Yes, yes I know it's been a very long time since I blogged. Life gets busy and suddenly you notice that over two years have passed since the last time I checked in. I can't go back and tell you everything that has happened in our life in that time, but I'll fill you in on some pretty important things as we go along.
I'll start by explaining a little bit about how we got to this place today.
In August of 2014, Scott and I celebrated our 10th wedding anniversary. We decided to take that Alaskan Cruise that we always talked about doing. Life it too short to just keep talking but never doing. I'll keep this story short (or somewhat short).
When booking our Alaskan Cruise, we saw that we could also add a "land" portion to our trip. Heck, let's get the most out of this trip! Side note: this is the first and only cruise we have ever done. We both agreed at the end that this was the way to travel. Someone else did all the planning, all the logistics, all the driving, and all the heavy lifting. I highly recommend taking a cruise once in your life.
We flew from Portland to Anchorage and met up with our cruise director there. We spent the night in Anchorage before heading north into the heart of Alaska. Our first stop was Mt. McKinley. It was a beautiful day and we were lucky to be some of the few people who actually see the mountain from bottom to top unobstructed.
This made up for the fact that the resort had no power for most of the first day we were there. That meant no running water, no restrooms, and no heat. It also meant that the kitchen staff had to be pretty creative with dinner options. We originally made reservations to eat in the resort restaurant, which should have cost us about $60. By the time dinner came around, and still no power, the kitchen staff cooked anything and everything they could on the propane BBQ outside. All reservations were cancelled and everyone ate together, family style, and best of all, for FREE!
The next morning at breakfast we heard people talking about the northern lights. We learned that you could give your room number to the concierge and if the northern lights come out in the middle of the night, they will ring your room to wake you up. Of course we added our room number to the list. Low and behold, at 2:20am the call came. We jumped up, threw our heavy jackets on over our pajamas, and wandered out into the dark parking lot. I can't begin to explain the mesmerizing sight of these lights constantly changing along the horizon. Just when you think you have seen the most beautiful, they change and you are hypnotized again. Then you realize that you are sharing this experience with 200 strangers, standing around in your pajamas, in the middle of Alaska!
We continued north to Denali National Park. Denali is one of the few National Parks that limits the amount of people who can drive their personal vehicles into the park. Not wanting to spend our only entire day there on a tour, we signed up for just the half day tour that takes you to the end of the paved road into the park (about 11 miles). We loaded up in an old school bus and started our drive in.
The park was beautiful, with all the fall colors out. But soon the snow started falling and the road became slick. We ended up making it to the end of the paved road, and so did everyone else. Unfortunately the people who signed up for the full day trip also only made it that far. The road was too dangerous for anyone to go any further.
Our tour included several spots where we were scheduled to get out and meet with a park ranger for an interpretive speech. Because of the weather conditions, the rangers ended up boarding the bus to give their talk. This made our tour go much faster. On the way back out of the park, the bus driver asked us if anyone had anything they specifically wanted to see since we were way ahead of schedule. One lady piped up and asked if it would be possible to actually get off the bus for a minute. She had never actually been in snow before! The driver hit the skids and half of the bus unloaded out into the snow.
One day just wasn't enough time to see all the beauty of this place. Denali is definitely on our list of places to revisit!
From Denali, we rode the Alaska Railroad 275 miles south where we would catch up with our cruise ship in Whittier. The train ride was definitely scenic and beautiful. We saw some pretty remote areas, people living hundreds of miles away from the grid. Somehow I think there are people in this state that live a lot further off the grid then that.
I don't think either one of us ever imagined that we would actually be on a cruise ship! It's amazing how these things float! It's seriously a city on the water.
We sprung for a cabin with a balcony. If we were only going to do this cruise thing once, we were going to go all out. Every cabin has a T.V. that has one channel that is specifically for the ship. Several times throughout our cruise, we tuned our T.V. to this channel and sat on our balcony listening to the Captain give a narrated live tour of what we were seeing. Even though there are 2,200 other passengers on the ship, we felt like we we getting a personal tour.
The Alaskan Cruise is a lot of seeing glaciers. These glaciers are amazing. They are this blue color that you have never seen before, and no two look the same. We were floating out in the ocean, completely silent, and then all the sudden a huge block of the glacier would break off and slide into the ocean. This was followed by a loud bang, almost like a gunshot. The ice that breaks away during this glacier calving is considered an iceberg. That's how big these things are! My description of this isn't doing it justice.
This was where I could find Scott during most of the down time we had on the ship. Alaska is a photographer's paradise.
The farther south we traveled, the more the snow and glaciers gave way to green, lush forests and thousands of small islands.
But every once in a while, around a corner, would be another glacial flow. This one different from any others we had seen.
Our first official stop on our cruise was the town of Skagway. We had pre-registered to take the White Pass and Yukon Route railroad. Everyone we had talked to that had done this trip before highly recommended this excursion. Scott, being a huge fan of railroads, spent the ride walking from car to car trying to get the best view, but really there wasn't a bad view from any car.
Our second stop was to the city of Juneau. We had pre-registered for a whale watching tour and a trip to to the Mendenhall Glacier.
Whale watching was great. We quickly lost count of how many whales there were around our boat. We also saw sea lions and bald eagles on this trip.
The weather on this day was not so great, so we didn't venture out much further then the covered viewing areas of the glacier and the visitor center.
Our final stop on our cruise was to the town of Ketchikan. This was the only stop that we decided not to pre-register for an excursion. When we were doing our planning, we decided that it would be nice to have one day on our trip that wasn't booked solid.
The day we arrived in Ketchikan the weather was beautiful! We were so happy that we would have one down day to just venture around and check things out.
Ketchikan is not a very big place so it's pretty easy to walk around downtown and see a lot of the sites.
We visited a totem pole museum, watched the salmon run up the river that runs right through the middle of town, and ate lunch at a nice cafe right on the harbor.
We sat on a bench along the waterfront and watched the float planes come and go, soaking up the beautiful sunshine.
When we boarded the ship for the final day of our cruise, we talked about ways to come back to this place. We were just talking and day dreaming like people do. You know when you visit that place that you could go back to time and time again. For some people it's Disneyland, for some people it's a city like Seattle, and for us it was Ketchikan.
Our ship departed for our final push to Vancouver. Our adventure was almost over, but neither of us was sad because I think that somehow we knew that we would be coming back to this place. Little did we know it would be so soon.
