Alaskan Cruise
The Travel: We flew to Vancouver on Friday with Air Canada. This is a terrific airline with easy boarding and great service. Left and arrived on time. We chose to depart from Vancouver rather than Seattle to visit a new city, and weren't disappointed.
The Place: Vancouver is a neat town with friendly people. We stayed downtown to be near the departing ship and glad we did as we were across the street from the modern football/soccer
stadium and concert venue. The Eagles played that night. It is a walkable downtown that reminded us of San Francisco or Austin. Three things we hardly saw: police ( saw one cop car), black people (saw one on the street and one as waitress) and homeless. According to Wikipedia Vancouver has the 4th highest crime rate but downtown was police-free and peaceful. Also, since Hong Kong went back to China from the British there has b een a large influx of Chinese immigrants. Today the town is 46 % Asian and the influence is evident. I'd never seen Japanese and Korean hot dog stands. Vancouver has them.
The People: The Canadians we encountered on Air Canada and Vancouver were wonderful. Walking around with our hotel map three people that asked if they could help with directions.
Recommendations: Frankie's Italian next to our hotel was great - very upscale dining. Also Jerry's Tap Room had an outdoor deck on the street and happy hour every day. Jerry's deck is across the street from the library, which looks like the Roman Coliseum. More friendly people.
Ketchikan, Alaska
The Travel: The Sapphire Princess left at 1645 Saturday. We passed a cool green suspension bridge that led to North Vancouver and beautiful scenery.
The Weather: Clear, cool weather at departure, but we awoke early Sunday to foghorns. Completely fogged in all day. Went to a brief church service and watched NFL all day, two games won by a last minute field goal.
The People: We signed up for "Anytime Dining" which meant we could eat dinner anytime we chose at three restaurants, or after 8:30 pm at two more. The first night we were seated with a couple that lived just across the green bridge in No. Vancouver from England, and a couple of retired Dept. of Defense folks from Tucson.
The Place: Ketchikan is called the salmon capital of the world so of course we signed up for a fishing excursion. The ship arrived at 0505 and we left for our fishing boat at 0630. We fished until 1130 and the ship departed at 1405, leaving little time for exploration. We each caught a Coho (silver) salmon.
The People: We had five fishing companions on Dewey's boat. Dewey has been running charters for 25 years and brings his beagle, Sherman. Our fishing buddies were two ladies and a man from St. Louis. Everyone caught a fish, and lost one too! The fish ranged from 10-15 pounds and 28-30 inches Dewey said. Sherman makes friends at first and then snoozes most of the trip. Dewey brings snacks and some smoked salmon. I expected a packaged salmon, but found it was his own creation. He soaks the fish in a brine overnight, then puts brown sugar on top and smokes it for 2-3 days. You peel off the skin for Sherman and eat a delicacy. At dinner we shared a table with a couple from Alabama and from Australia, both who had toured the world extensively. One took a 48 day cruise earlier this year. There isn't anywhere these two couples haven't been.
Juneau, Alaska
The Travel: Arrived 0700 Tuesday morning to a partly cloudy cool day, with a high of 54 degrees. Highs ranged from 50 - 66 degrees all week with very few showers.
The Place: We were here until 2100 hours and thus had time for sightseeing. We took a bus tour to the Mendenhall Glacier (see below). It is the capital of Alaska and we saw the smallest State capital and ugliest State office buildings, according to our tour guide. It is the only State capital accessible only by water or air - no roads run into Juneau. We did manage to find the Red Dog Saloon, a former brothel and famous watering hole.
The People: We settled on one dining room for dinner, the Savoy. The food in all the rooms is about the same but here we had a server named Nestor (Nestie, "for short."). He is from the Philippines and his wife works on the ship too. Their children are 14 and 11, being raised at home by her parents. Almost all the ship employees come from economically challenged countries. Our other favorite server was Lajos, from Hungary. Curiously we did not encounter any employees from North or South America, and few from Europe. All were extremely well trained. The dinner servers were on duty at the buffet at breakfast and lunch, with several hours off between each, every day during the cruise. Servers clean, bus and set the tables and then serve the meal. They are in constant motion and always with a god attitude. In the Savoy we were seated at a table for two, with other such table nearby so we met others at each dinner.
Skagway, Alaska
The Travel: Arrived at 0600 hours and left shortly after dinner. Nice partly sunny day.
The Place: Skagway is the most interesting town we visited, and we took a tour trolley. It has an artsy population and of all the cities Skagway would not survive without the cruise ships. The high school graduated 6 last year, 5 girls and one boy. (She thought the odds were good, but the goods were odd). The school enrollment dropped under 100 with the recession. The tour took us to the cemetery where many bandits are buried, including infamous con man Soapy Smith. Our tour guide, an actress certainly, narrated the gun fight when Soapy was killed. The ship anchored next to a mountain covered with painted rocks. We found out each new ship that arrives can paint a rock and some went back to 1976. Disney came last year for the first time and cheated, according to out tour guide, hiring a crane. Skagway is influenced by a warm current from Japan and has mild winters until...sometime in January, the cold air build up on the other side of a mountain. It spills one into town and meets the warm Japanese air. That creates a dense fog and everyone knows they have about two hours to stock up before 3-4 weeks of cold, howling winds.
The People: The tour guides were fantastic, letting us know if we wanted jewelry we'd better hurry as main street is down to 43 such stores. It also has the Red Onion Saloon, our second brothel. All the waitresses and bartenders wore period dress, and all were female of course. They also had an upstairs tour of the rooms for $ 30. Mary was not interested.
Mendenhall Glacier
We took a bus tour out of Juneau up to the glacier and surrounding area. It is a spectacular with icebergs in the bay, which was created by the retreating glacier, and a nature walk where we saw spawning salmon and a porcupine in a tree. The park service had a visitor center and short video explaining the geology of the glacier. Since 1750 there have been a mini ice age and two warming periods which dramatically affected the glacier. Below is a bald Eagle on an iceberg, one of 9 we saw in a few days. This was a good prelude to the passage up Glacier Bay.
Glacier Bay
The Travel: The ship entered the bay after breakfast on Thursday. A boat from Bartlett Cove brought several Park Rangers who boarded for the day. One narrated the trip up the bay and others manned an informational display on Deck 15. She told how a ship can't come right up to Johns Hopkins glacier until after Sept. 1 because they are afraid of scaring the mating seals. We were lucky to get so close. It is several miles wide and 250 feet high (a 25 store building would fit in front). The most amazing scene was witnessing the calving of the glacier, where with much noise a 10 story building of ice fell off the front and into the bay. Mary got a couple of pictures. We also went by Margerie Glacier and College Fjord.
Whittier, Alaska
The Travel: We traveled all day Saturday to dock at 2330 hours, and woke up to another foggy morning. We boarded a bus that took us to Anchorage. Our driver was a retired school teacher who entertained us with a 10 minute tour of Whittier waiting for the one-way tunnel to open. He mans a check point on the Ididitrod Trail as a volunteer, thus he regaled us with tales of the history and dogs of the race. The dogs run 6 hours and rest 6 hours, and during the rest time the musher spends about 5 hours caring and feeding his dogs. Incredible stories. The bus ride took about an hour, and the driver spoke at length about the earthquake of 1964, of which we learned more during the tour of Anchorage. On the way from Glacier Bay to Whittier we passed many amazing glaciers.
Anchorage, Alaska
Arrived about 1100 at the cruise ship loading center in the middle of downtown. Our bags were taken from the ship to the center and we took a cab for the few blocks to the Hilton. It is an old remodeled hotel. We were on the top floor, 22nd, across from the McKinley Suite, which has a view of the peak.
The peak is 200 miles away and visible throughout downtown at over 14,000 feet high.
Everyone recommended Humpy's for food and game watching, where we got great grub and watched the Alabama-A&M game. We raised the average age in the bar. After walking downtown we tried to eat dinner at the Glacier Brewing Co. but the wait was too long for our hunger. We did manage to get into the Snow City Cafe for breakfast Sunday morning after an hour wait. Great food - if you go make reservations! Saw glaciers all the way into Anchorage and never tired of staring at them.
Took a bus tour of the city, with a retired teacher/band director driving and narrating. He took us to Earthquake Park, where a friend of his in the Anchorage Symphony lived as a 10 year old. He watched his neighbors houses disappear, and he and family go out the front door just before theirs sunk. They spent 4 hours in the snow before they could escape. Most earthquakes last 30 seconds; this one was 5 minutes. It raised the level of Houston 4 inches and impacted Ft. Myers, FL. Earthquake Park is now a stand of young trees adjacent to the city's nicest residential neighborhood.
Home via Alaska Air. 3 1/2 hours to Seattle and 2 hours to Las Vegas. Great to be home after a terrific vacation. We loved the Sapphire Princess and highly recommend an early Sept. cruise to Alaska.
After a week away from social media (FB, LinkedIn etc) I have to say life is better without it. We bought an internet package and went to the Internet Cafe each night after dinner to check email, mainly to see what the kids were up to. The last day we had 30 minutes left and both looked at Facebook. It was a waste of time, nothing interesting and nothing to add.
Now that I'm back, gotta go and check if Brett has any new posts on Facebook.
