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Alaska Cruise 2001
Our Family Adventure
On May 26th, many of our family met in Vancouver BC, ( 22 of us in count ) for a trip of a life time. My mom had earlier recounted that when I was a little boy I promised to take her on a cruise, that she wanted it now, and that she wanted to go to Alaska. The photos below highlight places visited during the trip. To see us, in all of our joy make sure you visit the family gallery link at the bottom of this page and the extra photo gallery on the bottom of the family gallery.
So, we boarded Holland America's Zaandam for a seven day cruise to numerous points in Alaska including Juneau, Skagway, Ketchikan and highlighted by Glacier Bay.
Being May, everyone was expecting cold, rain, wind etc. What we got was beautiful blue skies, with fluffy white clouds during the majority of the trip and only one morning where our activities were curtailed and even that was minimal.
Our first shore excursion was in Juneau. As we disembarked the ship, this large bronze reminded us of the many hard rock minors that lived, worked, and struggled in this area. Check out the memorial plaque.
Several of us took the tram to the top of Mt Roberts. Looking back our ship looked so small and then we looked out and saw how really huge the mountains were - right on the doorstep of Juneau.
On disembarking at Skagway, we were also greeted with a bronze. This one depicting a gold prospector with his guide and their packs setting out for the gold fields of Canada. Check out the Memorial Plaque
The White Pass railroad, a narrow gauge railway constructed to take minors into the gold fields was a pleasant ride, and gave us many views that would not have been visible otherwise. Mom nearly freaked when she saw the trestle above - but then she heard that we would not be using it. The railway had recently constructed a new "modern" bridge to take the train across the chasm.
Upon leaving Skagway, we sailed up to Glacier Bay passing by a smaller glacier and many floating "icebergs"
This climaxed at Margerie, and the Great Basin glaciers. There we sat, enjoying the view, listening to the "thundering" of the glaciers cracking their way down the valley and on occasion calving into the bay.
Our next stop was Ketchikan and we had our one excursion day rainy morning. So we first visited the Saxman native village
and enjoyed the many totem poles and a brief presentation on the making and reasons for totem poles.
We continued onto the George Inlet Cannery where we saw the above waterfall and after a wait boarded a sea plane.
The plane ride - was veryyyyyy turbulent and we did not get to see the Misty Fjords but it was a time to remember.
( i.e., my stomach will never be the same ! )
As we were cruising through the Seymour Narrow's on our way back to Vancouver we were blessed with a magnificent sunset.
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