Farewell Alaska

It is our final day of our cruise.  Today we said goodbye to Alaska while spending the day at sea heading to Vancouver.

So what do you do on the boat all day. There are so many things to do and places to go.  From the pool both indoor and outdoor, the different restaurants and bars, movie theatre, card room, library, shopping or checking out the many photos that had been taken everywhere.

We decided to skip breakfast today and when we arrived for lunch the cooks had prepared a large Bon Voyage cake to show their appreciation to the travellers on this ship.

Next, we did a little shopping at duty free, the photo shop and then arranged our transportation for tomorrow when we put our feet back on Canadian soil.

After this bit of work, I decided to spend some time in the Casino, my first visit on this cruise. I set myself a time limit of 2 hours and at about the 20 minute mark I was pretty sure I would be finished well before that limit, but suddenly the cards came around and I was able to continue playing to my deadline leaving the table having lost only $15.00.

Next, it was time to pack. It will be very interesting to see if we are under our weight limit.  I'm thinking probably not.

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Once the packing up was finished, we headed upstairs for a drink and views from the upper deck.

We were in the strait between Vancouver Island and the mainland and Barb and I were very happy to see our country once again. She also discovered a new drink we had not tried all week... oh boy.

There were more whales spotted in the distance and the sunlight on the water was a great view.

Our final dinner was our chance to say goodbye to many people we have met and sat with including my shooter buddies.  Tonight our waiter chose the drink, "Anaconda", which is Sambuca and Jack Daniels.  Burns all the way down.

The waiters gave us all a little farewell song and we are now back in our cabin preparing to face reality again.

Alaska is beautiful, a place full of amazing wildlife, scenery and people.  Another part of our world that we were lucky and blessed to be able to explore and we will never forget this place.  Our lives go back to normal on Sunday and we are looking forward to coming home. Thank you for reading along with us, we love sharing our travels.

p.s. We were unable to post this last night as our Internet service was very slow. We are back in Canada, spending a night in Vancouver before our flight home tomorrow. First stop in back in Canada .......

Oh yeah, then we got a free upgrade to a suite at our hotel !!!  Looking forward to one final special dinner to celebrate this great trip.

We are Crabbers!

Today we are in Ketchikan, the last stop in Alaska for our trip.  I think we are finally starting to experience true Alaskan weather for this time of year, it is raining today and cooler.  Not a heavy rain but one that will soak you through in about 10 minutes.

We have one more tour today and I was really looking forward to this one.  Have you ever watched the Deadliest Catch on the Discovery Channel?  Well, today we board the Aleutian Ballad, a ship that was on season 2 of this program and the one that was hit by a rouge wave that nearly sunk the boat. More about this later.

Barb and I left our ship this morning to tour the town, in the pouring rain, hunting for the elusive and sometimes hard to find, fridge magnet.  Since our trip in Europe it has become a custom for Barb to buy a fridge magnet from the cities we visited. Our poor fridge, I'm afraid that it may topple over when we add all of the collection we have gathered on this trip.

After our walk, soaked, we boarded our crab boat and set off.  The captain and his crew were so much fun, stories, and silly pranks, just my kind of humour.  I took an entire 5 or 6 minute video of them pulling up the first pot and as it was getting closer to the surface, one deck hand is yelling "I can see the hook!".  It was an anchor they had planted...  silly city folk!

The crew also tossed some pieces of fish overboard to try to attract the Bald Eagles to fly. This process worked fairly well. 

On the deck of the boat was a large tank full of King Crab and prawns and smaller crab and one small octopus.

The first items they brought up was a pot used to catch opilio or snow crab. 

Once the pot was opened the catch was passed around to all of us. 

They caught a starfish in this pot as well.  Finally, since Alaskan King Crab are out of season and usually caught in the Bering Sea, we got to see these monsters that were in the tank. King Crab are covered with thorny spikes on their legs and entire body so picking them up was handled by the crew only.

We returned to our ship looking for a drink to warm us up ... best thing was a spicy Bloody Mary. Not our favourite but it worked! Dinner concluded with the elusive shooter. Tonight was Sex on the Beach!  Then off to party the night away!!

As another night winds down, we will spend our day tomorrow at sea, heading back to Vancouver. It will likely be a quiet day and we have to figure out how to pack everything up again for our journey home.

Wildlife, Bears, Deer and so many Whales

Today we are at Icy Strait Point on the Chichagof Island here in Alaska. This island is a tourist attraction owned by the native people through their corporation.  One thing we have found here in Alaska, is that the native people here are living and fully integrated in the state.  They do not live on reservations like many at home do and we have met many of these great people, young and old.

The young lady from our river cruise in Fairbanks is studying to become a nurse and others who live and work here are so very informative on this part of the country and of course, their heritage.

So our tour today took us up into the back woods area where we took a hiking path to search for wildlife.  Now, us city folk took this path, part ground and part boardwalk with three outlook points over a river.  Just before we began, we realized that we were actually going into the wild, when our guide was joined by another local man. Take note that he has a rifle over his shoulder !!

It had ben raining all night last night so the river was high and we did not see any wildlife on this walk. There were salmon in the river that we saw.

On the bus ride back to our starting point, we finally saw some dear and an Alaskan Brown Bear walking down the road.

Next, we set off whale watching.  Barb and I have done this before and seen Minki Whales in Newfoundland, and humpbacks at a distance off Vancouver but never seen a breach or even the tail fin of any whales.

Shortly after leaving, our boat spotted the misty plume of a whale and we headed towards it.  Well, we came across a pod of Orca's or killer whale. What a sight!!

The crew told us that orcas travel in pods but they can travel up to 100 miles per day so they are rare to find.  We had another special experience.

Next we went off to find one of the local humpback whales from this area and we found one. First time we watched and saw his massive tail come out of the water, another first for us.

We enjoyed the day, watched a show after dinner and retired for the night.  This is the first time that we actually felt the boat move or we had too much to drink, again !!! Actually, we had moved out to some open water for awhile. We are going to have to come home for a rest soon.

Back to Canada

We arrived in Skagway, the home of many gold rushers who never made it to the land of gold, to some overcast skies and some intermittent rain ... first time the sun wasn't shining since we started our vacation! We looked back to our ship to see all of our life boats down and out on the water ... they were doing a safety check! Glad they do this sometimes.

We had the opportunity to visit another dog sled facility. This one was much smaller than the last one ... they only had 10 dogs here but we did learn a few more things that are required to participate in the Iditarod. Check out these boots.

And, we got to hold more puppies!!

From there, we took a ride on the White Pass and Yukon Railroad, which goes all the way to the Yukon, something else on our Bucket List however, we didn't get the right tickets so we only made it as far as Fraser, BC. Beautiful scenery for sure but somewhat disappointing.

The ride up was on a bus about 5 minutes into BC, then we rode the Alaska Yukon Railway back down to Skagway.  Some pretty great scenery and scary trestles to cross.

I was feeling pretty tired today after last nights events.  While walking down the streets of Skagway, we bumped into Dave and Cheryl and decided to visit a local saloon. Juneau has one called the Red Dog Saloon, which we somehow avoided, but not today.  The Red Onion was in our sights.

My last drink yesterday was in this Saloon.  I drank water at dinner and while Barb wanted to dance the night away at the 50s - 60s party on the ship,  I just couldn't do it.  Might have been the shooter I had with my shooter buddy after dinner tonight. 

We must slow down, we are up early tomorrow to search for Alaskan Brown Bears and Whales.  From my buddy Dave and I,  good night!

Juneau, and our gold claim

It seems that at least once on these travels of ours, I have an evening writing this blog after too much fun.  Tonight is the night.

Today we explored Juneau, the capital of Alaska.  There are no roads leading to Juneau. Boat or float plane is the only way to get here.

We took a tour today, gold panning and then a salmon bake.  First off the search for gold.  The tour guarantees that everyone will find gold, so the sceptic in me right away says this is a tourist trap.  Well I was wrong.

Our tour guide, a young man the size of a grizzly bear with the beard to match takes us up to this river bed.  There are two guys there digging into the river bed and sifting the dirt, stones and fine sand.  These guys were not part of the tour.  We were shown how to pan for gold and then each person was given a pan full of dirt and pebbles that our tour collected earlier from the riverbed.

After a bit of work cleaning out the larger stones, then panning the sand slowly out, all of a sudden we actually find gold.  Probably only worth $10.00 but there was gold in each pan, different amounts.  

We were shown how to extract the shiny pieces and also separate the iron sand particles using a magnet.  Barb and I will bring home what we found!

Next, off to the salmon bake. What a delicious meal!  At this outdoor location we found a group of ducks, rather large ducks in a pond.  A bus came by and scared them and they all came running towards Barb and I. 

We also took a path up to a waterfall and Barb just has to dip her toes into the icy mountain waters.

Tonight we dined as usual.  We had met people at the table beside us on the first night when we were seated at the wrong table.  One of the fellows, Patrick, said that he always finished his meal with a shooter and I never like to see anyone drink alone so we both had a slippery nipple. You can google the ingredients.

Last night we were seated at our proper table and met other very nice people but no shooter.  So tonight I spoke with Patrick and told him that I missed having the shooter, so after dinner this evening, we joined them and on the menu tonight was "duck farts".  So good that we had 2 of them.  Oh boy.

The music theme today was the 70's, and the main area in the middle of the boat was having a 70's party and Barb and I joined in with the friends we met on our land tour and our Australian friends.  So much fun and of course we kept drinking.

Finally that party ended and Dave, Cheryl, Barb and I went up to the 13th deck outside at the front of the boat.  It was not very cold and there they were, the Northern Lights.  What a great way to finish the day.

We are off to bed now, probably going to be a rough day tomorrow but we can sleep in a bit.  Tomorrow we are taking a train trip through the Whitehorse pass and into the Yukon in Canada. It should be another amazing day.

The Hubbard Glacier

We just want say thank you to those who have commented on our blog, especially our dear friends Bruce and Anne Compton. It keeps us close to those back home that we love so much.

Today was a special day for Barb and I. Although we woke up to a very heavy fog, the skies cleared and we got to see something we have never seen before.  I'm sure those of you who have visited Alaska have seen the Hubbard Glacier. This is something that even pictures do not do justice to but we have tried to show you the size of this behemoth.

The glacier is 122 km or 76 miles long stretching all the way to the Yukon in Canada, and is 6 miles wide.  It's height is 700 feet! This is a tidal glacier meaning it reaches the sea and tides I'm sure, affect this.  It can take 400 years for the ice to travel the full distance of this glacier and when it reaches the sea it breaks off or calves into the water.  This is a regular occurrence and we saw quite a few of these calves while we were sitting only 1/2 a mile from it.

The sound. the cracking and then to break away is really something to see.  We have tried to capture this experience for you with our pictures and videos.

Our ship launched the rescue boat while we were here, to retrieve a piece of glacier that had broken away.  They brought it back on deck for pictures.

From land to sea

This morning we woke early again to take a boat tour of Resurrection Bay here in Seward.  The town of Seward is quite small with two area of business.  The one area is full of restaurants and stores while the other part is near the harbour.  It took Barb and I about 5 minutes to walk from one end to the other.

Our land tour has only 18 people and this morning, we had the entire boat to ourselves.  It was wonderful to be able to move anywhere we wanted without being overcrowded.

Moving out of the harbour, we spotted one of many sea otters.  What a life, floating on your back and watching the world go by.

We saw the many glaciers and a couple of icebergs; however, we were not able to get very close to them. 

Puffins and other sea birds were spotted and we also saw some Bald Eagles, but were unable to capture them on our camera.

 

We went past a few sea lions sitting up on a rock and the big one gave out a roar as we passed.  Finally, we found the blow of a whale out in the distance and tracked him down to get a few pictures.  Our captain said it was the first whale he had seen in over a week.  Again we have been lucky.

We are now on our cruise ship, the internet is costly on this boat so our posts may be less frequent, but we will record our days and update when we can.  These cruise ships are wonderful, so fancy with many places to explore. Our first stop, where else, the bar!! We want to send a special thank you to our travel agent back home in Bowmanville, who ordered a lovely bottle of wine for us that was set up in our room when we arrived.  We share a drink with you in our thoughts Louise.

We have a set seat in the dining room for dinner, the food is amazing and we are sitting with two very nice couples from South Carolina. Dinners should be great fun with these people. Here are just a few pictures from inside the ship that we will call home for the next seven days.

Tomorrow we stay on the ship all day but we will be sailing near the Hubbard Glacier. The views and pictures should be spectacular.