We booked a Royal Caribbean Cruise using Sue's timeshare. The cruise would be 7 days, starting in Vancouver, Canada, and ending in Seward, Alaska.
Everything was very nice, but the process of getting on the ship in Vancouver was time-consuming and tedious to say the least. I think it was because we had just entered Canada, and were then leaving Canada as soon as we left port. So not only were we being checked into the cruise and assigned rooms and all of that, we were also going in and out of customs; TWICE. It took hours of waiting in line, and not sure why.
Here were the ports of call:
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1 - Day at sea. We acquainted ourselves with the ship. There were two 'free' food choices: a buffet style and a sit-down style. There were lots of bars and a casino. June and I played a little roulette, and managed to walk away after 30 minutes or so with about $30 more than we started, which was nice.
2 - Ketchikan - We took a scenic walking tour through the town which started and ended at the infamous 'Creek St.' Along the way, we stopped at a liquor store and Geoff and I each got a pint of Jamison in a plastic bottle. It started to drizzle a bit, so we had lunch on Creek St. at the Fraternal Order of Eagles #162. That was a mistake. After lunch, June and I took a cab to the Rainbird Trailhead near the University of Alaska. It was a beautiful hike along a high hillside in the drizzle. We got back to the boat in plenty of time.
3 - Icy Straits / Hoonah - June and I decided to take the 1.5 miles (3 mile total), very uneventful walk into Hoonah. When we got back to the visitors center, we learned that the whale watching tour that we booked with the Ramsey's actually took us back into Hoonah. So we boarded the bus and then boarded the boat. This excursion was WELL worth the money. We motored out for about 30 minutes until the captain alerted us to a pod of whales just off the bow. We went up and, as I readied my camera, a gigantic explosion of whales plunged out of the water not 20 yards in front of us. Everyone gasped loudly, and just as quickly it was over. The captain explained this relatively new phenomena they call 'Bubble feeding'. Check this out! We followed the same pod of grey whales for the next hour or so, but never got as close to the explosion as we did that first time. We also pursued some sea otters, but the thrill of the chase was over. Also at this stop there was zip line going over head. We also started to hear about the native Tlinget tribes (pronounced Cling-et).
4 - Juneau - Here is where we got first-hand experience with the '90 days' Alaska tourism has to make money for the year. We decided that we would take the usual 10-mile ride to the Mendenhall Glacier. And there were plenty of tour buses ready to take us. We soon found out that the customary round-trip ride includes a quick tour of Juneau, for about $50/person. Ouch! Afterwards, June and I took a short walk back to the ship for a free lunch, then took a nice, drizzly walk up in the hills. We were heading for the trail to the tram site up Mt. Roberts, thinking that we could get a free ride back down. At the trailhead, we ran into a guy hiking down. He said the trail was a bit treacherous, and he was walking down because the line for the tram was about 45 minutes long. As we turned around, we crossed paths with a couple of local older gentlemen (our age), who were out walking their dog. They led us up to Perseverance trail on an adjacent hillside along a stream, which proved to be very scenic. The whole hike took about 2 hours, and got us back into town in plenty of time.
5 - Skagway - This little town is ground-zero of the 1897 Klondike Gold Rush. The White Pass railroad was founded to bring the masses to the gold site. Now, the train brings tourism gold to this little town, and it was very entertaining. June and I took in the story via video at the Skagway visitor's center. Then we boarded the train which took us high up the canyon. The train turned around at White Pass Summit, just into British Columbia, Canada. I'm surprised they didn't make us go through customs again!
6 - Hubbard Glacier - This was just a drive-by viewing of the spectacular glacier. The weather was unbelievably warm, probably low 70s.
7 - Disembark at Seward.
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