Back to Seattle

Our cruise is over. We are docked at Seattle and are preparing to disembark. iI's been a very nice vacation and we saw a lot of new things but now it's time to head back to reality.

Our heavy footed captain got us into Victoria 5 hours early at 11:00 so after packing our suitcases Mary and I took a walk towards town. After being in fog since Friday afternoon it was nice to get out in the sun. Victoria has a nice walking path with benches along the way so we walked about 2 miles along the harbor edge, but did not go all the way into town since there was a big festival going on. We watched several float planes land and take off as well as just enjoying the fresh air and sunshine.

Our evening visit to Buchardt Gardens was very nice. Here's the classic view from the Sunken Gardens overlook. We had a very nice time walking around the gardens. I was not going to take a lot of pictures this time, but the views were so pretty it was hard to resist; I ended up taking 22. 8-) They had some new things like animal figures made from natural-looking material staged in the woods. We had a very relaxing walk and gift shop visit.

So that's it for my travelogues. I plan to post a larger slide show, probably on my PIcassa site but that may take a few days to complete since I'm anticipating a very busy Tuesday doing post-vacation things. When it's ready I'll post a link here so check back in a week or so.

Cruising in the fog

We are in the middle of a 48 hour run from Tracy Arm to Victoria. Yesterday afternoon is started to get foggy and we've had a dense fog surrounding us ever since. At some times we cannot even see the front of the ship from our balcony. Also since we got further than expected into Tracy Arm, we left there behind schedule so the ship has been cruising quite fast - over 18 knots to make up the time. Sure glad we have radar otherwise we'd be creeping along due to limited visibility.

On the return helicopter flight I got a neat picture that should help put "small ship cruising" into perspective. We were docked next to the 3200 person Sapphire Princess which is a good 20' wider that our ship and also a bit longer as you can clearly see from this picture. We are actually enjoying the small ship. Only 2 staircases and elevator banks so getting around is quote easy. There are a few less amenities - the Princess Theater is much small and has tables and chairs instead of traditional auditorium seating - and a smaller staff. But with only 710 people on board you do recognize about everyone after a few days. Also we have yet to have to wait in line for anything. Getting on and off the ship has been a breeze. I'm sure we'll go back to Anytime Dining on a larger ship, but Mary likes our table for 2 and we have a very nice pair of waiters so that has worked out well. We've only skipped the main dining room 2 or 3 times.

So we are on our last full day at sea. We get into Victoria tomorrow afternoon and have an excursion to visit Buchart Gardens at night. The captain announced today that they are expecting a sunny day in Victoria. But we need top spend the day packing - and figuring our how to pack all the souvenirs we did not intend to buy. Princess has a nice option where, for a $20 fee, they take your bags from the ship to the airline so once we set them our Sunday before our excursion, we won't see them again until we pick them up at DTW.

Cruising Tracy Arm Fjord

Today we cruised the Tracy Arm Fjord, hoping ice would not stop is from getting back to South Saywer glacier. We heard that the much larger Sapphire Princess made it back to the glacier 2 days ago so I was pretty confident our smaller ship would make it.

The scenery on the way in was spectacular! Towering mountains and very long, steep waterfalls as you can see from these pictures. There was also lots of floating ice, including some very large ones as you can see in the first picture. White ice, blue ice, deep blue ice, green ice, dirty grey ice, all kinds of ice in all sizes. The ship steered clear of most of it, but one 2 occasions had to plow through scattered fields of small ice floes. There were also too many waterfalls to count, running down in deep cuts into the mountain from the high ice fields. Pictured here is just one of hundreds of similar multi-step waterfalls. The naturalist who spoke yesterday say this fjord is more impressive that those in Norway. I find that hard to believe, but now feel compelled to check it out on a future cruise.

As we approached the glacier, we passed an island that the ship had never been able to pass before. I'm pretty sure the Sapphire Princess had stopped there. But we were able to continue on maybe another mile past that island and got fairly close to the glacier when ice forced us to turn around. It was very impressive to get this far into this fjord and to see this glacier form a distance few others had seen it.

On the way back, we saw the "other" side of the fjord from our balcony and Mary caught some rays on our second sunny day in a row. Isn't she cute all bundled up!

Glacier Trekking in Skagway

The SUN! The SUN! We actually had a sunny day today!! 10 days into our cruise, we had our first sunny day. After overcast days and many rainy days, the sun was very welcome. Any since this is our glacier helicopter day, it came none too soon. Today's first picture is Mary and I on the helicopter, ready to take off. As you can see we were pretty excited to be repeating this excursion that we enjoyed so much in 2005. We spent the morning shopping in Skagway, followed by lunch on the ship, then we got ready for our afternoon excursion.

Once on the glacier, we were lead on a stroll across its very rocky surface. There were actually very large bounders, up to 4 feet by 3 feet by 3 feet in size. Quite amazing.

We were also shown several large holes (called moulins) in the ice, leading deep into the glacier and often several hundred feet to the bottom. It always amazing me to see streams and waterfalls like these on a glacier. But when you are in the melt zone, that's what happens. When we were watching Marjorie Glacier in Glacier Bay I took some video of a large water flow running out from under the center of the glacier.

Re-Crossing the Gulf of Alaska

Another quiet day at sea. A bit cold to be out on deck very much, altho the swimming pool is heated. A few lectures, playing some bridge, watching a movie or two and Mary busy at the $10 bargain shopping in the lounge...
We've had a few isolated whale sightings. Last night at dinner Mary casually looked out the window and say a beautiful whale dive. Today we were looking off our balcony and saw a whale spout about 75 yards from our ship. Very cool to see these unplanned casual encounters.
On to Skagway tomorrow!

Our Day in Kodiak

We had a nice, dry day in Kodiak today. We had a nearly full day, arriving at dawn and departing mid afternoon to cross the Gulf of Alaska once again on our way to Skagway.

Our excursion was titled Russian Heritage Tour and it covered many Russian sights as well as a general tour of Kodiak.  We visited a Russian Orthodox seminary (one of three in North America) as well as attended a Russian tea with entertainment by a local group dressed in Russian costumes and playing Russian instruments. They played several familiar numbers and was very entertaining and interesting.

The trappings of crab fishing are all around.  Kodiak hosts several large canneries (a.k.a fish processing plants) and we had a large stack of crab pots on our dock, just opposite the ship. Our guide had a lot to say about this being the home port for the Cornelia Marie, made famous on The Deadliest Catch, but it was not in port.  I did spot the Polar Star which was mentioned on a few episodes.

We also saw an eagle nest with 2 baby eagles in it, the Kodiak fishing docks, Coat Guard base, and many other sighs of this town.

Dog Sledding in Seward

We were scheduled to take a flat trip on the Resurrection River today,
but when we pulled in, it was raining and c-c-cold (upper 40's - 9 C).
We met our group anyhow, but thankfully the tour operator offered to
cancel and refund our $$$.
While talking about what to do, I saw a table for Ididaride Dog
Sledding. This camp is run by the 2004 winner of the Ididarod race who
also has several top 5 finishes. This was one of our alternate
excursions so we signed up. The lady called ahead, and drove us to
the place. They have 85 husky's there, many of which have actually
run the Ididarod race. We had a very nice tour guide - had has run
several Ididarod races who explained the background and about the dogs.
Rick hooked up a team of 15 dogs and took our group on a 2 mile ride.
They use these carts to train the dogs in the summer when there is no
snow. You always picture these dog teams all pulling and working
together. Apparently that takes a lot of training because our team
had a couple of dogs who were jumping all over the place and getting
tangled up with their neighbor. After climbing one slope, Rick said
"we did pretty good with only 10 dogs pulling". He noted that fully
loaded with him and 7 passengers, our sled weighed about 2,000 lbs.

After our ride, he showed us two Ididarod sleds, then took us to the puppy pen. Here's a shot of Mary holding an 8 month old husky.

Even with the raincoats, we were cold and wet at the end so we headed back to the ship to warm up and have some lunch. Tonight we sail to Kodiak for a Russian Heritage tour.