My wife, Karen, and I just returned from an Alaska cruise. It was our big event for 2018, which marks the 30th anniversary of our wedding.
We were on the Celebrity Solstice out of Seattle. Nice cabin and very roomy balcony, great food, fun people, and a bartender seemingly at our elbows to see to it that our drinks were supplied.
Our first shore excursion was in Ketchikan where we caught fabulous weather for sea kayaking in Orcas Bay, see the photo above. We also managed to see some harbor seals feeding in the stream, right under the footbridge.
The highlight was cruising up to the Dawes Glacier after a spectacular sail through the Endicott Arm and past Ford’s Terror Wilderness. The cruise’s original plan was to travel up Tracy Arm and view Sawyer Glacier, but the ice there shifted our agenda.
I’ve posted a few of the photos we took. One of the wonderful aspects of the tour was narration by Brent Nixon. Starting at about 5:30 AM he came on the ship’s television system and described exactly what we were seeing and also told the history of the area.
He also conducted three lectures in the ship’s theatre during the cruise: humpback whales, orcas, and bald eagles. These were extremely informative and he makes them very entertaining and fun.
I’ll note that the ship cruised as near to the glacier as they could go, then did a gentle 360 degree turn so everyone on the ship had a fabulous view right from their cabin balcony.
Then we stopped in Juneau where it was raining most of the time. Our trip there was a bus to the Mendenhall Glacier but with the rain and fog, we couldn’t really see much. Our guide on the bus, however, gave us a fair bit of information on the city.
Then it was on to Skagway. Here despite a bit of rain, we did a raft tour down the Taiya River. The river was moving pretty swiftly due to the rains and snow melt. So that was fun.
Our final stop was in Victoria, British Columbia, where we had an evening whale watch tour. We didn’t see any orcas but quite a few humpback whales along with a ton, literally, of sea lions on a group of islands.
I will mention that for our honeymoon in 1988 we stayed at the Whale Watch Inn in Northern California. Didn’t see any whales there but more than made up for it on this cruise.
