Alaska: Skagway, Juneau and Ketchikan

One reason cruising is a great way to see Southeast Alaska is because all the major cities of interest are accessible via cruise ship. Our first stop was Skagway, an adorable, charming town North of Juneau. It was a short, scenic walk from the boat to downtown Skagway.

Again, the weather was perfection.We didn't have time to visit the dog kennels in Denali, but we were treated to a close-up look at, and some hands-on time with, both a Siberian and Alaskan husky!The larger one is the Alaskan, and the leaner one is the Siberian. Despite appearances, their owner says they weighed the same. I'm pretty sure the bigger Alaskan always ended up on top, though.Conner was very curious, but tentative.Mark loved them, and the feeling was mutual.After quite a bit of time with the dogs, we finally moved on to ... shopping! This Alaska Shirt Co. provided us with everything we needed and wanted, from toiletries to kid toys to souvenir clothing.The train cars and train equipment around town proved endless entertainment for the kids.And then there's a lovely, short hike up to Lower Dewey Lake.Short, but steep. I'm told we climbed over 500 vertical feet in an approximately half mile hike. Half mile sounded so easy, but less than halfway up I was already cursing.By the time we finally got up to the lake, I was done. Mark fared much better than me, carrying the backpack, encouraging me the whole way up, and periodically handing me a towel and water. No way I would even consider going the extra distance to Upper Dewey Lake. We snapped a quick picture and headed back down straightaway.We encountered Jimmy and Sally on our way down. They were making their way up, woefully unprepared: no map, no water, no bug spray. They did, however, have motivation we didn't have - time away from their kids. So not only did they make it up to Lower Dewey Lake, they made it halfway around the lake and back.

Next stop Juneau, our busiest port. Sally and Jim opted for a floatplane tour to the Taku Lodge, while the rest of us opted for a whale watching excursion with a stop at the Mendenhall Glacier afterward. It was the most productive whale watching tour I'd ever been on.
Dolphin Tours promised we would see Humpbacks, and we did almost right away, but it dove deep down before I could get my camera out. I saw its beautiful tail just before it disappeared.

Orcas, on the other hand, were not guaranteed. These tours estimate they see Orcas maybe once a week during the summer season, but our luck was running hot. Shortly after seeing our first Humpback, we spotted a group of Orcas a ways off.
There had to be at least three of them, and all the whale watching boats were far enough away that they were undisturbed for a good while, playing around long enough for us to get lots of pictures in. If only I had better zoom on my camera. Sigh.
Finally, the boats got too close and they disappeared under the water. So we were on to the next location.

We saw several more Humpbacks, but they were good at eluding my camera.
The tour included bagel sandwiches with lox cream cheese spread, bottled water and juice, for everyone: little kids ...
... and big kids alike.
Everyone had a great time.
Only, it was over too soon, especially for Conner, who took quite a bit of convincing to get him off the boat. Poor guy was not happy it was over.

Dolphin Tours then took us straight to the Mendenhall Glacier, the largest "walk-up" tidewater glacier in Alaska.They had a display of glacier ice for you to feel and handle. Apparently the ice crystals are so large, due to the amount of pressure that packs the snow together, that they melt much slower than the conventional ice we eat. A block about a foot and a half in diameter would take several days to a week to melt!

There is a vantage point close to the Visitors Center, and then there's a trail that will take you closer to the glacier and up to the gushing waterfall to the right of the glacier.What more could you ask for? Well, back in downtown Juneau, there's Tracy's King Crab Shack. It's not cheap - $15 per leg - but it's oh-so-fresh, sweet and delicious. Nothing like the crab legs at restaurants or from Costco. This was as fresh as you can get, and they know just how to cook it at Tracy's.
We also tried the crab bisque because how often do you find King crab bisque? It was a great accompaniment.

But it was nothing compared to the main event. My mouth is watering just thinking about it. One leg was plenty for one person, although without the bisque, I probably could have done two.The Bear's Lair - a reminder of homeFinally, there was Ketchikan, which as far as I can tell, was dominated by four large cruise ship docks. Mark and I had plans to take a kayak tour to Orca's Cove, but I wasn't feeling well, so I opted out and only Mark went. Mark doesn't take pictures, so this is all we have from Ketchikan (taken on the way out to Orca's Cove). Alaska stayed sunny and mild for us throughout our entire 13-day stay, and for that, we are eternally grateful. Our disembarkation port was Vancouver, where it rained for the first time on this trip.

Alaska: Coral Princess and Glorious Glaciers

We had to be on the road from Alyeska promptly at 3pm in order to make the 3:30pm opening of the Anton Anderson Memorial Tunnel connecting the tiny town of Whittier to the Portage Glacier Road. It's a one-way tunnel shared by cars going in both directions, and trains, according to a schedule (the trains must run at night).

Just before the tunnel, we passed Portage Glacier, which is no longer visible from the road, but you could see evidence of it floating in Portage Lake.
Just past the tunnel, we had our first look at the cruise ship (that's Sally's big head blocking my view).
In a later port, I believe Ketchikan, I got a better picture of the ship.
The bigger kids were pretty bored waiting to check-in for boarding, but not Trevor. He took off running.
And had a ball just running around and around, stopping at this pole and that pole.

view of the ship on our way to the gangplank

kind stranger offered to take our picture (seriously, we didn't ask)

so pleased with our balcony!

Deck 14 - open air pool area

Ashley, our resident monkey found monkey bars wherever she went.

She also took to Mark like a sea monkey to water, and spent many a dinner, as well as a lunch or two, on his lap (and could be found clinging to his legs at other times). She was so cute, it's no wonder he didn't mind at all.
Mark and I were first-time cruisers, and we had our reservations about it, particularly about the size of the cabin, general cleanliness and quality of food. It turned out to be awesome. The cabin size blew us away, the cleanliness was as good as any five-star hotel, and the dining room food was excellent, even if the buffet food was hit or miss. Much more on the food later.

our cabin
our closet: fully unpacked, but not even close to full
views from our balcony before setting sail

and soon after

The Coral Princess is a nice size - not so big that it's annoying getting from one end to the next, but not so small that you feel claustrophobic (or see the same people all day long). I looked forward to the Princess Patter every evening, the newsletter that lists the activities for the next day. We watched several movies on board, in the Universe Lounge, the Princess Theater and mostly in our oh-so-homey cabin. We played bridge and met some super nice elderly folk at our bridge game, competed in a trivia session and got thoroughly trounced by the 6-person teams, worked on the communal jigsaw puzzle, as well as the daily brain teasers and crosswords available in the library, and of course, we gambled. My luck was running good, so I chose gambling over karaoke, and ended up missing every karaoke session.

aft view over "The Sanctuary"

Formal nights were a little like prom, except instead of one photographer, they have numerous photographers stationed all around the public areas. Thanks to Sandy's connections at HP, we have high quality scans of our cruise "prom" pictures.
Here are some of our own humble photos from that first formal night.
Needless to say, the little dude in his tuxedo was a big hit. He had the paparazzi (strangers with cameras) hounding him the entire night. It was so bad that when we finally had to head into the dining room to eat, people were chanting, "just one more picture!" All the attention was quite exhausting for the little star. He was yawning before we even sat down to eat.

The first two days of the cruise when we were viewing glaciers were the most awe-inspiring days. We sailed up to Hubbard Glacier on our first full cruise day, one of the largest tidewater glaciers. As we approached Hubbard, the water already was full of floating ice. That was our cue to get up from our bridge game and get on deck for our first glacier viewing. It was an amazing feeling just sailing quietly amongst the ice.

Mark and I headed to the bow of the ship for some prime views during the approach. Hubbard apparently spans six miles, but it didn't seem quite as wide from the ship because part of it was hidden behind that island on the right side.

The glacier calving was the most amazing thing to see, but near impossible to capture on video, much less in a still picture. Instead, I got a picture of a slight indentation on the face of the glacier after the fact.

Hubbard was great, but it was clearly an appetizer with Glacier Bay being the main course and dessert. Glacier Bay is all that and a bag of chips. We sailed by glacier after glacier from late morning through into the evening.

Park rangers boarded our ship around 10:30am when we passed the entrance to the bay. A little after 11am, one of the rangers gave a lively presentation about the history of Glacier Bay, and what we could expect to see. When I first entered the auditorium, I had unpleasant flashbacks of o-chem lectures in Pimentel (Go Bears!), but it turned out to be a great presentation, priming us for the relaxing, yet awe-inspiring, day ahead.

The first glacier we saw was the Reid Glacier, I've concluded. I thought it was the Lamplugh at first, but then we saw the Lamplugh on our way out of the bay, and it was not this one.

Reid Glacier (flowing down like a wide river of ice)

The main event: Margerie Glacier

We got much closer to Margerie than we did to Hubbard. For instance, I believe this is with 3x zoom, whereas the similar-sized picture I took of Hubbard was probably with 9x zoom.
As witFrom this view, you can see Margerie flowing down the mountain.
Next to Margerie is the Grand Pacific Glacier, blackened by the rocky debris embedded in it. I admit I'm biased against these "dirty" glaciers, as well as the "dirty" icebergs that float by. They're ugly.
After hours of peaceful glacier viewing, I lost track of which glacier was which. I believe this is the Johns Hopkins. Gorgeous.
So here's a piece of advice, if you're going to Alaska and want to see wildlife, bring binoculars. Quite frankly, I would not have enjoyed staring through binoculars for hours, but otherwise, you see this:
It's an oddly shaped piece of ice with a bald eagle standing on top (and to the left). But would you know what it was if I didn't tell you? People saw whales early in the morning, mountain goats on the far banks (if you had binoculars), and even bears. I saw this bald eagle.

And finally, Lamplugh was the last glacier I saw before dinner.
I thought maybe this was Reid, but they announced it as the Lamplugh, which means the first glacier was Reid.
We saw more calving, resulting in the holes you see here at the base of the glacier.
Now FOOD. As I indicated previously, the buffet wasn't our first choice for dining. There are always a few good options, but not nearly as many as we could find daily in the dining rooms. Besides, the service in the dining room was so good that any meal without it seemed ... incomplete.

Here is just a few of the delicious dishes we ate in the dining room:

#1 fettucine alfredo
(the best dish of the entire cruise)

#2 creamed chicken with mushroom sauce on puff pastry
(a close second to the fettucine alfredo)

#3 shrimp cocktail
(Mark ordered this everyday despite his allergy!)
matzo ball soup

rice pudding

venison

surf and turf

fritto misto

pasta arrabiata

citrus seafood salad with caviar and roe

lobster

chocolate mousse on brownie base
(it had a cute name that I can't remember)

tomato and mozzarella salad with anchovies

The king of the dining room - the boy who got the best service - was, of course, Trevor. The head waiter, Erno, took a particular interest in Trevor's food allergies, and personally customized every multi-course meal for him. Erno made sure the chef baked a loaf of non-dairy tapioca bread for Trevor everyday, and also made sure he had his favorite fruit (watermelon and papaya), steamed veggies (he soon learned Trevor's favorite was carrots), some form of meat protein, and jello for dessert.

Even breakfast and lunch were multi-course affairs for Trevor. In fact, we all enjoyed the food Erno brought for him. Good thing Erno brought much more than Trevor could eat.
Trevor and Sandy were both delighted with Erno.
We didn't try quite as hard to impress on the second formal night, but we did enjoy a wonderful dinner thanks to Derek and Jim, who very kindly took the kids so that the Chen clan (+Mark) could enjoy a peaceful dining experience. It was quite possibly the best meal of the entire trip.
You can't tell, but Mark was dashing that night in his lavender button-down shirt, catching some more moments on our balcony after dinner.Even if the buffets weren't our first choice for food, apart from near 24-hour access, it did offer one thing the dining rooms did not - beautiful ice and fruit sculptures.
Our last night on the ship, we ate at one of the ship's specialty restaurants, Sabatini's. For a mere $20 surcharge, you get a really nice Italian meal.
The menu is split into five categories - antipasti, pizza, zuppe e insalata, pasta, secondi piatti. Dessert menu was listed separately. I thought we would choose one item from each category, but it turned out, we were to get all 8 antipasti, 4 pizzas, 3 zuppe e insalata, 3 pasta, and the only choices we were to make were for the secondi piatti and the dessert. The only problem was ... we already had an early snack in the dining room (I had the creamed chicken pictured above, and Mark had some shrimp cocktail), so there was just no way we were going to eat all of that. So we opted out of the soups and salads, as well as most of the pizzas.
Apart from the pasta, the dessert was the best part of the meal: tiramisu.
Since it was the last evening, I splurged on a hot chocolate. Mmmmmmm.
After the glaciers, we stopped at Skagway, Juneau, Ketchikan and finally Vancouver. Stay tuned for more on that.