This may seem like an outlier considering I've mentioned I haven't really been out West but I would consider Alaska and Washington to be more northwest. It was only one trip out that way but it was to fly out to Seattle, take a bus to Vancouver, and then go on a week's cruise up through Alaska's Inner Passage. Taken together it was a great trip to all the places and we did discover we really like cruises.
There's always a sign
We had received a gift certificate from work towards a cruise and my wife decided she would like to take a cruise to Alaska. Our initial plan was to drive from Illinois up through the northern states states on our way over to Washington, adding as many of them as we could to our states list. We would then drive up to Vancouver where our cruise would begin and end, the drive down to California catching Oregon on the way. We would then head back to Illinois, visiting the Grand Canyon and as many other states as possible, for at least a three week adventure. It sounds exhausting now as I write this but the cruise was for April 2004 so we would have been nearly twenty years younger at that time. Alas, between the time we set up the cruise and the time we were set to leave, we had bought a smaller house and the closing date got moved up so we had only enough time to fly out to Seattle, take the cruise, and fly back. A prime opportunity to visit more states was gone. But we did have a great time on the cruise.
That's all I got looking for whales
Taking off from Vancouver, this cruise was made through the Inner Passage for a smoother experience. We were on The Radiance of the Seas which was a Royal Caribbean ship that held about 2,500 passengers. I thought that one was big but Royal Caribbean is near to completion on The Icon of the Seas which will be the largest cruise ship around. It can hold 5,610 passengers and 2,350 crew and I'm only aware of all these things because friends we met on this particular cruise in 2004 will be going on a cruise next year on this newest Royal Caribbean ship. I thought it a bit ironic that there will be six water parks aboard the Icon while they float......on the water. As they say, whatever floats your boat. I spent some of the time looking for whales while the ship was out on our journey, and the photo above shows the extent of my success. We had three stopovers on the way there and back, in Juneau, Sitka, and Ketchikan. Considering that this was in April we expected very cold temperatures but we had 75 degrees and sun during the whole week.
Meeting new friends at dinner
I will again bring up that this trip was in 2004, which was remarkable only in that this trip was pre-digital camera ownership. I bought a small Canon Powershot A95 for the New York trip in 2005 (those photos are on the New York state blog) but I probably brought my film camera. There were way too many photo albums to go through so it was just easier to use Craig's photos. Who is Craig you might ask? He is the guy seated on the left, and he and his wife Missy were on this cruise and had been assigned to the same table as us. Serendipity. They are from Australia and we had a great time sharing stories. And he had come with digital DSLR in hand and was a great photographer. Missy asked for a lemonade when they took our drink order, but then nearly spit it when the glass arrived. Turns out that she was looking for Sprite, which they call lemonade in Australia. We also discovered (because our waiter mentioned it to us) that you could have anything off the menu as many times as you wanted. And here I was spending so much time trying to decide what to have. So we had it all, a feast every night. That was when I could really put away the food. One day I ended up eating five separate times, from breakfast first thing in the morning to the chocolate spread late at night and everything in between.
The scenery was breathtaking
There was a lot of things to do on the ship, like miniature golf or shuffleboard or even watching a movie or taking in a comedy show, but I was more impressed by the scenery off the side of the ship and we slowly floated by it. Craig's camera was working overtime for sure.
Mountaintop eagle at Juneau
Since the ship docks at port three times (on this particular cruise anyway) there are a multitude of shore excursions that one can purchase to entertain while on land. We saw Jeep offroad trips, helicopter rides, whale watching boats, and so on. But those were the expensive ones; we bought the cheap trips but we did one on every stop. The first we took a tram ride up the mountain at Juneau to see these eagles on display (not in the wild). It was really cold up on the mountain. The next stop at Sitka and we road a train on the track used for the Klondike Gold Rush and heard stories along the way to the Canadian border. We liked riding the train. The last stop was in Ketchikan and we went to the Great Alaskan Lumberjack Show and laughed our heads off. So good.
View out the dining room window
Somewhere along the way we took a side trip into Glacier Bay, a small body of water where you could see glaciers. Our ship got very close to one of them and did a full 360 degree spin around in the water so everyone could see the glacier no matter where you were on the ship. We grabbed the very front of the ship to see it head-on, as we watched chunks of ice falling into the water. My wife had insisted we get a room with a balcony (which was more the size of a sideways diving board) so we went to our room next to continue watching the glacier and getting more photos, and then we went to Craig and Missy's balcony as they were on the other side of the ship. You try to make the best of every opportunity. Nature put on a show that day.
The glaciers at Glacier Bay
Turns out taking a cruise combines a bunch of my interests. Since you take a week to do it then you must be on vacation and what's better than a vacation? Since you're going somewhere new there are tons of things of which to take photos. There's all the food you can imagine and every imaginable kind of food, an aquatic buffet. There are opportunities to meet new people and share the memories with them. There's the points you get for finally taking your wife to a place she actually wanted to go to, so there's that. There's the calmness of sitting outside on one of the decks just enjoying the boat ride in the great outdoors. There's the excitement of going to places you've never been to before and seeing new things. There was the hilarity of watching Craig shooting golf balls so hard in miniature golf, airborne into the ocean. And, at least for this cruise, there was chocolate. More kinds of chocolate than you knew existed as far as the eye could see. What more could a guy want?
Chocolate Buffet
At the end of the trip we exchanged phone numbers and addresses with Craig and Missy, and they came over to America to visit us several times. In fact, on one of those trips they got engaged on a Sunday, asked me to marry them that coming Saturday (I am a minister), spent five days getting a wedding gown, securing a photographer, putting together the wedding venue and wedding cake, sending out announcements, and then coming together on that Saturday with other friends to celebrate their marriage. You don't get to say that every day.
Looking down several levels of the ship
Let's do this again,
Arktander
(aka David Andreasen)
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