Ten Days in May, or That Time I Went Up North

May 2015: Alaska Cruise

From May 12-22, I was on board the Celebrity Millennium with Boyfriend and 9 of my inlaws. Mostly we all had our own adventures each day but got together for a (semi)formal dinner at night. The food was extravagant and rich and a lot probably got wasted . . . let's focus on the good stuff, hey? The fruit was always perfectly ripe. Most of the staff were perfectly friendly. The ports . . .

Edit: This got really long and I should have made it 2 or 3 posts. Or 10.

I hope you make it to the end! There's no prize if you do.

May 12 - Vancouver
http://tourismvancouver.com/

• Boyfriend and I forget to check our bags in all the excitement - and because no one offered to help us - and end up sitting down to a nice buffet lunch beside a pile of our stuff.
  



Warm salt water. Mmmmm.

• I do a full recce of the ship once we drop off our why-did-we-bring-so-much-stuff luggage and I proceed to make frenetic and unrealistic plans regarding how I will spend my time on board. (I manage some arcade games but not basketball.) I also discover the thalassotherapy pool during a particularly rough patch of the Strait.

May 13 - Cruising

Sadly, it was a bit too cold for the outdoor pool.

• Today I passed out in the hot sun on one of the deck lounge chairs. This and thalassotherapy really set the tone for my Alaska vacation.
  
• We get our first formal dinner out of the way and The White Dress invites all kinds of wedding jokes from the fam. I don't have a picture of it, but it's a long white dress though distinctly not marriage-like.  
  
• I realize I should have told someone in Food Service I am lactose intolerant after having the same chicken meal with plain salad two nights in a row. There are few dairy-free chicken-tarian food choices and that was reeeeallly shortsighted of me.
  
• Stopped carrying around my cell phone when I realized I couldn't use it for anything because WiFi cost $300 and there's no signal on deck 2 anyhow. I decide I need to buy a watch in Sitka tomorrow since my tiny computer / glorified timepiece is now an inert piece of plastic.

The Cruising Lesson: It is going to be hard to hang on to this little Seapass card for 10 days.

May 14 - Sitka
(a.k.a. Here Be Watches)
http://www.sitka.org/

Sitka the postcard-perfect

• Our first port of call! We walk along their version of a seawall to the totem pole park and take one of the trails through the woods. There will be a lot of walking about this trip. At noon, the horns blare as we stumble into a clearing. Startled, perhaps, a juvenile and an adult eagle fly within 10m of us. I do not pick my jaw up off the ground in time for photos.  Probably the most spectacular moment of my cruise, and (possibly) because some animals got scared.
  
• The only other birds I spy in the forest are the ubiquitous ravens, but we see a couple merganser species on the water. We head back into town and Mae Adventure our way up Baranof Castle, which is a kind of hilly fort and not a bad thing to stumble upon whilst wandering around.
  
• We see some porpoises off the port side.

The Sitka Lessons: I am better at finding fun adventures when I don't look for them.
In America, chicken soups might be made with cream instead of broth. Don't get the chicken soup.

May 15 - Icy Strait Point
http://www.icystraitpoint.com/

I have a lot of pictures of that darn boat.

• We do a walking tour I booked way in advance: Ancient Oceans & Newborn Forests. Our guide is named Jeff, and he is awesome plus very patient with all my invasive species questions. We learned a wee bit about Tlingit culture as well as the geology and ecology of the region. A humpback breaches in the distance and blows my mind from a kilometre away.
  
• I choose to forego the zipline, at the time the longest in North America. Most of the tours here are things I can do in Vancouver: ziplinines; float planes; whale watching. The unique tours, for the most part, are so far outside my budget it's not even funny. Maybe it's a little funny.
  
• There is supposed to be an event for folks aged 18-35 night tonight. We show up and see one person in our age group. The entertainment crew instead choose to extend the ABBAMania event from earlier in the evening.

The ISP Lesson: Just a friendly reminder that firearms are OK to carry around in the U.S. especially when leading tourists through the woods. You might even want two guns. Just in case.

May 16 - Skagway
http://skagway.com/

That little white blip in the water is our cruise ship. To take this photo, I am standing on a rattling platform hanging off a moving train.

• We start the day with a full-family adventure on the White Pass Train. The views are gorgeous but I may have had unreasonably high expectations for my first time on a train. It is, after all, just a train.
  
• Boyfriend and I grab a quick lunch at the Morning Wood Hotel (The Station, great sandwiches) and window shop around the downtown. I pick up a reusable coffee mug so that I can fit more than 8 oz of java on the breakfast table. Yep, I'm drinking coffee again. At another souvenir store down the road, the cashier tries to ring in my now-full-of-precious-joe mug. That's why your souvenirs smell so tasty. C-O-F-F-E-E.

The Skagway Lesson: Sometimes a "Veterans' Memorial Park" is just a plaque outside a museum.

May 17 - Juneau
http://www.traveljuneau.com/

View of our cruise ship (on the right) from across the Channel

• During my pre-cruise research, I decide that when we are in Juneau, I will walk to Douglas, which is on the next island across Gastineau Channel. This is also the day Boyfriend's immediate family joins us for our trek. This particular Mae Adventure ends up being a +10km hike in the hot sun with  minimal provisions. Level up. We take the scenic route by way of the governor's mansion and do hangry lunch at The Island Pub after several hours of walking.
  
• Formal dinner night two is moved up to today due to how incredibly awesome tomorrow's weather will  be. Which doesn't really make sense, but hey. Sari time.

The Juneau Lesson: Men in cowboy hats share a special bond.

May 18 - Tracy Arm Fjord

• We weren't able to go all the way up the fjord to see the iceberg calving due to ice levels in the water. Still, the views were spectacular in the part of the fjord we got to see. Imagine sheer cliffs rising from the ocean depths and cutting the sky with icy majesty. Or here's a picture:

Majesty!

Wonder!

Beauty + spectators of Beauty!

Okay yeah, I took a lot of pictures. I have WAY MORE.

Like, oodles more. I took a lot in Skagway too, I just thought you'd like this better. Look at the ice in the water! Neat-o!

• Viewing and photo-taking spots were definitely at a premium that day.

The Tracy Arm Fjord Lesson: Adjust f/stop, too much aperture. Adjust shutter speed, EV too high. WHY IS EVERYTHING SO BRIGHT HERE? Polarizing filter. Adjust. Adjust. Adjust. Lesson/reminder: Practice makes perfect.


May 19 - Ketchikan
http://www.visit-ketchikan.com/ 

View from top of Cape Fox Lodge in Ketchikan

• My purchase from Creek Street will arrive in 6 weeks with an Oregon postmark. We find a used clothing store and a "real" bookstore at last. Favourite souvenir is, at this point, a necklace from Maiden Voyage. I could have bought ten things in this store. Twenty things. All the things. So much for my rant about the requisite functionality of souvenirs.
  
• We stop into the Totem heritage center where I ask about Seward's shame pole and learn that labrets on women are auspicious. Tlingit cultural artefacts seem quite different from Coast Salish; particularly the totem poles.
  



Thunderbird, you are my everything.

• Boyfriend, brother-in-law and I go for a walk along Ketchikan Creek and pass through a residential/school neighbourhood. Adventures. We take a gondola ride up to Cape Fox Lodge even though we could have walked because we are extravagant.

  

  Small poles outside the viewing area

  
  
• Pacific white-sided dolphins swim alongside our ship. This is my first time seeing them in the wild and it is pretty magic.

May 21 - Victoria
http://www.tourismvictoria.com/

• I finally make it to Craigdarroch Castle! Today, my mother-in-law is my Mae Adventure partner and we hoof it around Victoria. She is amazingly patient considering my evolved sense of whimsy.

  

  View downtownish from the Castle

  
  
• We stop by the Royal BC Museum and check out their exhibit on GOLD. This has been a definite theme along our "gold rush" cruise route.

The Victoria Lesson: Just because you can walk to the corner store in those sneakers without socks on does not mean you can walk 10km like that. Blisssssters.

Blistered selfie. Not shown: blisters. Shown: 155 square feet of living space

May 22 - Vancouver

• Finally home to relax and . . . what do you mean the Sky Train is broken? Oh, Vancouver. I leave you alone for ten days and you just fall apart at the seams . . .

Themes? How would I summarize my Alaska cruise?
Walking, fruit, Tongass National Forest, Tlingit culture, wildlife. Nature, landscape, view, awesome.