Our Travel Blog

The further north we go, the brighter it is in the evening. Luckily most of the places we stay at have blackout blinds, so we are able to sleep OK. We had a good continental breakfast at the B&B and then set out for Fairbanks. Along the road near the B&B we had seen the 12,400′ Mount Dunn, but every time we saw it, it was shrouded in cloud. This morning it was clear.

Mount Drum

Beyond Glennallen we lost sight of the mountains for a while and drove through heavily wooded areas. As we started to climb up towards 3200′ the scenery changed again, and was predominantly snow covered mountains.

From the Passenger Seat

With the occasional glimpse of the Alaska pipeline.

Alaska Pipeline

For the last few days we have seen a purple covering on the roadside verges, at first glance it looks like heather, but it is not. If anyone can identify it, please do so.

What Is It?

Descending back down, we wet back into forests again, but this was a good thing as Lyn spotted a moose at the side of the road.

Moose

I was surprised at how tame it was. By the time I had stopped the car we were way beyond it, so I did a 180 and took a couple of pictures across the road, then another 180 and pulled up along side it. The moose just carried on as though there was no one there.

We finally pulled into Fairbanks, still with clear blue skies and a temperature of 20C, forecast for tomorrow is 27C. I was a little nervous approaching the hotel as it was the cheapest one of the trip @ $99 per night and it had a couple of not so good reviews, but it was the only one available when I booked. We checked in, and all was good. Even the internet was pretty good (once they reset the WiFi)

The rain continued over night, but but let up for a while until after breakfast. For breakfast we tried the local reindeer sausage. Hope that doesn’t put me on the “no present” list. There was no real distinguishing flavour, may need to try the reindeer steak to get that.

After breakfast, when the rains came tumbling down again we decided to re-plan our day. Instead of staying in Seward, and spending most of the day in the hotel, we jumped in the car and headed north then west to Soldotna and Kenai. As we got away from Seward the rains lightened and eventually the sun made an appearance although the mountain tops remained shrouded in cloud.

The scenery along the way was great, with very blue silt filled rivers, unfortunately the photos don’t do them justice.

Rusian River

Somehow, in the middle of nowhere a quilt shop jumped out in front of us, so we stopped. After all Lyn hasn’t been in a quilt store for at least 4 days!

We were surprised to discover a Walmart, Home Depot and other big box stores in Kenai. We took the opportunity to replenish our rapidly shrinking gin supply with a bottle of Gilbeys for $12.47! We successfully smuggled booze onto the boat, cleverly disguised!

Disguised Booze

On the way back we took a smaller gravel road and got some (to us at least) typical Alaskan views.

Quintessentially alaska

We also managed a bit of geocaching. As we approached Seward the rain started again, but by around 6PM it had eased off and the evening has been dry. We took a walk around the down-town area where there are a number of murals painted on the walls.

Seward Mural

Woke up this morning after a more lively ride after we left the shelter of the inside passage and crossed the open waters of the Gulf of Alaska.

Our balcony windows were dripping with water, so we assumed it was raining yet again, but it turned out to be spray. After breakfast we headed up to deck 10 for the walking track and got a mile walk in. We then headed back inside for a presentation by the Executive Chef, followed by a tour of the galley.

Next we checked out the disembarkation procedures for tomorrow, at first we were shocked to see that we had to vacate our cabin by 08:00, on further reading we discovered that we had to meet with the rest of out disembarkation group at 07:35!! I guess all good things must come to an end!

As the day wore on the weather continued to improve, and we had bright sun and clear blue skies. We are now north of 60N and the sunset is at 23:20 with sun rise at 04:15. As we head further north towards Fairbanks and approach the longest day on June 21 we should see sunset occur after midnight.

After lunch we walked another mile, unfortunately the calories burned in one mile comes nowhere near the calories gained in one (any) meal. Hopefully, once we are away from the ship we should start eating a little healthier again.

College Fjord at Night

College Fjord

Although the weather hasn’t been the best, it hasn’t ruined any of our plans. The day of the worst weather was in Juneau, where we had nothing planned anyway. We saw some whales, and other sea life, a number of eagles and some calving glaciers, so all in all we were quite happy with the cruise. Tonight we even got to sit on our balcony and drink our G&T!

Time now for the “last supper” we have been lucky, sitting with a good group of people which has led to some interesting mealtime discussions…. we may even have been persuaded to consider Australia for a future trip!

Hopefully after today the internet will become less of a rarity.

We woke up early this morning and the ship was pitching and rolling quite a bit. A while later the captain made a broadcast saying that there was a small technical problem. It seems that the waste water system was misbehaving and we had too much you know what in the tanks. The solution was to head out of the calm waters of the inside passage and head out into the Pacific Ocean before pulling the big flush lever!

This little manoeuvre cost us about 4 hours, but luckily there is plenty of daylight up here so we we could still complete the scheduled trips.

Unfortunately, after a pleasant day yesterday we wer back to low clouds and rain/drizzle. We were late down for breakfast, but managed to grab a window seat so we sat there for a while hoping to see some whales. I was lucky and just managed to see the classic view of a whale diving with its tail out of the water, unfortunately Lyn missed it. We saw a number of sea otters and also some porpoises, so all was not lost.

After our walk yesterday we decided we needed to keep up the good work, but it was too wet to use the outdoor walking track. Instead we walked around one of the lower decks 5.5 times which gave us a one mile walk.

We spent a vet lazy morning, popping outside in between showers, and we both managed to see a whale as well. Lunch was a crowded affair as a lot of people were sitting inside for their sight-seeing, luckily we spotted a couple of Australian women we knew so we had a good meal.

In the afternoon we cruised up into the Glacier Bay National Park to view the glaciers that exist there. One of them, the Margerie glacier is different from about 95% of the worlds glaciers in that it is not receding. We were lucky while we there as there wer two calvings. Calving is when chunks of the glacier break off and drop into the water.

Marjerie Glacier with Crushed Rock Patterns

Marjerie Glacier.

As we returned from the Margerie glacier the sun graced us with its presence as we visited the Johns Hopkins glacier.

On our way back out we passes the Lamplugh Glacier, which head a bright blue patch in the centre. This is evidence that there was a recent large calving from the glacier.

We anchored around 07:00 at Skagway, and even when anchored there was still some movement throughout the ship due to high winds and a choppy sea. The good news though …. no rain, and even patches of blue sky. We docked about a half mile walk from the town centre, so after breakfast we braved the strong winds and headed into town.

Main Street Skagway

This was by far the best town we had visited so far, although there were still a number of “tourist trap jewellery stores” there were also normal stores, and you got the feeling that this was a lived in town, rather than one that had been designed around the cruise industry. of course there was the obligatory quilt store as well.

Overall we walked about 5 miles today, which was good as I (we) are falling victim to the good and plentiful supply of on-board food.

After lunch, well actually we didn’t have lunch we borrowed a couple of sandwiches from the buffet, we headed back down the pier to board the White Pass & Yukon Route railway.

The Train we didn’t Take (unfortunately)

Our Train

Train Heater

This trip took us 20.4 (track) miles inland and and across the Alaska border into Canada. The railway was built at the end of the 19th century at the time of the gold rush. In the 20+ miles we travelled we climbed nearly 3000 feet in elevation. It was a well worthwhile trip, made even better by the clearing skies and and a guest appearance or two by the sun.

Trestle Bridge

The Bridge we Didn’t Coss

Back on the ship, this picture shows how light it was at 11PM

Light at 2300