Sept 1st: Final thoughts on cruising…..

09.14.2018 by Trish // 6 Comments

This is what I loved

Relaxing with a beer and watching Alaska go by

Relaxing with a book from the library and coffee and pastries

The library was gorgeous, so many books, so little time!

This is what I didn’t love

Taking the lift with the view to the 10th Deck

Despite food and accommodation being paid for we still managed to spend near a thousand dollars …….note the $15 per person per day Hotel Service Charge!

I really didn’t love the lack of internet, ship internet was really expensive and although we purchased $10 a day roaming from Telstra, apparently a ship is not a recognized country! I’m ashamed to say that the first thing I did when I got off ship was turn on my phone to roaming…..

But I appreciated that they thought of us after 6 days of eating and drinking!

Not sure whether I loved these or not

Would I do it again? Absolutely!

Aug 30th: Glacier Bay

09.14.2018 by Trish // Leave a Comment

The most amazing day at sea was the cruise through Tarr inlet to view the Glacier Bay National Park and Reserve which contains over a thousand glaciers. What a magnificent day just sitting watching nature in all her glory, the icebergs drifting past, the rugged cliffs of ice, the snow capped mountains. Unfortunately the whales and bears were always on the other side of the ship to us but we were lucky enough to see the glacier calving into the bay. (That’s glacier speak for a chunk of ice breaking off and falling into the water) You could hear the oohs and aahs along the balconies!

Glacier Bay was almost entirely covered by one tidewater glacier around 1750 but began to retreat, by 1879 it had retreated almost all the way up the bay, a distance of around 77kms. Some glaciers in the park are still retreating while others are stable.

In the late 1600s near present-day Bartlett Cove, an extended family of Tlingit harvests salmon at a summer fish camp. Looming in the distance, a great glacier sits dormant, pausing before the cataclysmic advance that will force these people from their homes around 1750. But the Tlingit have proven resilient. They returned as the ice retreated and today claim Glacier Bay as their spiritual homeland. https://www.nps.gov/glba/learn/historyculture/early-peoples.htm

What better than an Alaskan beer to accompany the glacier watching!

Aug 26th – Sept 1st: Why we loved Alaska!

09.12.2018 by Trish // 5 Comments

A – Alaskan Beer

L – Learning stuff about salmon and glaciers

This hatchery releases 100 million salmon hatchlings per year. Before setting off to the ocean they spend a month imprinting their place of birth and return there after 5 years at sea. Only 5% survive.

Mendenhall Glacier has retreated around 2800m in the last 100 years due to climate change. The lake in this picture was covered in ice at the beginning of the 20th Century

A – Amazing scenery

S – Skagway – doorway to the Yukon and starting point of an amazing bus and train ride

The front of the train going over a trestle bridge

Obviously I didn’t take this photo, thanks Wikipedia. The stampeders of the Klondike gold rush had to haul a year’s supplies to the gold fields. It was a distance of 53kms and they had to make many trips, often totalling 4000km. Only to find that all the claims had been taken

K – Ketchikan totem poles

A whale’s tail in the style of a totem pole

A– Arctic (sub) landscape

Cabin views

09.03.2018 by Trish // Leave a Comment

I didn’t realize how expensive and/or unavailable internet access would be so I wasn’t able to post anything during the cruise, which is why you will now be inundated with posts while I catch up!

The view from our cabin balcony was one of my favourite parts of the cruise, an ever changing piece of living art. I’ll let the art tell the story.

Embarkation Day – This ship from the Princess line sailed parallel with us for a while then all of a sudden turned around and sailed back towards port. Someone must have left something behind!