Cruise to Alaska
Aboard the Golden Princess

May 29 – June 7, 2014

 

 

Ying and I had been interested in taking a cruise to Alaska for some time.  When she hurt her ankle playing tennis in April, we decided this would be a good easy activity during her recuperation.   In mid-May we took advantage of a last minute offering from Princess and booked a one-week excursion from Seattle to Skagway along the Inside Passage.  My previous trip to Alaska started in Anchorage and went inland so this would be a new experience for me too.  As a travel agent, I had studied to become an Alaskan Destination Specialist so I was anxious to visit the coastal towns along the Inside Passage.

 

The cruise was Saturday to Saturday round trip from Seattle.  We had considered an 11-day cruise round trip from San Francisco, but we liked Seattle and decided to spend a couple days there before the cruise.  We flew from SFO on Thursday, May 29th arriving in Seattle before 3:00PM.  The Downtown Airporter took us to the Fairmont Olympic, about a half-mile from where I used to live twelve years ago.

 

After checking in, we walked down to Miner’s Landing on the waterfront where we ate dinner at a restaurant under the Seattle Great Wheel.  This Ferris wheel has been in operation about a year and is similar to London’s Eye, only smaller.  After dinner we rode the wheel a few turns and then returned to our hotel by taxi.

 

Friday morning we had an elegant breakfast in the Georgian Room of our hotel.  We walked down to the Pike Place Market and spent a couple of hours browsing the stalls of flower sellers and fish mongers.  Ying was excited when she saw a Starbucks which she thought was established in 1912, making it the first Starbucks by a long shot.  But on further examination it turns out the 1912 actually referred to the coffee shop’s address, not the year it was established.

 

We continued on to the ferry terminal where we caught a ferry to Bremerton.  We ate lunch at Anthony’s overlooking the water, and then spent an hour walking around the town before returning to the dock for a ferry back to Seattle.  Ying returned to the Pike Place Market while I went back to the hotel.

 

Saturday we ate breakfast at Fonde, a local coffee shop in the Four Seasons Hotel.  Upon return to our hotel, we packed, checked-out and took a taxi to the Pier 91 Cruise Dock where our ship was docked.  The Golden Princess is huge towering fifteen stories out of the water.  The check-in process was very well organized and we were able to board the ship just after noon.  Our cabin has a balcony, king size bed and enough room to move around.

 

We spent a few hours exploring the ship before setting sail at 4:00PM.  The weather in Seattle has been beautiful the last couple of days and the forecast is very good for our trip north.  There are two other cruise ships departing for Alaska at the same time as us and we will travel in tandem up the coast for the next forty-five hours.  We had a buffet style dinner tonight.

 

Sunday morning I spent some time in the gym before breakfast.  Hopefully I will stick to this plan every day that I am on the ship.  There are certainly a lot of ways to spend money on the ship.  The ship has its own VP Shopping who gave a seminar to some 300+ attendees on where to get the most for your money.  He did mention that all ‘Princess approved’ vendors pay Princess a commission on whatever is purchased by Princess Clientele.  There is an art gallery and a score of other high-end shops on the ship.

 

Monday we arrived in Juneau at 1:00PM, two hours late due to strong currents.  Our ship alone towers above the cityscape, but we arrived along with three other large cruise ships which deposited some 10,000+ passengers into the small Capital.  We had not arranged any tours for today which turned out to be a good thing as all the tours were pushed back due to the late arrival.  After disembarking the ship, we walked through the town, stopping at as many gift shops as possible to buy souvenirs.  A highlight of the afternoon was a stop at the Red Dog Saloon where I had a Duck Fart (drink) and we enjoyed the local musicians banging out hundred year old saloon songs.

 

We had elected Anytime Dining for our cruise as opposed to having to eat at either 5:30PM or 8:30PM each night.  We were assigned to one dining room, the Bernini Dining Room on the fifth floor, but it was very nice and the service and food were excellent.  After dinner on Monday we went to a presentation by Libby Riddles, the first woman to win the Iditarod Dog Sled Race.  The one-hour slide show was very interesting and she stayed to answer questions and sign her books after the show.  The ship was due to cast off from the Juneau dock at 9:45PM and I was interested to watch the procedure.  There seemed to be some problems with the departure through because we did not leave until after 11:00PM, but I still stayed up to watch. 

 

Tuesday morning we arrived in Skagway at 7:00AM.  We had reservations on the White Pass & Yukon narrow gage railroad up to White Pass Summit which left the train station in town at 8:15AM, so we needed to be off the ship early.  The rail line was built in the late 1890’s to replace the Chilkoot Trail, the original footpath for gold seekers who would sail up from San Francisco and then have to carry their supplies up White Pass Mountain to the headwaters of the Yukon River where they would build boats and float down to Dawson in Canada’s Yukon Territory, some 500 miles east.

 

The weather was cloudy with a light rain all day.  We still had good views and there was a narrator aboard the train who gave us a running commentary of events from the construction of the rail line to the history of Skagway and some of its more notable residents.  The train returned before noon and we went over to the Red Onion Saloon for lunch.  The food was average, at best, but the Red Onion was once the most infamous bordello in town, and for $10 we took a tour of the upstairs cribs and present day museum where the girls once worked.  Tips were appreciated. 

 

We spent a couple hours walking around Skagway, dashing in and out of souvenir shops to avoid the rain.  Ying was scheduled to take a helicopter ride out to a glacier at 3:00PM, but changed her mind at the last minute because her knee was hurting and she did not want to walk around in the rain.  We returned to the ship which cast off from the Skagway Pier at 8:00PM.

 

During the night we cruised up to Glacier Bay.  This will be the northern most point of our trip.  I woke up to see the sun rise over the bay at 3:47AM.  Summertime in Alaska boasts 18-hour days while wintertime is the reverse with 18-hour nights.  I spent half an hour in the gym and then looked for an open hot tub in which to relax.  Unfortunately the six hot tubs on board close every night and are supposed to open again at 7:00AM, but they rarely do, which is annoying.

 

As we entered Glacier Bay National Park, several park rangers joined us and provided a running commentary about the area.  One ranger asked if we had felt the 5.7 magnitude earthquake which was centered just below us a few hours earlier.  Glacier Bay is currently 65 miles long.  In the mid-1700’s the Grand Pacific Glacier extended all the way down to Point Gustavus covering the entire bay with ice.  Today it will take us 4 hours to reach the top of the bay.  Around 8:30AM we passed Reid Glacier, the first of seven glaciers we will see that terminates into the bay.  Lamplugh Glacier was next before we turned into Turr Inlet and cruised another half hour to Margerie Glacier and Grand Pacific Glacier.  Margerie Glacier was the most spectacular rising some 250 feet above the water.  It was a little hard to appreciate from the 15th floor of our ship so we went down to the seventh floor and was able to look up at its huge face.  The ship stayed in the area for almost an hour and we were able to watch several pieces of the glacier calf off, although they were difficult to photograph.  The Grand Pacific Glacier is just to the east of the Margerie Glacier, but is covered with dirt so it is difficult to recognize it as a glacier at all.

 

On the way back we turned up into Johns Hopkins Inlet and were able to get a good view of the face of Lamplugh Glacier.  Lamplugh seems to rest on the ground and it appears there is a river flowing out beneath the glacier.  There is less calving here than at Margerie.  At 1:00PM the ship headed south, back towards Seattle.  We observed several sea lions, sea otters and even a few whales although the whales were quite far away.  The ship will reach Ketchikan at 7:00AM Thursday morning, where Ying and I have scheduled a fishing trip.

 

Sunrise was at 4:12AM Thursday.  I ate breakfast in the cafeteria and brought Ying some food to eat in the room.  We sailed up a small inlet to Ketchikan towering over the few houses which were built on the shore.  We arrived about 6:30AM and Ying and I were ready to disembark for our fishing trip, which began at 7:05AM.  Our fishing guide/boat captain met us at the end of the pier along with three other passengers and we quickly set off in his 30’ aluminum fishing boat.  The weather was spectacular and on the way out of the inlet the captain would toss herring in the air which the bald eagles perched on nearby trees would swoop down and grab. 

 

Fishing sure has advanced since the last time I was in a boat trying to catch fish.  The captain explained how his fish finder worked and it seemed he could pick out individual fish at 200 foot depths.  To get the bait down that far he used 12-pound sinkers which he would attach to the line, but were each controlled by independent motors that could raise and lower the sinker, along with the attached hook & bait, in seconds.  The water is about 100 feet deep close to the shore but will over 1000 in the middle between islands.  Once the captain set all five lines we started trolling.  To be honest, it really did not feel like fishing because at no time did we touch the bait, pole or any fishing gear.  We are fishing for King Salmon.  Other salmon will arrive in another month, but Kings are the trophy fish.  Any fish under 28” long must be returned to the water.

 

There are at least a dozen other boats, each with 5-6 lines in the water, all trolling for King Salmon within a half-mile of us.  But nothing is happening.  The first hour goes by and we did not get a single bite.  When we first started fishing we picked which pole would belong to which guest.  In the second hour, Ying’s pole caught a rockfish.  Once the captain had determined that the fish was definitely on the hook and reeled the line in to within 20 feet of the boat, he handed the pole to Ying and let her reel it into the boat.  Her first fish, ever.  She was very excited.  It was not a salmon, so not worth keeping.

 

By the start of our third hour we had still not had a single hit from a salmon on any of our five lines.  However, none of the other boats in the area had caught anything either.  But then, Ying’s pole caught another rockfish, which the captain reeled in and handed to her.  She is even more excited.  The rest of us are quite disappointed.  One of the other guys on the boat caught a cod, but it was not big enough to take home.  Just before we gave up, Ying’s pole caught a third rockfish. 

 

At 11:15AM the captain pulled up the lines and we headed back to the pier.  I thought the fishing would be much better here, but apparently that’s fishing.  At least Ying was happy.  For dinner tonight, one of the menu items was rockfish.  Ying, however, had the lobster.  This was the second of two formal nights aboard ship and photographers were all over taking pictures.

 

Our last full day was Friday.  We had left Ketchikan at noon on Thursday and will not arrive at Victoria, British Columbia until 7:30PM Friday night.  The weather is overcast, but visibility is still good.  Our cabin is on the starboard side so it appears we have a view of Open Ocean, although there are some Canadian islands in the distance.

 

We docked in Victoria, BC at 7:00PM but we're only scheduled to stay for a few hours.  Ying wanted to see the Butchart Gardens and there was still some room left on the tour, so we boarded the bus for the 40 minute ride.   Our driver was very knowledgeable of the area and offered a running commentary of the area.

 

I have visited Bouchard Gardens in the past, although I cannot remember when.  Family owned for over 100 years, the new generation of owners has installed lighting which enables these later tours.  We visited the Sunken Garden, Rose Garden, and Japanese & Italian Gardens.  It is still a little early to see the garden in full bloom, but the trip was still worthwhile.  On the return trip to the ship, our driver took us through downtown Victoria where we saw the Capital Building all lit up.  Back aboard by 11:15PM we packed our suitcases to leave outside our door tonight so the steward can check them through to San Francisco tomorrow.

 

Saturday morning we slept until 7:00AM which left us little time to eat breakfast.  The ship had already docked in Seattle by the time got up.  We needed to be out of our cabin by 8:00AM and then caught a bus to the airport.  The cruise line was amazingly well organized to get people off the ship as they start boarding a whole new group of passengers for the afternoon sailing back to Alaska.

 

We reached the airport by 9:00AM and had hours to wait before our 2:30PM flight.  We filled the time reading and catching up on my journal.  The flight home was uneventful and we were back in Fairfield by 6:00PM.

 

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