Skagway and Hanes

On Tuesday we visited Skagway, one of the 3 cities in lower Alaska that has roads to the outside world. Rain greeted us in the morning and we had spotty showers all day. 

Our excursion took us to Hanes by fast ferry, a 45 minute ride.  Andy and Melissa, our son and daughter-in-law, had a similar excursion and were on the same ferry with us which was nice. After a bus ride to our rafts, we set out for a 1 1/2 hour float through Chilkat Bald Eagle Preserve.  We experienced rain, sun, clouds, wind and just about every other type of weather on our float.

We were well bundled up as the temperature was in the low 50's and very windy.  My favorite Australian hat thought that the river looked so inviting it jumped off my head and took a dip, but was quickly rescued. 

Eagles, eagles and more eagles!  At one point we had 5 of them flying near us! Lots of views of eagles sitting in trees or on sand bars, even one in her arie (nest).  Here's another one of a mother and a young eaglet (their heads do not turn white until age 5). 

Glacier Bay

The highlight of today was watching the Marjorie Glacier in Glacier Bay National Park.  Three park rangers came on board and did a presentation before narrating our trip to and from the glacier.  I'll only post a few of the 46 pictures I took today!  Unfortunately, I did not get any pictures of the glacier calving.  It calved a few times in the first 1/2 hour of watching, but nothing of significance in the second half hour when I was setup to capture that event. 

After dinner this evening we headed for the top deck for some whale watching.  We did not see any whales, but we did see a lot of sea otters!  I made a video of them, but need to wait to upload it until I get off the ship due to the expensive internet time. 

I also caught one of this cure guy resting on his back which is how they make a table to work on clams or other food they find.

Hubbard Glacier Day

We celebrated out 40th wedding anniversary today on the Crown Princess with a day at sea and glacier viewing of the Hubbard Glacier.  For the most part it was a quiet, relaxing day, with a British "pub lunch", bridge play, and an anniversary dinner at the specialty restaurant, Sabetini's. 

Besides our celebrations, the highlight was seeing Hubbard Glacier.  The ship was maneuvered to less than 2 miles from this 350' high, 7 1/2 mile wide glacier.   Hopefully these pictures convey the size of this glacier. 

Tomorrow is Glacier Bay which we will watch calve from 1pm - 2 pm Alaska Standard time (4 hours behind Eastern Time)  

Land of the Midnight Sun

We are south of the main part of Alaska and the sun sets at 10:39 p.m. and rises at 4:22 am, we have been wondering what it looked like, wondering if it ever gets dark.  I was unfortunate enough to wake up at 2:48 this morning so I took the opportunity to look outside and see what it looked like.  I was quite surprised at the sight so I grabbed my camera and snapped this shot. 

So I guess this really is the land of the midnight sun!

Heading to Our Ship

Our cruise begins today!  We had a 9:45 train departure to take us to our ship.  We had a very pleasant and uneventful ride to Whittier with seats on the second deck with a great view towards Cook Inlet.
Here are a two of the many mountain view pictures I took today. The one on the right is called a hanging glacier.

We passed through two tunnels to get to Whittier, with the second being the shared car/train tunnel we drove through yesterday.  As we emerged I got an updated version of my favorite picture from our first Alaska Cruise in 2005.  Love seeing that white ship in the distance!

Boarding went very smooth with little waiting and we quickly found our cabins.  Andy and Melissa are next to Mary and me while Katie is a few decks below.  We enjoyed a buffet lunch and have unpacked our luggage.  The ship does not sail until after 8:00 pm tonight so we will have supper before the muster drill and sail-away party. 

Touring Kenai Peninsula Area

Today was a driving day south from Anchorage as we visited the towns of Portage, Whittier, and Girdwood, along with driving part of the Kenai Peninsula. 

Unfortunately we had a very rainy day.  As we drove south the light rain turned into a steady rain so we skipped the Alyeska Tram, hoping to see it later.  We arrived at the site for the Portage Glacier boat and again decided to defer due to weather. So we headed toward Seward. After driving for quite a while we saw we still had another hour ahead of us and it was getting close to lunch time so we reviewed our options and turned around, heading for Whittier.  

After a somewhat unproductive morning we arrived in Whittier via the Car/Train tunnel.  This is a 2.5 mile long tunnel that is only wide enough for a train so car traffic is single file, with the direction changing every half hour. Prior to 2000, it was a train only tunnel and all car traffic had to be loaded onto train cars.  It was quite a thrill to drive through it. In Whittier we had lunch at a nice fish 'n chips establishment, drove around what little we could (not many roads..), then headed back to the tunnel and spotted the train we'll be riding tomorrow from Anchorage to Whittier! We watched it head back through the tunnel as we waited our turn at the tunnel to leave Whittier since trains always have the right of way over cars.

Since it was still raining as we left Whittier we skipped the Portage Glacier boat ride and headed back toward Anchorage.  On the way we spotted the Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center and did a driving tour.  They have a lot of native animals, including wood bison which are working to reintroduce to Alaska. They also rehabilitate injured animals so they can be released into the wild. 

As you can see we got very close to a resting moose and also watched this pair of musk ox square off and push each other around a bit.

Near the exit some reindeer were being fed.  As you can see, one of them even had bells on his bridle so we called him Rudolph! All in all we had a great time at this place.

As we approached Girdwood the rain stopped so we checked out the Alyeska Tram  and decided to take it. We could not see the 5 surrounding glaciers due to clouds and once at the top it fogged up so much that for a while we could not see the ground! But it cleared again as we descended.  

Our tram operator mentioned that today was projected to have a large bore tide so as we drove we decided to wait and check it out.  It was projected to have a 3-4 foot high wave, but from our vantage point it looked to be more like a 1-2 foot wave.  It was cool to see this local phenomenon. 

After that we headed for Anchorage, grabbed some supper, turned in the rental van, and are now getting ready to head for the Crown Princess  in the morning. It was a full day and very enjoyable once we got on track after a run-around morning. 

Touring the Anchorage Area

After a restful night (well some of us woke up at 4:00 am which is 8:00 am Michigan time...) we enjoyed a nice hot Springhill Suites breakfast, then headed northeast to Wasilla.  We saw lots of views of the Wrangle Mountains. on this drive.  Along the way we spotted a sign for Thunderbird Falls and thought that might be nice to see. But after we found the projected 1000 yard walk was going to be 1 mile, we bailed and headed on to Wasilla.

Since we wanted to make an 11:00 trolley tour of Anchorage we did not stay in Wasilla very long.  The trolly guide gave a nice narration, mostly focused on the 1964 earthquake, but with a nice tour of the float plane area as well.  The planes launch from two lakes and they even have their own control tower!  

After a nice salmon burger lunch at local restaurant called Humpy's (well at least that was what Mary and I had), we headed for our float plane tour. 

Our pilot was quite young (and the owner's son), but has been flying since before he had his driver's license.  We sat Katie in the front by him, with Mary and I in row 2, and Andy and Melissa in the back row.  The plane looked a bit dated so I asked and found out it was nearly as old as me! But it looked to be in great shape and well maintained.

Overall it was a super ride!  While it was a bit bumpy at times, we saw several moose from the air and circled Mt Susitna before heading back toward Anchorage.  This picture shows a moose and her calf trailing behind her .  On the return, the pilot surprised us with a landing on Figure 8 Lake.  The landing was amazingly smooth, especially compared to our commercial jet landing the day before.  

Now we are off to Moose's Tooth pizza parlor for supper, then back to the hotel to crash for the night.