A couple weeks ago, the wife and I went on an alaskan cruise with my side of the family. The whole trip was pretty awesome although it started out rough.
From phx we did a layover at SFO and then continued on to vancouver...without our luggage.
Because it's a cruise with formal nights, I ended up having to buy a new suit, nice clothes and shoes, while the wife had to buy a formal dress and other clothes. The only saving grace was that we did buy trip insurance which covers delayed luggage. Still, I would have much preferred to spend my day exploring vancouver.
Beyond that, it was an absolute blast!
Landing in Vancouver at 9:10pm with the sun still up was weird.
Disembarking and looking back at vancouver. Vancouver seemed like a pretty cool city, but too bad we didn't have more time to explore it. The mom and pop restaurants looked pretty good.
We didn't plan it that way, but it happened to be our anniversary and they sang us happy anniversary.
Our first stop was Ketchikan.
After finally getting our luggage back, we didn't do much except walk around the town and explore. We did see a couple bald eagles though.
The next stop was Juneau where we went ziplining.
Ziplining was a total blast and much less scary than I thought. At one point, we walked across a rope bridge and the guide pushed off of a tree and got the bridge swaying back and forth a few feet. I thought that was way scarier than the zip lining.
Next on the list of things to do was see Mendenhall glacier.
The second port was skagway where my brother and I took a helicopter ride to walk on a glacier.
Here the guide is throwing a rock into a giant hole and it took a good 8 seconds for it to hit bottom. What was scary was the realization that if you slipped and fell in, nobody is even going to get your body out.
Running water on the glacier, clean enough to drink from.
The next stop wasn't really a port, but we did sail to a glacier bay NP and visit some glaciers.
Margerie glacier is one of the few glaciers still calving.
I secretly snapped this picture of the biggest damn zipper I have ever seen.
At College Fjord, there were otters galore, but no sign of shamu.
On our 2nd formal night, they served baked alaska for desert.
The ship was made in Japan.
Bring on the rain! I was comfy the whole time in the wind and rain and surprisingly, the cheap plastic rain cover for the camera worked well too.
All good things must come to an end. Mt Rainier on our flight back to 108 deg weather in phoenix.
Link to the rest of the pictures.
http://antinode.smugmug.com/Vacation...4391351_4VWvsd
I could definitely get used to cruising!!!
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