Traveling again…

 

I never dreamed that I would get to go on a cruise to Alaska!  Last month I did!  In fact, my entire family did.  We celebrated my parents’ 60^th Wedding Anniversary by going on a family cruise to Alaska, all 23 of us. 

I’m going to do several posts about our cruise, including one featuring the quilt  and yarn shops I visited.  But today I am giving you a taste of the scenery we saw.  So settle in with a cup of coffee or tea and enjoy pictures celebrating Alaska.

Our cruise started and ended in Seattle. 

Our first stop was Juno, where we saw eagles catching fish in the port right beside the cruise ships.  The weather was chilly, high 50’s, but felt colder to us Floridians!  We saw hills covered in low hanging clouds and some snow!

 

In Juno we sampled a quilt shop, yarn shop and the Alaskan Brewery.  I’ll talk about the shops in a later post. 

We also went whale watching and had dinner on the whale watching boat.  The whales weren’t cooperating, but we did see a couple of humpback whales and some sea lions sunbathing on the rocks.

Skagway, was our next stop and we went to a sled dog training facility, where we met the dogs and heard about training for the Iditarod. 

We also got to pan for gold and feel what it felt like to be in -40 degrees. 

Here’s a picture of my granddaughter and her mommy and daddy.

We then cruised to and through Glacier Bay National Park.  The park is reached by plane or boat only.  They only allow 2 cruise ships in a day to keep the park as untouched as possible. 

We were not allowed to have any paper on the ship during the time the cruise ship was in the park.  For instance there were no paper cups for coffee, no paper napkins, etc. available for us to use.

Glacier Bay was amazing.  It was a truly moving experience and the glaciers were huge.  I saw one glacier calve (part of it fall off into the water of the bay).  The ice really was blue and it was also COLD!

Next stop was Ketchikan where we spent a morning with our other two grandchildren.   

 

 

 

 

We walked up the hill and saw the boardwalk along the creek, I think it was called Creek Street. We also enjoyed all the spring flowers that we don’t see here in Florida. 

There are lots of totem poles in Ketchikan.  We went to a museum to learn more about them, but it was a quick stop since we had two children 5 and 3 years old with us!

We went to a playground nearby for some kid-friendly time.

We were all tired from walking when we got back to the cruise ship. 

 

 

See the human totem pole below!!

 

The cruise also stopped in Victoria, Canada, but got there at 8:30pm and only stayed a couple of hours.  We decided to skip getting off the boat for that one. 

There were some days that were just cruising days, so that gave us time to spend with family.  We also had a big celebration for the 60^th and I will talk about that in another post.

Our trip was in May and it has taken me this long to get my house and work in order and spend some time working on the pictures for this post!

Happy 4th of July!

Leigh