Alaska Cruise - Day 6: Juneau

Today is the official middle of our cruise -- happy because that means we have half to go still but sad because that means it's half over.  

Our breakfast routine has become solidified...Ian orders coffee and cereal and pastries delivered to the room and the twins and I head up to the buffet...because we've become obsessed with the chicken congee there. They add green onions; I also add seaweed and crumbled eggs. They say it tastes like 皮蛋瘦肉粥 and therefore devour huge bowls of it every morning. 

The main attraction in Juneau seemed to be the Mendenhall Glacier.  We could have done the shuttle or tried to catch a cab, but many people recommended renting a car to explore Juneau with more flexibility. Given that Juneau doesn't even have roads connecting it to any other town, the number of rental cars is limited...leading to a healthy supply of Turo cars. This was our first experience renting with Turo and I have to say it was pretty seamless!

To get to the parking garage where we picked up the car though, we had to walk past about 30 jewelry stores and some sort of fish packing/hatching facility. The smell was...very powerful. 

Once we got ourselves in the car and out of town, it was about a 20 minute drive to Mendenhall. Drumroll please!

The twins insisted on an "eating the glacier" shot. I applauded the creativity. 

To give you a sense of perspective, this entire lake used to be all glacier a mere fifty or so years ago. Shocking....and pretty depressing. 

I tried to force the twins to do the Trail of Time hike with me...they countered by promising to cooperate on photo taking if we only did the shorter Nugget Falls and photo point hikes instead. So here's them standing in awe of where the glacial field used to reach back in 1938.

Family shot with the glacier:

Here's L's masterpiece on the beach.

They told me that there are three rules for hiking: 1) there must be a destination. 2) it must not be more than 4 miles. 3) it must all be flat or end with downhill. The Nugget Falls trail, being only 2 miles and ending in a waterfall, was satisfactory. Here's the destination!

I also took them on the photo point walk -- because the destination for this 0.5 mile hike was definitely worth it:

After all that hiking, we thought we'd try to catch some famous Alaskan crab. Unfortunately...the four other cruise ships docked at Juneau today were filled with folks who all had the same idea it seemed. So...back to the ship buffet for lunch it was. 

When we came back out for our afternoon adventure, we decided to check out the jewelry stores, which all seemed to offer free pendants or gifts for stopping in...so I tried out a TON of rings and the twins picked up a dozen or so free souvenirs. I ended up realizing how good of a deal I got on the Sri Lankans sapphire ring (that I lost, sob). We later heard that all of the diamond stores were actually owned by the cruise ships. Made sense, as I didn't think Alaska was exactly known for the mining of diamonds...

Random shot with the bear seats outside one of the dozen jewelry stores we stopped in:

Our afternoon destination was the National Shrine of St. Therese, the patron saint of Alaska, who advocated for everyone doing little acts of goodness. The grounds were supposed to be quite beautiful (and often were a good vantage point for whale spotting too).

No whales today, but it was an enjoyable little destination.  Great time for gardens in Alaska right now. Here's the labyrinth, which had a very impressive array of flowers all around.

Someone is cheating!

Parting shot of Juneau pier:

The pier actually had a pretty impressive outline map of the United States with little nails. We weren't 100% sure what we were looking at until we saw Michigan. 

Today was the last port day in Alaska, but tomorrow will be the highlight of the entire cruise: Glacier Bay!

Alaska Cruise - Day 5: Haines

The ship wasn't going to be docking until 11 this morning so it gave me a chance to visit the gym. Two gym visits in 4 days is pretty good I think! Proof that if I did one day book one of those 60 day cruises, I might end up in better shape afterwards? Optimism! Here's a shot of the view from the deck in front of the fitness center - not bad:

We had a wildlife canoe excursion booked for the afternoon so the morning would be self-guided walkabout. The highlight of the morning stroll through town was definitely the hammer museum.  This is basically one man's passion project based on a love of all hammers. A fairly non-descript little house that is just filled with hammers.

Outside was this Rube-Goldberg-machine type contraption that the twins had a lot of fun working. 

These were the "prettiest" ones, according to the twins -- the glass hammers. Yeah...unclear what possible utility they would serve besides decoration. But they even have glass nails!

Here's one for the pre-1990s crowd -- real hammers from Tim the Tool Man Taylor! (Yeah, another reminder of how uncool I've become).

More odd contraptions...

Hammers for cancelling checks (apparently in the old days, you use a special hammer to "stamp" the center of the check and the imprint would then indicate that the check was no good.

Downtown Haines was even smaller than Ketchikan. It was basically just two blocks. R wanted to show off the bracelet she made for the bear:

We also visited the Post Office where we mailed off a couple post cards. And then also checked out the "fort." I thought this would be like a real Fort (a la Fort Mackinac)...but in reality it's just a bunch of older style houses surrounding a large grassy area. 

This is a town that has a graduating class of 11 kids each year and that gets all their fruits and vegetables by barge once a week...so let's cut them some slack!

The afternoon wildlife adventure started with a drive out to Chilkoot Lake. We passed some more totems on the way:

And then....a bear sighting! (Credit to R for the initial sighting). This bridge is the salmon weir -- it forces all of the salmon swimming through to pass through a single gate so that they can be counted. How counted? AI hasn't taken over this job yet -- you literally have individuals sitting there counting the salmon manually. Except this kind of man-made funnel for all the fish means it's free food on a platter for the bears! I didn't catch the bear cubs off at the edge of the forest, but as we were driving in, the weir workers were trying to scare the mama bear away so that they could keep counting. 

Nice start to the wildlife tour! We proceeded to the next part in the lake itself -- obligatory family photo here:

The scenery here reminded Ian and I of Milford Sound down in New Zealand. The water was more green than blue though. Apparently this is because the glacier melt is pretty silty from all the ground mountain rocks in it. 

We saw a few bald eagles as we paddled, some were flying around but others were just perched on the branches. 

The lake was very pretty -- with the two canoes that our group was on being the only things there. Our canoe actually ended up being just the four of us and another family of four that we were traveling with -- private tour!

Since of the 8 of us in the canoe, 4 were children...we pretty quickly opted for using the motor instead of our limited upper body strength. 

We were hoping to catch more glimpses of bears -- the Chilkoot Lake is a known salmon spawning spot -- in a single day, they could have thousands of salmon coming through! Here's a shot of the salmon jumping around in one of the spawning sites:

The bright red color is evidence of these sockeye salmon being at the end of their life cycle -- apparently by this point, they've essentially lost all feeding capabilities and are just subsisting off of their own internal organs until they die. 

No bears at the lake...but as we drove back by the weir...the mama bear was still there! Clearly, she won that standoff with the weir workers -- no sight of either of them as far as we could see. Here's an action shot of her bringing the fish back to her cubs:

Pretty good day for wildlife sightings! We made our way back to the ship where I caught a few more shots from our balcony:

Guess where we head to tomorrow? I heard it's the capital of Alaska. Juneau? I'm not sure...we'll find out! (I hope people appreciated the effort that went into that set up!)

Alaska Cruise - Day 4: Ketchikan

First port day of the cruise! When the biggest attraction is a lumberjack show, you know it's going to be a little kitschy...but really, secretly don't we all love a little kitsch? 

The plan for today was to do a little self-tour of Ketchikan downtown. We would be following a route called the "Salmon Walk," which basically just connects together a bunch of attractions in a loop. To give you a sense of how much the local economy is dependent on cruise ship tourism, Royal Caribbean actually put up all the signs for the Salmon Walk. It would include a stop at the salmon ladder, some museums, some totems, and then end with the Great Alaskan Lumberjack Show. The boat was leaving at 2:30 so it was going to be a fairly short port visit.

Before we got to all the sights though, our priorities were clear -- no trip these days is deemed to be complete with an order of boba. I'm happy to report that this requirement was met in Ketchikan (even though I'm told the quality was a bit lacking).

With that out of the way, we could focus more on culture and learning. Here are some of the impressively preserved totems from the Totem Heritage Center. 

And the salmon ladder! 

The twins actually learned about salmon ladders in school this past year -- apparently they were started because of dam construction -- a manmade way for an salmon to continue their uphill swim when a dam otherwise blocks the river entirely.  The salmon run was just getting started so we actually got to see some salmon jumping out of the water and making their way through the ladder. 

Here is a shot of Creek Street, basically the heart of Ketchikan. Back in the gold rush heydays, this was also the location of the red light district. "Where men and salmon came upstream to spawn," as the saying went...

We also spent a good bit of time at the Ketchikan visitor center. The highlight I thought was actually the hands-on rope tying activity. I generally think of myself as fairly good in terms of following diagram instructions (ie, making art projects). But I had a really hard time with some of the instructions (like the square knot even!).  The twins on the other hand made it through all of the knots with no issues. You might say they are knautically talented...while I was knot. 

There was also what I thought was a pretty good exhibit showing you the size of the infamous "Old Groaner" - the brown bear would make an eerie groaning noise because of injuries to his jaw. 

Another totem, this time displayed outside and with paint intact. 

The kids, thanks to the boba hit, were generally good sports about walking around town catching all these museums. I even convinced them to strike silly poses with the various sculptures. 

I would have appreciated more stops at the various artwork shops...sadly no one was really interested except me. Aren't the carvings pretty cool?

The true highlight of the day was of course the lumberjack show. I hear that lumberjack shows are somewhat of a known tourist thing (ie, they aren't unique to Ketchikan, others exist in Oregon, Washington, other parts of Canada, etc). This one was done competition style, with two teams of two contestants each, trying to be the first to do various athletic/timber-sports activities (like cutting through a log, running across a log, climbing a log, throwing axes at a target, etc).

I thought it was interesting how all of the contestants were a bit on the shorter side. The guy in the center below was the announcer, who wasn't extremely tall himself -- the four contestants around him were noticeably shorter. Perhaps center of gravity being lower gives you an edge on some of these activities?

All in all, don't think I'd go again, but would recommend it as a one time activity for sure. Very entertaining. 

As we walked back to the ship we also caught a really big jellyfish in the water. Only living animal sighting of the day, but still pretty cool!

Today we were also celebrating the twins' birthdays, so we booked a dinner at the speciality Italian restaurant on the ship. Six courses! And no, the twins did NOT pace themselves. I think they had about 7 pieces of bread to begin. In their defense, the bread was quite good, but then the appetizer came...and then the minestrone soup...and the burrata tomato salad..and the truffle fettuccine alfredo...and then the steak/lasagna secondi...and then the huge "rocher" hazelnut dessert...and then a chocolate birthday cake! Suffice it to say they were a bit stuffed by the end. 

Only day 4 out of 11 down -- tomorrow we dock at Haines!

Alaska Cruise - Day 3: Still at Sea

Today is my last work day before I truly go on vacation, which means I again had some 8am calls to kick off the day. Again, impressive video quality! People kept asking me where exactly I was and I truly did not know. I wish the princess app had a feature that would show you where the ship was. I could only answer - somewhere in the Pacific Ocean.

There wasn't too much to report on this day -- I spent a good chunk of it on emails and work calls. But one thing I will note -- there was a free pendant giveaway several times a day on sea days and the twins (and their friends) became obsessed with collecting all of the pendants. This meant that I ended up spending a lot more time in the diamond gallery than I had been expecting. Everything was pretty pricey...but I guess it was fun looking?

One benefit of the kids all being in their staterooms is that we weren't afraid of waking them up if we stayed out later. Our paper card mahjong set got a lot of play time!

Tomorrow, it's our first port day -- stepping foot on Alaskan soil. Ketchikan -- here we come!

Alaska Cruise - Day 2: At Sea

We have a lot of travel planned this year so I decided not to take a vacation day for these two sea days at the beginning. Meaning: I get to test how good the Starlink internet actually is. (spoiler alert: quite good!)

Had a great night of sleep (8 hours+) - must be rocking that lulls me. It is definitely a more sway-noticeable cruise compared to the Caribbean ones we've been used to. But I got my scolopamine patches so all good!

Started the day with a bunch of work meetings at 8:30...I think it's amazing what Ian can sleep through.  The first few calls I did with video off, but when I turned it on for the last call, the other folks said the video quality was so good that they had no idea I was floating in the middle of an ocean. For the multiple hours I was in meetings, the internet only cut out once! And only for about 2 minutes. 

In between meetings, I managed to hit up breakfast, lunch, and afternoon tea. As Ian says, he is amazed that all of the crew members aren't obese with all the food available on the ship.

High tea was pretty good! We convinced the kids to come by telling them that tea with a lot of milk and sugar was basically like boba. 

The scones with clotted cream and jelly and mini tuna sandwiches were also a big hit though!

We also managed to catch the champagne tower toast.

We also joined a bingo game (as expected, did not win, not even close), caught a stand up comedian show, and tried to win some diamond jewelry.  I was only two numbers off in that raffle - so tantalizingly close! 

The musical show tonight was not super impressive. Maybe I've just become a very critical critic for singing over the years, but I think the Disney shows generally had more talented people. Also being able to use the full song repertoire probably also helps. Case in point: Ian's favorite part of the show was the Colors of the Wind segment. 

Tonight the ship crosses the Pacific time zone boundary so our clocks go back an hour. Wouldn't be so bad except that I have a 9am Pacific call tomorrow -- guess I better head to bed on the earlier side tonight too. Adios folks!
 

Alaska Cruise - Day 1: Hello Ruby Princess!

Time for the next installment of our travel adventures. Alaska has been on my bucket list for quite some time now, so an Alaskan cruise -- especially one that left from San Francisco -- seemed like a no-brainer. No hotels, no flights, no weight limits, so freeing! Well...except that we ended up with gargantuan suitcases that each weighed a ton. When there are no restrictions in place, I apparently pack a LOT. 😆 

Because I'm all about optimizing schedules, I actually had a choir performance this morning still, so we didn't make it Pier 27 until a little before 2pm. Downside: four very hungry people. Upside: no lines for anything! 

This is our first time cruising with Princess, so a few immediate impressions compared to Disney -- more bars, more older folks, food variety very strong, but as for food quality...not overly impressive thus far. I'm kind of regretting the upgrade to the Princess Plus package because there really isn't that much for the twins to enjoy (soft serve is free, there are no smoothies, it's not like they drink coffee), but I guess Ian appreciates the freedom of being able to drink 15 cocktails a day for free. I think he's taking it as a personal challenge. He needed to drown his sorrows after he found out that the poker table on the Ruby Princess was literally taken out on the previous cruise right before ours. He JUST missed it. 

Balcony size is much larger than Disney staterooms -- wait staff much less entertaining, but still very friendly and competent. Ship overall feels more blah in terms of theming (ie, there really isn't any), but a lot more going on -- including all day mahjong, daily taichi, lots of performers of all sorts -- and even a cruise passenger choir that we can join! 

But since it was our first day, we took it fairly easy, basically just unpacked, had dinner, and walked around a little to get our bearings (signed kids up for kids club, picked up some bingo tickets at the casino, took a spin through the library to see what games they had). 

Did NOT take enough photos this first day, but here's one of the wind surfers under the Golden Gate Bridge as we were passing through. These guys were super impressive -- wind surfing seems like an extremely difficult and potentially painful sport.

It was very cold out on deck all day -- but I braved the elements to catch us passing under the Golden Gate bridge!

I went to bed early (twins stayed up late than I did -- the aging milestone has been crossed!). Still working these next couple sea days so limited on having TOO much fun for now -- will try to take more photos though!