Alaska Cruise Tour Days 1-3

This is the first post in a series of posts sharing our Alaska experiences. Make sure you also check out days 4-7, and the land tour adventures!

When we were planning our wedding one of the most important decisions we had to make was where to go for our honeymoon. It seems the overwhelming theme of honeymoons is to go somewhere tropical and lay on a beach. We had gone to Jamaica about six months before our wedding, and we live in Central Florida right in the middle of tons of beaches, so going somewhere tropical was on the bottom of our list. My Husband and I have done a fair amount of traveling in our lives so finding somewhere new for both of us was a little tricky. We like adventure and exploring new things, which is what lead us to decide on Alaska as our Honeymoon destination. Almost everyone we talked to that had previously visited said with out a doubt it was one of their best trips.

We chose to do a “cruise tour” which includes additional land tours before/after your cruise. Our itinerary included a 7 day cruise, followed by a 5 day land tour.  We choose to go with Princess Cruises after researching prices, itineraries, and reading reviews. This was our first time on a Princess cruise and it was a great experience. Our trip started with our journey to get to Vancouver, the port where our cruise started. Our 7:25 am flights from Orlando had a layover in Phoenix and because of the time change when we landed at 9:30 am we were ready for lunch and everyone in the airport was still serving breakfast!

Once we made it to Vancouver we got our bags and headed to find the bus to take us to the port to board our ship. Sadly the only parts of Vancouver we got to see were what we saw out of the bus windows off the highway on the way to the Port. We made it to the port and were ready to begin our adventure.

• My #1 tip for going on an Alaska cruise is to definitely spend the extra money to get a room with a balcony. There’s so much to see, even on your days at sea. You spend two full days going through Glacier National Park and it’s very cold! It’s nice to be able to sit on your balcony with a warm cup of coffee and watch the mountains and beauty roll by.

Our itinerary for the Cruise half of our trip was:

• Day 1: Set Sail from Vancouver, B.C.
• Day 2: Day in Ketchikan
• Day 3:  Day in Juneau
• Day 4: Day in Skagway
• Day 5: Cruise through Glacier National Park
• Day 6: Cruise throught Prince William Sound and College Fjord
• Day 7: Arrive at Port in Whittier and start on Land Tour.

Ketchikan, AK

Ketchikan is a small town built into the side of a mountain with lots of stairs and walkways built to connect the roads. One thing I found interesting is that some of those stairways are actually considered roads with names and addresses listed for them. It was very rainy on the day we visited and we had signed up for a walking tour of the town. Our very nice tour guide recommended that we should run into the local store and purchase wind breakers because they not only with help with the chill from the wind but they are water proof also. It was a great suggestion as those jackets came in helpful during the entire trip.

The town was very colorful and full of totem poles. They have the world’s largest collection of standing totem poles they are spread out all though out the town. They are sustained by their lumber and salmon industries. There’s not a lot of tourist attractions in the town which I actually loved. I like seeing the real town. Out tour guide was great and shared lots of knowledge about not just Ketchikan, but about Alaska as a whole.

Juneau, AK

Our second day was spent in Juneau which is the capitol of Alaska. While it was a much more metropolitan town than Ketchikan the day before, it still wasn’t as large as the typical state capitols you’re used to visiting in other states. The tour we choose took us to The Glacier Gardens, Macaulay Salmon Hatchery and to see Mendenhall Glacier. The gardens were outside the downtown city area and up the side of a mountain.

• Glacier Gardens – The gardens are home to what they called their world renowned Flower towers, which were where they had planted small gardens in the tops of trees that looked like the tops had broken off over time. There are both self-guided walking paths and fully guided tours. We went on a guided tour and it was a beautiful tour through the colorful natural landscapes of this rainforest. One benefit to the guided tour is it’s not all on foot so you get to see more of the area during your tour. Something I found amazing is that the gardens are the work of a single family over the past 18 years.

• Mendenhall Glacier – The glaciers in Alaska are such an amazing phenomenon to me. I think more so because I live in Florida and at the time of our trip to Alaska I’d never even seen snow. Mendenhall is one of the most impressive as it’s 13 miles long. It ends at Mendenhall lake which is where we viewed the glacier from. There are plenty of options to take helicopter rides over the glaciers and even to land on the glaciers. I would have loved to do any of those, but the price tag of those excursions didn’t fit in our budget. The viewing area around the visitor center is full of different walking paths, one leads to a very pretty waterfall that feeds the lake.

• Macaulay Salmon Hatchery – After leaving Mendenhall Glacier our last stop on our way back to our ship was to stop and take a tour of a salmon hatchery. I was confused why there would be a salmon hatchery when I thought the salmon was just living freely in the waters in Alaska. They explain the difference between wild salmon and farm raised salmon (hint: you always want to go with wild salmon!). The purpose of the hatchery is to make sure there is not a shortage of salmon. The adult salmon return to the hatchery between late June to early October to mate and lay eggs. The hatchery care for the eggs and baby salmon until they are ready to be released into the wild. The hatchery is protecting the life cycle from predators to ensure that there is plenty of salmon available. It’s nothing like you would imagine and still so interesting. Inside the hatchery there is plenty of information about the waters on Alaska, including a touch tank explaining what everything is that you could find in the water.  This is not something I would have thought to visit but I’m glad it was included in our tour because it was actually really interesting.

This was just the beginning of our adventure. Can’t wait to share the rest with you in the next two posts. Make sure you are on our mailing list so you don’t miss the rest of this amazing trip! Have you been to Alaska? What was your favorite part of the trip?