed through customs in about 5 minutes. Our friends Scott and Jeanne who arrived in the evening two days before said it took two hours to get through customs. We then got the sky train to the last stop in Vancouver which was only about 3 blocks from our hotel, an easy walk. It is a beautiful day with the temperature in the low 70s. Fortunately, w

 We are excited to be leaving for our trip after a hectic few months and look forward to relaxing with a glass of wine. Our flight to Vancouver doesn't leave until 8am tomorrow but we decided to spend the night at the Crowne Plaza hotel at the Newark airport. Due to the smoke from the wildfires in Canada, there is a heavy haze and the sun is just a dim yellow-orange orb.  We left home just after 5pm, stopping at the Majestic Diner on route 17 in NJ for dinner. From there it was 40 minutes to the Crowne Plaza. I dropped our luggage and Carmen off at the hotel, dropped off the rental car and then took the hotel shuttle back to the hotel.