Alaska by Sea Recap...

I'm finally getting around to finishing my journaling about our Alaska trip. Things have been very hectic lately with work and Abbey was visiting this past week so I've been away from the computer for the most part. I'm condensing our cruise experience into one blog entry.

We boarded the Sapphire Princess on Saturday, June 21st. We had taken the bus to Valdez where we caught our ferry boat to Whittier where we then boarded the ship. The immense size of the cruise ship is more than I could fathom. It was so huge! My mom, Chris & I enjoyed lunch at The Whittier Inn, a quaint hotel right on the waterfront, before mom & I boarded the ship since Chris had to head back here to Durham.
After saying goodbye to Chris for a week, :-(, we boarded the ship and set sail about 8 p.m. Saturday night. We cruised all day Sunday and Monday before we were able to set our feet on solid ground again. The scenery, when you could see anything other than water, was phenomenal. We spent much of the 1st two full days on board exploring, shopping at the boutiques, and of course seeing shows & eating, eating & eating.

Monday we cruised through Glacier Bay National Park. There are over 20 glaciers contained in this area. The largest and most famous is Marjorie Glacier. I posted some of my favorite pictures of Marjorie below. We got to experience glacier calving which is when pieces of the glacier break off and fall in the water forming floating ice sheets. The neatest thing about the calving is the sounds you hear before the glacier actually breaks off. It sounds like a thunderstorm within the glacier. It was an awesome experience.


Tuesday was our first day in port and we docked in Skagway, AK. Skagway was historically a mining town in it's prime. After docking in port, we disembarked and mom, Cheri, Abbey, Jesse & I headed to our glacier flight adventure. We took about a 15 minute helicopter ride and then proceeded to land on a glacier, walk around on the glacier for about 45 minutes and then ride back. It ranks right up there as one of the neatest things I've ever done. Not too many people can say that they've walked on a glacier. I drank glacial water, in fact one of the picture below is of me doing just that. The water is so blue & crisp. The other pictures are of me geared up riding on the helicopter and then the glacier that we walked on!

Wednesday we spent our day in port at Juneau, the capital of Alaska. That day's adventure was whale watching. We saw quite a few humpback whales but for the most part all you ever got to see of the whale was it's fin and tail. Very rarely do humpbacks come fully out of the water like we all had imagined. We also saw lots of bald eagles, other birds, and lots more beautiful scenery.

Thursday we docked in Ketchikan, Alaska which still thrives today as a fishing town. My grandparents and I adventured out here on a boat trip to see over 20 eagles' nests, plenty of bald eagles, a lighthouse on a small island, and an authentic totem pole village. We enjoyed spending that few hours with just the 3 of us.

We spent much of the time outside of our port adventures picking up souveniers and doing some shopping.

We cruised all day Friday and docked in Vancouver, Canada early Saturday morning. We disembarked the Sapphire Princess for the last time and began our journey home!