Schlepporello

I've booked a back-to-back from Vancouver, B.C. to Seward, AK and return. In searching for flights to and from YVR from DFW, it appears that my choices are limited to United and American. What happened to Alaskan Air? Also, when returning from Vancouver, it seems that United cannot fly out of Vancouver without using Jax Air. This confuses me because if United has jets flying in to YVR, they must fly back out loaded or they lose money. That is unless United is using those jets to fly somewhere else besides returning to DFW.

I know, it's a stupid question, but I'm long overdue on asking them. We will be visiting Juneau in late August 2021 on the Celebrity Millennium. It looks to me like we will arrive at 9 AM and depart at 9:00 PM. During that time, are there any excursions that will take us up Tracy Arm Fjord by boat from Juneau?

2 minutes ago, rkacruiser said:

 

I picked up my car, which was a Ford Escape, at ANC.  Had the "mis-fortune" of arriving for the pick-up near the time that some flights had arrived; had a good wait at the check-in counter because of that.  Once the check-in was complete, accessing the garage was easy and the car was easy to find.  Returning the car proved to be more simple and quick than I expected.  Avis personnel were pleasant and helpful.  

They always are. I used to be a fan of Enterprise until a fiasco in Dallas. We had to switch to Avis, we haven't looked back. The last two times we rented in Anchorage, it was from Avis at the Airport. The 2nd time we rented, I was able to return it to the facility in downtown Anchorage. Did you return yours in Anchorage or Fairbanks?

29 minutes ago, rkacruiser said:

 

Last year when I needed to rent a car, I did a lot of on-line shopping.  Hertz was the most expensive of all of the companies.  I found the best rate for the type of car I wanted at Avis. 

That's what I'm finding out "after" I looked at Avis. Their prices are far more reasonable, so the self-driving tour is back on track for now.

7 hours ago, SuperCrewBear said:

How many days are you planning to allow for your trip from Seward/Anchorage to Fairbanks?  As you may know, the more the better.  What are you wanting to include (Denali [again?]) in particular or are you totally flexible?  A direction you might consider is going from Anchorage to Glennallen then north to Delta Junction then northwest to Fairbanks. There's a lot of scenery in that direction that many people miss.  A great place to eat at Glennallen is a small take-away joint called Tok Thai - excellent, LARGE portions and not very expensive by Alaska standards. Tok Thai is sort of the edge of the parking lot for the Tesoro / Hub station/store.  If you have the time you could deviate south from Glennallen to Valdez.  You'll get to see large portions of the Alaska Pipeline on this route too.  Good luck!

That sounds like a great route for another trip. You can never have too many trips to Alaska.

6 hours ago, Budget Queen said:

How much time are you allowing and why- Fairbanks?     Of course you see a lot more with a car.   For me Fairbanks is for getting north. 🤩.    Are you planning on Denali?    How long were you there last time and how far did you get in?   Every trip IS different. 
 

Do not rely on google map times-  estimate at leas 50% more.     I’m here now and ran into about 1.5 hours total delays yesterday.    Previous I’ve just missed a pilot car and had an hour wait 🤩.    
 

You are best to figure out what you want to see and do. First.    Then fit in your lodging and schedule.   

 

We're looking at taking 6 days to get there,  I'm not sure if we'll overnight in Talkeetna as of yet. I'm thinking we'll stay overnight in Anchorage for a day of laundry, so we may just have to stay a night in Talkeetna. I'm looking at 2 nights in Denali so we'll have a full day in Denali. We'll go in as far as we can go this time. That's how long we stayed last time, but on that trip, our tour only took us to the stop where you finally get to see Denali, then we turned around. Then I hope to spend at least 2 nights in Fairbanks. I have a 2nd cousin who lives there and I'd really like to spend time for a meal with him. Maybe take a flight to the Arctic Circle and hopefully drive to the town of North Pole. If we do this, we may have to plan on staying another night or two.

These plans right now are contingent on car rental fees, and those currently are too blasted high! at $500 per day for car rental, the land tour option sounds REALLY GOOD right now. Hertz will rent the car 1-way, but this rate really is a but much.

3 minutes ago, Roger88 said:

From  what I read in your post you made a nice little trip of your own. Its always nice to be able  to put up your plans along with the cruise and not ruin one or both. Usually I am little afraid of going on my own when cruising but sometimes I actually do get away just to visit places that were not originally planned  

I hear you.

Being a truck driver by trade, I'm not afraid of a little driving. I think it would be nice to stop where I want along the way should I see something cool that needs to be looked at. And the activities we did when we did this route as a pre-cruise tour we don't really need to do again. And I do understand that the inland tour rates have dropped. Even so, I'd like to wing it one time on my own.

My DW and I have booked a northbound cruise from Vancouver to Seward. We have done this itinerary as a southbound three times already. On our 2nd time, we also booked a pre-cruise tour by rail which took us from Fairbanks to Denali to Talkeetna to Anchorage and finally to Seward via bus. On our 1st and 3rd southbound cruises, we flew into Anchorage 3 days early and did our own tour of the peninsula prior to our cruise. There are certain activities which we do not want to do on this upcoming cruise, so we have decided to make the trip to Fairbanks via rental car. I have already found an agency in Anchorage that advertises that they will rent us a car for this type of travel. My question is this. Have any of you done this? We would like to do our transfer to Anchorage via train as we love the ride and the scenery. Is this possible?

Thanks!

Thanks! Knowing where both locations in Anchorage are brings out the truck driver in me which sees the airport as being the better option as opposed to the depot. I'll check with the agency that I plan to rent from as well as look at the land tour packages again.

OK, thanks! The airport is what we'll be shooting for.

We stayed a Sophie's Station. Some people we were with thought it was dated. The room was nice and clean though and we had no issues.

You can't go wrong with the Deadliest Catch excursion. I'll offer no spoilers here.

I have a friend who lives in Juneau and he says the very best thing to do there is the helicopter ride. Yes, it costs a lot, but you only live once.

We're planning on doing a northbound cruise which will terminate in Seward, AK. I would like to take the train to Anchorage from the ship. From there, we are planning to rent a car and travel self-paced to Fairbanks. Where will the train drop us off at in Anchorage? The Airport Spur or the Depot?

Many thanks!

11 minutes ago, CHEZMARYLOU said:

They could also open the MDR every day so no one would have a fee regardless of cabin category.

Does Royal not do that already? I know that Holland America does, or at least used to. I'm assuming all cruise lines do this.

8 hours ago, hallasm said:

Do not understand! If Norway is open for traveling in July there is a Hurtigruten departure each day from Bergen. I’ll suggest the seven days Northbound from Bergen to Kirkenes combined with some days in Oslo and Bergen - train ride from Oslo to Bergen is beautiful - possible stop in Flåm with a Norway In a Nutshell tour.

You can easy book Hotel, boat, bus and train segments yourself.

 

just a hint. Check Hurtigruten prices at both the US web in US$ as well as their .no page in NOK - might be big savings when booking at the Norwegian page in NOK rather than US$ .

 

Thanks! I obviously don't understand this cruise line's scheduling. I figure that's one more thing I'll need to learn.

Wow! Thanks for the link to Hurtigruten! Unfortunately, the sailings don't work with the time that I have allocated to take off from work. But that's a great line to remember!

Which cruise line goes to Norway? I'm trying to find one for the last of July 2020 and I'm not having any luck. I'm thinking the corona virus may have scared everyone off for the season.

1 minute ago, AF-1 said:

Thank you for your answers.  When I visited the glacier in 2017; never saw any piece break off or slide into the sea.  You were fortunate.  Have a great day

Unfortunately, that happens too. The last time that we were there on the Celebrity Millenium, we didn't see a single piece of ice calve off. It was raining that day and I assumed it would be calving like crazy. So much for my assumptions.

Also, there are instances where you'll hear the pop, or crack, and you'll hear something fall into a crevice or water, but you won't see anything. That's because there are many gaps behind the front face of the glacier that you can't see. Ice is breaking off behind the face of the glacier and is falling into those gaps behind it.

And you as well.

I'd estimate around 4 ship lengths, which is the recommended distance per ship I think. So if our ship was 1000 feet long, we were about 4000 feet from the glacier.

When the glacier calves, the pop that it made when the ice first broke free. This to me sounded like a distant shotgun blast. This was not loud at all. And as the glacier calves, the noise was easily overpowered by the noises from those people on the ship.

Thanks everyone! That's about what I thought. It's been a few years since we sailed on Holland America though, my remembery isn't what it used to be.

The last time that we cruised on the Oosterdam, we were able to eat breakfast in the Pinnacle Grill without any additional charge or reservation. I'm wondering if the same holds true for the Maasdam. I might also mention that we had booked a suite. Would this have enabled us to enjoy eating in the Pinnacle?

Here in Amarillo, Texas we are encouraged to stay home if at all possible. Non-essential businesses are closed. A few of what I would consider essential businesses are closed voluntarily until the middle of April so they can give the stay at home order a fighting chance to work. We have had a local sand and gravel company forced to close on account of the S & G company not following CDC guidelines at all concerning the corona virus.

When this first hit here, my church said "OK, we're closing it down, no activities at the church until this deal is finished. I've been an active part in our sanctuary orchestra for over 30 years. As the proud owner of 6 tubas, I took this quite hard as the community band I play in also rehearses at church. Our rehearsals are now forbidden as well until this thing is over. "No sweat" says I. "I have at least 4 other churches that I can at least play in for their Sunday services." Hah! No such luck, everybody's shutting it down. All of our restaurants are offering food pick-up only, a few of them offering home delivery for an additional fee. Oh well, at least I can go out and at least pick up my favorite weekend meals and eat them in the comfort of my own home. All of our local stores have been hit hard by the hoarders. It has gotten so bad that next week many stores are coordinating with each other as to which days they will close so they can properly restock their shelves. Some stores are offering "seniors only" shopping hours, but these are not being enforced. And for the first time ever, I've seen some stores hire law enforcement officers to stand at the front of their stores.

As for me, I haven't missed a paycheck. As a truck driver, I'm an essential employee. I generally don't have to get out of my truck to make deliveries, but occasionally I do. On one such occasion, I had to deliver 6 pallets of product to an internet service here. All six pallets had to be off-loaded by hand as the customer did not have a dock or forklift and I had no liftgate. The customer had five guys including the manager to help me unload. All of them except the manager were wearing face masks. After we had off-loaded the third pallet, one of these employees mrntioned that they had two of their guys test positive. Needless to say, I was VERY put out by the lack of concern about the corona virus these guys were displaying. As soon as we finished, I had the manager sign my bill using his own pen, and I made no physical contact with anyone there while I was there. As soon as I left, I contacted my freight operations supervisors to report to them what had happened, who then forwarded that info to my service center manager, who then contacted me directly. I told him exactly what happened and he contacted the manager of that business. "Oh that guy was just joking, nobody here has tested positive for anything" was the response he got. My manager that said that this was not something to be joking about, that his drivers were putting their lives on the line daily so he could get his product. The business manager was then told to find someone else to haul his freight, we would not be providing service to him any longer. My DW and I are still in good health and have not had any issues with Covid other than this little scare I just laid out.

24 minutes ago, Cruise4food said:

Talk about the most unusual thread-drift that I have seen. 😄👌 Anyway, I am also a Juneau Harbour webcam aficionado. Even if they spell it “Harbor”. 
 

My apologies. I didn't intend to go off-topic.

You have to admit though, that really is a great web cam.