Monthly Archives: July 2022

On Wednesday morning at 6 am, two rangers from the Glacier Bay National Park boarded our ship just as we entered approximately 45 miles of bay leading to Margerie Glacier. This is required of all cruise ships entering the park and they narrate your trip up the Bay for several hours. The park is made up of 3.3 million acres of mountains, glaciers, forests, and waterways and is considered a highlight of the Inside Passage. At one point, the entire bay was glacier, and the melting ice is responsible for all the water in the bay. Unlike glaciers in the contiguous U.S., some of these glaciers are retreating and others are advancing.

Notice the blue hue of the ice. Spectacular!

The icebergs floating in the water are chunks of ice breaking off the glacier, called “calfing” and serve as a resting place for wildlife. In fact, we were told that baby seals are placed on these icebergs by their mothers until they develop enough blubber to withstand the cold glacial water temperatures.

Later that same day, we boarded a smaller whale watching boat that took us to a part of Icy Strait where whales are known to feed. All the whales we saw were Humpbacks.

We spent over an hour watching whale after whale blow air through its hole and then dive for a fish dinner. Sometimes, we just saw the back, sometimes, the tail when they dove deeper, and on a few occasions, we actually saw them breach like in the first picture. One thing we learned that we had never experienced before was the breath of a whale. We had turned the boat into the wind and suddenly there was this terrible odor in the air. The guide told us it was the breath of the whale, almost a belch letting out the air in his stomach where all these fish are rotting.

Glad I’m not a whale!

The day after Juneau, we docked in Skagway and since our planned excursion didn’t start until after lunch we decided to strike out on our own and check out the town. Skagway was the starting point for many of the gold seeking miners to head into the mountains looking for gold. It was also where they returned when they found nothing. There were more bars and brothels in Skagway than permanent residents and the town retains its small-town charm away from port, but in the immediate port area nothing but souvenir shops.

After lunch we were met by our guide to head off to a sled dog encounter way up in the hills where the temperature was at least 15 degrees cooler. Did I mention in Skagway port it was in the 90’s.

Once we arrived at base camp for the training facility, we were loaded on to these monster trucks modelled after WWII German vehicles used to move troops.

At the camp, there were four teams of dogs hitched to sleds with wheels. We then became the “load” our team was carrying during their summer training for the Winter races they would be competing in. At least two of the dogs in our team had actually competed in the Iditarod and so had our driver. These training sleds go about 25 miles per hour which seems much faster when you are sitting on them, but the dogs are trained for endurance not speed.

Then came the best part, the puppies. There were two litters of puppies. One set of five, were 3 months old and extremely loving and affectionate.

The second set was seven puppies 3 weeks old and a very exhausted mother.

After the partying was over and we had a day or two to get things together, we began our graduation trip with Rebekah and Kyle driving up the coast of California with stops along the way to our eventual destination of Seattle and a cruise ship to Alaska. The first stop was in San Simeon to see the summer home of William Randolph Hearst the media mogul. Years ago, when we had the whole family in North Carolina, we took them all to see the Biltmore home in Asheville and we knew the kids would find this just as spectacular. At its peak, the campus was 250,000 acres with its own private zoo. Hearst did a great deal of entertaining here and often had movie stars and politicians of all stripes as guests.

The houses and all the surrounding designs were the joint ideas of Hearst and the first woman architect of renown from San Francisco, Julia Morgan. She was one of the most prolific and important woman architects ever to work in the United States. It’s estimated by some, that it would cost Five Billion dollars to duplicate the property in modern times, and that is before the current supply chain issues and costs.

The opulence is staggering.

The next day we stopped in San Francisco to take a boat trip under the Golden Gate Bridge and around Alcatraz Island. Very windy and slightly chilly while much of the country was having a heat wave.

Leaving San Francisco, we headed to Oregon and the Avenue of Giants.

Hard to believe trees can grow this big and live this long.

Our final stop before getting on the cruise ship was Seattle and the famous Space Needle built for the 1962 World’s Fair whose theme was “The Age of Space”. Built with a futuristic design, it was recently upgraded to include a rotating restaurant and a second glass floor observation deck. The tower provides a 360-degree view of area including Mount Ranier in the background.

The cruise ships you see in the picture are at the pier where we boarded our cruise.

Right next to the needle was the Chihuly Garden and Glass Gallery featuring the glass art of Dale Chihuly which exceeded our expectations. Every time we turned a corner into a new room we were blown away by the spectacular artistry of the glass. Remember, pictures never capture the total impressiveness of the reality.