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The story of our Alaska trip...July 18-Aug. 3, 2013

cruisin'mama

By cruisin'mama,
in Alaska

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cruisin'mama

cruisin'mama

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Oops, I got a little ahead of myself! Here is the story AFTER the pictures LOL!

 

Day 7 we were up early and went down for breakfast by 5am. We had signed up for the Comfort Inn’s shuttle to the train station yesterday and were outside to wait for it by 5:30am. Soon other people were outside waiting too, so I decided to leave my husband and son with the luggage to take the shuttle and I walked over to the train station to check us in. I stood in line to check in and when I got to the window, I was told I could only check myself in since we had to show a picture ID and my husband and son weren’t there yet. Turns out that when the shuttle arrived, other people jumped in first and they had to wait for the shuttle to come back to get them. No big deal since we were early enough, it’s just that some people can be kind of inconsiderate at times. End of rant.

We booked the Gold Star class because I knew that I would want to be outside on the vestibule most of the time on the trip. I was on this train 2 years ago with my friend, and we loved being outside taking pictures the whole time. My husband and son stayed inside almost the whole time, but I had requested the 1st row of seats for them so they had a window looking forward as well as the dome windows. It started out a little drizzly, but again turned into a nice sunny day. The ride was spectacular again.

 

We arrived in Seward and had checked our luggage through to the Holiday Inn Express, so it was an easy walk across the street to the hotel with just our carry-ons. http://www.hiexpress.com/hotels/us/en/seward/swdak/hoteldetail?sitrackingid=221099257&siclientid=1962&dp=true

When we went to check in, we were informed that they were fully booked and since I had made our reservations so far in advance, they were upgrading us to a Harbor View Balcony room! I was a happy girl! We were told the room wasn’t ready yet so we decided to walk around and find some lunch. The hotel put our carry-ons in the locked luggage room so we wouldn’t have to deal with them while we had a late lunch. Our room was finally ready a little before 4pm. It had a great view of the harbor and a little balcony with a couple of chairs. It was nice to be able to sit out there and watch the boats come back in to the harbor and people posing for pictures with the fish they had caught.

 

We walked down to the Safeway to buy a case of water and a 12 PK. of Diet Dr. Pepper for my husband. While we were there, we just grabbed a few things to eat from the deli and then took the free Seward shuttle back to the hotel. http://www.sewardchamber.org/wp-content/uploads/2012-Free-Shuttle-Schedule.pdf

 

Another great day was coming to an end….

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cruisin'mama

cruisin'mama

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Ok, on with the next day now....

 

Day 8 We woke up and looked out our balcony door and saw the Celebrity Millennium there waiting for us to board later in the day. The Holiday Inn Express transferred our luggage ( and soda and case of water ) to the Millennium for $2 per bag. That was so helpful since we had a 7 ½ hour Kenai Fjords trip with Major Marine. I had a BOGO Toursaver coupon for this so I used one coupon and for the 3rd person, I got the online booking discount.

 

http://www.majormarine.com/kf/ Major Marine held our carry-ons in a locked room while we were on their tour. We were assigned a window table with a couple and a single man. The couple was from the East Coast and had left their home driving their camper in Oct. and didn’t plan to get back home until the following Oct. A year’s worth of traveling! FUN!

We started seeing wildlife right away. It started with a mountain goat and eagle, then quickly saw our first whale. Soon we saw sea otters on the way to the Holgate Glacier. The glacier did some calving for us, then we headed out to the Aialik Glacier. We saw more otters and eagles on our way and seals on the ice. When we got to the Aialik Glacier, it put on a nice show for us! One of the larger pieces that fell created a nice wave.

 

It was time to move on and again we saw more otters and a couple of whales. We saw lots of puffins in the area too. We went through the beautiful fjords and ended up in an area that had LOTS of whales! There were so many, it was hard to know which ones to watch. There were several whales breaching but it seemed I was always watching the wrong ones so my pictures of the breaching whales are all pretty much out of focus. L

 

After a great day, we headed back to Seward.

We went back to the Major Marine office to pick up our carry-ons then walked over to the ship. Since it was almost 6pm, most of the other passengers were already onboard so there was no line to check in. There was a minor glitch with our room keys ( sea pass cards ) not being ready, but it was rectified before we even go to the place where they take your photo for the sea pass cards. We boarded and enjoyed the complimentary champagne and headed to find our stateroom. We had cabin 7199 which was a Family View room on the port aft corner. It was a GREAT room with a FANTASTIC veranda!

We didn’t have too much time before the Muster Drill and then enjoyed the sail away from our veranda! After that we ended up just going to the buffet for dinner since we had already had a long day and didn’t feel like showering and getting ready to go to the MDR.

 

The start to a wonderful cruise.

 

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cruisin'mama

cruisin'mama

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Ok now these are some breaching pictures... they are not very good because there were whales everywhere and I never had the camera focused in the right directions for the breach. Figures! But I thought some of you might like to see them anyway. You can see how close that one little boat was to one whale that was breaching....

 

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cruisin'mama

cruisin'mama

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Day 9 was our day for Hubbard Glacier. After breakfast, we wandered around the ship and went to the casino to sign my husband up for the Poker Tournament. We had over $600 in Onboard Credit so my husband pulled out some of the $$ and he and our son sat down at the video poker machines and played for a while. I got bored and wandered around some more. I went back to check on them and they were both winning so I left them alone. When I went back again to see how they were doing, my husband had won $1000 when he got a Royal Flush on his machine. Time for lunch!

 

As we approached Hubbard Glacier, I could see that the ice field wasn’t too thick. I have been there before when you would hear the ‘thump thump’ of the ship hitting the ice as it moved forward. This time there was none of that but we still stopped maybe 5 miles out and were told it was due to the thick ice field…????????? It was for our safety…???? I think there was some other reason, but that is what they were telling us. We walked up front but there were too many people, so we went back to our cabin since the ship would be turning, putting the glacier on the port side then the starboard side. Since we had a corner aft, we could see it most of the time. This was my 3rd time here and by far the least impressive.

It was formal night so we got ready for dinner. We had Select Dining so we went early and were seated at a 4-top window table. Our service team were Juan Reyes and Nedim. They were great and the food was good too.

 

With my son being along, we didn’t go to any shows on the ship. We just went back to our cabin so he could unwind and I could enjoy the sunset from the veranda.

 

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Day 10 found us in Juneau. We had a full day planned. First we were meeting up at 9:00am to do a Mendenhall Canoe trip around the icebergs then we were picking up our rental car fro Alaska Car Rentals, sightseeing and going to church at 5:30pm.

 

http://www.bestofalaskatravel.com/alaska_day_tours/pages/j_mendenhall_lake_canoe.htm

http://juneaucarrentals.com/

 

We ate breakfast in the buffet then made our way off the ship. We found our canoe adventure contact and he told us that there weren’t enough people for the 9:30 trip so they were cancelling it but could put us on the 3:30pm trip. ( We later found out that this wasn’t the truth ). We figured out that we could rearrange our day and make it work to go on the 3:30pm trip. So my husband and son waited while I went to pick up our car. I knew where it was since I rented from the same place 2 years ago when it was Rent-A-Wreck. I got the same mustang convertible that my friend and I had gotten from Rent-A-Wreck! Since it was another lovely sunny day, the convertible was fun!

 

We started out by going to the Mendenhall Glacier. We parked in the parking lot and watched the salmon from the viewing platform at the end of the lot. We walked the trail that led from there, but it was closed not too far down the path due to bear activity. I had wanted to find the Ecology Moraine trail that I friend and I had walked, but couldn’t find it. There were rangers there I could have asked, but they were busy talking to other people. So we headed out and went to the Nugget Falls Trail. We took the beach access path. It’s about a ¾ mile walk. We got to the waterfall and took the obligatory pictures before slowly walking back to the car. I wanted to see if the rangers were still near the viewing platform to ask about the trailI wanted to find, but when I got there, there was a mama bear and her 2 cubs walking by the stream. I took a quick picture then went back to the car to get my husband and son who were waiting there for me. We watched the bears for a while but never did get a good angle for a picture, but still took a couple.

 

On our rearranged schedule, we needed to get to the Shrine of St. Therese by 1:00pm to change into more appropriate clothes in time for the 1:30pm mass.

http://www.shrineofsainttherese.org/

 

We walked around and talked to some of the workers there before heading down the path, into the trees, to the chapel. It was a beautiful setting! After church, we didn’t have too much time before we had to be back for our 3:15pm meeting for our canoe trip. I did however want to stop at Brotherhood Meadow. The fireweed was in full bloom there and it was a gorgeous photo op with the glacier in the background. We made one other stop that my husband wanted to make before our excursion. We hadn’t eaten since breakfast and we wouldn’t be back from canoeing until about 7pm so we quickly grabbed something by the dock to eat on the bus. Not a good move….wasn’t very good.

 

We drove out to the Mendenhall Lake and found out that the 9:30am trip had indeed gone out, they just bumped us because they overbooked ( and I had booked really early with them ). Not cool, especially since we had to rearrange our day then it was too windy on the lake to go out so we didn’t even get to go at all! We could have been really upset with them, but we realize that things happen for a reason so we just let it go.

We were driven back to our car and had a little time left so we drove around a little more and filled up the car with gas. I showed my husband where to return the car, then he dropped us off and he returned the car.

 

We got ready for dinner and were seated at a table on the other side of the MDR from where we sat yesterday. The servers were fine, but we decided that we would try to be seated in Juan Reyes and Nedim’s station from then on. Again the food was good and we all enjoyed our meals.

　

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