Alaska Cruise

Kyle and I celebrate our 10th Anniversary on August 22; we decided we wanted to do something big and special to celebrate so we took a kid-free cruise to Alaska! Papa Jay and Grandma Kelley came and stayed with the girls for the week and we were able to go have a wonderful trip with just the two of us!

We left out of Seattle, with stops in Juneau, Skagway, and Victoria, B.C. We took advantage of most of the shows offered on the boat, as well as the rock climbing, the surfing, the outdoor track, the gym, ping pong, and lots of tasty food! Our room had a balcony, so we also spent a fair amount of time relaxing and staring at the ocean looking for whales and dolphins. 

We were on "Ovation of the Seas," one of Royal Caribbean's boats. It is pretty amazing how these ships operate! This one has a crew of 1600 and can hold just under 5,000 passengers! There were 16 decks; our room was on deck 10. Most of the activites/food was on 4,5, 14, and 15 so we took a lot of stairs!

Here are some of the pictures from around the boat.

That's me standing in front of the boat!

Looking down on the boat; it had an 'arm' that went up 300 feet above sea level,
giving us an aerial view of everything around!

Our room

Leaving Seattle

Gorgeous sunset!

It was a bit windy on the back of the boat!

Getting ready for a show

Another one of the shows

It's hard to tell from this picture, but this apple pie was at least 3 feet in diameter! 

Our first stop was in Juneau. While they usually get a fair amount of rain this time of year, we had a beautiful sunny day there. We took a bus tour to the Mendenhall Glacier where we went on a short hike to a waterfall. We spent about an hour here and then hopped back on the bus to go to another spot for an evening whale watching cruise. We were able to see quite a few whales, including a group of four humpback whales. 

Grabbing a beer at a local pub before heading out on our tour

The Mendenhall Glacier is just behind my head and Nugget Falls is to the right.

Nugget Falls...so much water!

Mendenhall Glacier

The view from the back of the whale watching boat

It's hard to see, but there are three whales in this picture!

From Juneau, we headed up to Skagway, AK. We went on a rainforest bike tour that led us to an area where there used to be a city, but now the only thing that's left is a few pilings from the dock and one front of a building! The salmon were all returning and swimming up the river, so we were able to see quite a few Pink Salmon, mostly all looking like they had lived a good life...and a few dead ones. 

The Taiya River-our tour guides said this river has caused a lot of erosion lately; they thought the trail we were biking on would be washed away within the next month!

That spot in the middle of the river is the back of a Pink Salmon

After the bike tour, we still had several hours to spend in Skagway so we went on a hike to Lower Dewey Lake. It was gorgeous!

Looking down onto the port from our hiking trail.

Lower Dewey Lake

We were impressed at how closely these two cruise ships were docked!

From Skagway, we turned around and south again. We made a stop in the Endicott Arm near Dawes Glacier. Unfortunately, because it's been so warm lately, the glacier has been calving a lot and there were too many icebergs floating around for us to get very close. In addition, it was pretty smokey from some forest fires so it was really hazy and we couldn't see hardly anything at all. 

Our last stop was in Victoria, British Colombia. We didn't have anything prearranged for our stop here so once we were there, we did a little perusing online and Kyle checked in with someone he knows who goes to school there; we ended up visiting a miniature museum that was filled with displays of all sorts of topics, ranging from history to fairy tales to dollhouses to the circus! We really enjoyed it! From there we went to lunch at a highly-recommended sushi restaurant and then grabbed a coffee and sat on the lawn of the parliament building, enjoying the sunshine and people-watching!

There was so much detail in all of these displays! I think this one was depicting the Revolutionary War.

Santa's Workshop

Gulliver's 

The old woman and the shoe

This one has a whole bunch of fairy tales depicted...it was fascinating!

There were a lot of moving parts in this display, like the Ferris wheel and the carousel!

There was a path next to the pier where our boat was; this was part of it!

A few sea otters playing together.

Our goal for this trip was to be able to relax, to have fun, and to come back feeling rested and rejuvenated. While we were definitely active (we averaged over 20,000 steps/day,) we had fun and felt ready to come home! It's amazing what a few days away will do!