Our Travel Blog

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

Seems there have been problems with logging into the blog! Unfortunately lack of reliable and fast internet up here meant that I could do little to fix it. I finally got around to phoning the hostog compan today, and they fixed the problem in a couple of minutes.

Another trip starts, this time without the trailer. I aam not sure what internet access we will have on this trip, so blog entries may be sporadic!

We had originally planned to travel to Alaska in the trailer, but after giving it some serious thought we decided to take a different approach. The cost of diesel alone to get the trailer up to Alaska from Alabama and back would pay for a flight to Vancouver, a 7 day cruise to Anchorage, 10 days car rental and a good chunk of our hotel costs. Given the wear and tear that would be inflicted on the truck and trailer the decision was pretty obvious, that is why I am sitting 40,000′ over Manitoba writing this.

It’s going to be a long day, we left home at 05:00 this morning, which will get us into Vancouver around 09:00 local time. We can’t start boarding te ship until 12:00 so we he some time to kill in Vancouver. Unfortunately we will have our suitcases with us, so that makes walking a little inconvenient, however there is the Skytrain which travels around Vancouver and the suburbs on an elevated track, so we will probably take the “scenic” rote to the cruise terminal on that. The ridiculous thing is, it won’t cost us to travel the extended route; the fare from the airport to the terminal is $4.00 PLUS a $5.00 airport “convenience” fee. For the same price you can buy a day pass, which is not subject to the fee. Must be a west coast thing!

After heading out to New Westminster and grabbing a snack we took the train back to the Cruise Ship Terminal. Although we could see the ship from the station, finding the terminal was a little more challenging. Finally we found it with a little help, and successfully cleared US Customs and got checked in. The cruise terminal was somewhat underwhelming compared with previous ones we had used in Florida.

The ship was much smaller than previous ones, it only carries 630 passengers compared with over 2000 for the others.

There was a Disney cruise ship at the terminal as well, and for some reason it seems we had to wait for it to depart before we could. We were due out at 16:00 but we left an hour later. As soon as the Disney ship set sail, we moved off minutes later.

Disney under Lions Gate Bridge

We headed N.W. out of Vancouver, around Stanley Park and under the Lions Gate bridge. From there we continue N.W. in the channel between the mainland and Vancouver Island. At some point later on to night we pass through the narrowest part of the channel which is only 140 feet wide. Our cabin is directly under the bridge (the one where the driver sits, not the Lions Gate one!) so we get a good forward view, if you go to princess.com and find the Bridge Cam tab, then select Pacific Princess you will see what we see from our balcony.

We also had a rare sighting of a floating Canadian submarine!