The Island Princess provided us with lots of entertainment, food and shopping. We attended several dance classes for line dancing and cha cha. The first day was exceptionally difficult as we were on open sea and the ship was rocking and rolling.
They had a Hoe-Down one night where we participated in a shoot out. That was a lot of fun. The musicals were good quality. Blind Side was shown in the theatre. We had not seen that movie. They had a comedy show and a magic show.
We chose not to go to the formal nights, but we did eat most of our evening meals in the dining room with our new Boomer friends, Ken and Bea. There was an ice cream parlor and a pizza parlor. On the upper level there was a buffet open almost 24 hours a day. Most of our meals were eaten there and the view was great. We always seemed to find ourselves there just before retiring for bed, too. We met lots of people during our meals as we sat with different people most of the time.
One of the nice aspects of the cruise was whale watching. We were told that it was very unusual to see so many whales, humpback and killer.
Some had babies. Even though some whale were quite visible when they broke the surface of the water, we were not able to get good pictures. We did see many blowing their spouts of water as they came up for air.
We learned when you see the full tail in the air they are going for a deep dive to probably feed and will not come back up for at least 5 minutes. We were able to view them from the top outside deck, the buffet deck and our personal balcony. It was rather comical while we were eating someone would holler "WHALE" and people would jump up and run to one side of the ship to take pictures.
MAY 25,26 TUESDAY AND WEDNESDAY
We saw the Hubbard Glacier and several others on our cruise.
I had seen them break apart and fall into the ocean on television but never realized the sound was like thunder.
We went to Glacier Bay and then on to Skagway.
We chose to book our own tours.
At Skagway we got a small bus to take us to White Pass and went into Canada a short distance.
There was still lots of snow on the mountains. We saw mountain goats.
Our driver and his wife ran this business. In the winter they live in north central US and the summer they live in Skagway. He was very interesting to talk to. The name of the company is Alaska Green Jeep Tours and we would highly recommend them if you are in Skagway.
MAY 28 FRIDAY
Our next stop was Juneau which is the capital of Alaska.
They have been trying to get the capital changed to Anchorage since most of the population lives there. We took another bus ride to the Mendenhall Glacier.
We saw several eagles on the way. This was a beautiful area around the glacier. There were many large icebergs in the waterway. The visitor center had a film we watched about the area. They also had several telescopes set up so you could view the area at a much closer look. We had a look at several mountain goats.
MAY 29 SATURDAY
Saturday we arrived in Ketchikan and walked around town.
Looked in a few stores and found the post office inside a clothes/general store.
MAY 30 SUNDAY
We attended church on ship. This day was a day at sea.
MAY 31 MONDAY
We arrived at Vancouver and went through customs and then boarded a Princess bus which took us to the Seattle airport, about a 3 hour drive. It was a rainy day. It was good to be home.
Alaska has 39 mountain ranges and they contain 17 of 20 of the highest peaks in the US. Mt. McKinley stands at 20, 320 feet. It is the tallest mountain measuring from the base, but Mt. Everest is the highest in the world in measuring elevation.
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