Wednesday, August 31, 2011

But wait, there's more!


I bet you thought I was finished with my documentation of our trip to Alaska, but I couldn't leave you hanging, wondering what exciting thing we did next. I would never do that to you. I haven't even shown you the whale!


We saw a whale.
Actually, we saw several whales, none of them particularly close up, but I'D never seen a whale before, so I thought it was pretty cool. See?


Cool, huh?

Anyway, the morning after Ketchikan, I woke up cold. Like, winter, I need another blanket, can someone please light a fire in here cold. I got up and looked out the window, which explained everything.


We were floating through icebergs. We were doing some "scenic sailing" up the Tracy Arm Fjord, which, I must admit, was probably my favorite part of the whole trip.


It was stunning. The water really was that blue green color.


And there really were icebergs. Not huge -sink the Titanic- icebergs, just lots of little ones.
Either way, it was cold.


Painfully cold.
Or maybe I'm just a wuss. In this photo, I'm wearing a shirt, sweatshirt, down coat... and a blanket.


We were on our way to see this. The glacier. Apparently the ship broke a record that morning and got closer to it than they ever had before.


Closer......


Closer...




Closest!

The crew seemed to get a little giddy about it and opened up the helicopter pad so that we could go out and have a little look-see.


It was pretty deluxe. A couple of Brent's sisters and their respective husbands came out with us (one of the is behind the camera)

After that, we docked in Juneau, which was also quite amazing.


It rained ALL day, which gave me an opportunity to walk around with my cute, dainty umbrella. The locals didn't seem to mind the rain. They were ALL wearing big rubber boots. Our tour guide said they call them Juneau tennis shoes.

Just like Ketchikan, we got to see a lot of things...


We got to see another glacier. It's back there, I promise. I didn't have any other pictures of it on my computer, Brent must have taken them with his phone.


We saw more salmon. Lots and lots and lots and lots of salmon.

Brent's sister saw a bear, but no one else did. :(
I wouldn't have been particularly interested in seeing a bear, except that everyone who lived there seemed to think that it was perfectly normal to run into bears, like it was no big deal or something. They actually recommended that we fight them, if we felt threatened. I'm kinda giggling just thinking about it. Like, they seriously said that you should punch a bear in it's face and charge at it and stuff.
Ya, I'm not going to do that. It's probably best that I didn't see one.


But we did see a Bald Eagle, sitting there all majestic in the tree tops.

It was the icing on the cake before we hopped back in the tour bus and headed back to the ship. For the record, I loved Juneau.

5 comments:

Lynda/Mom said...

Loved the second installment! I'll bet you remember this trip for a long, long time. One could get hooked on cruising.

Barbara said...

Yep, I really enjoyed my cruise to Alaska as well. It's a fascinating place. Great pictures, by the way.

Grammyzanne said...

Love the pictures. Looks like you had a great time.

Lynda/Mom said...
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Lynda/Mom said...
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