Alaska B2B Voyage of the Glaciers Cruise: SB – Episode #13: Haines, Juneau, & Ketchikan

On February 2, 2018March 30, 2018 By ArlynnIn Vacations5 Comments

Since Chris and I did an excursion a day at all three Ports of call on our Northbound trip, we decided to take it a easy and just do a little relaxing and some exploring of the Port towns on our Southbound trip. I will be telling y’all about all three Ports here in this one post. 🙂

Haines Instead of Skagway!

First up was Haines, yes, I said Haines…haha. 🙂 I bet you were expecting Skagway huh? Well, if y’all remember, there had been a rock/land slide the day before we docked in Skagway while on the Northbound journey. We were diverted over (which is just a trip down the Lynn Canal – a gorgeous fjord – from Skagway) so that they could have time to repair the damage to the dock over in Skagway. Princess was awesome and provided all of us passengers with all of the necessary tools and paperwork with which to handle our day in Haines. They also provided extra Ferries so that all that wanted to head to Haines could and in addition covered the cost of said Ferry Ride. Here is the Princess Patter for that day and also Excursion info and a map of Haines:

I was nursing a sore foot on this day, so I did not venture off of the ship, instead this is the day that I pulled together my Stateroom tour of our abode for the week, the Seychelles Suite D701. Here is a link to my YouTube video of that tour. 🙂

Here is my outfit for that day, I was comfy and cozy while hanging out on the ship:

Here are a few pictures of the Ferry activity of the day, it was a very busy day–those ferries ran all day long:

Haines is a beautiful port, soaring mountains and scenery was abounding!

Our dinner on this evening was at the Crab Shack. They set up the Crab Shack on one side of the Buffet, they switch out the table cloths and even the wait staff wear different shirts…it is a lovely experience, one that I highly recommend. 🙂 AND the food is phenomenal; you do pay and upcharge for this experience…when we were here the charge was $29 per person (of course, moving forward in time Princess may raise the price, so please keep an eye on your Patter to make sure you know what is what while on your cruise).

Here is the Menu:

After we were finished eating, we took a stroll around the ship, here are some pictures that I clicked off:

I will have to admit that this day in Haines was one of the most relaxing days that I’d ever experienced on an Alaska cruise, my dumb foot aggravated me in that I couldn’t get out and explore, but, it also forced me to stay put and enjoy the quiet and serene port. I had no internet on that day, well I had 3g phone coverage which was super slow and I gave up trying to get anywhere online..haha. So I sat out on our balcony watching the ferries come and go, and I gazed down the Lynn Canal and at all of the beauty that was laid out in front of me…it was a party for my eyes on this day…no doubt about it!

As we pulled out of Haines, we caught this gorgeous sunset…so, so pretty!!

Juneau

Our next stop on our Southbound cruise was Juneau! My foot was still screaming at me a bit, but, I was determined not to allow it to hinder what I knew I wanted to do on this day! First off, here is my outfit of the day:

One sweet Suite perk…is that we were able to go and eat breakfast in Sabatini’s every morning, we chose to do so on this morning because we didn’t have anything special planned other than to just walk around town a bit and enjoy a nice relaxing day.

It was delicious!!

Here is the Princess Patter for this day:

I also did a Facebook Live video on this morning:

BTW, here is a closeup of what is costs to send out your laundry if you so choose–for Suite passengers it is complimentary:

A seal came to visit in the harbor that day…too cute for words!!

We decided to go off of the ship and do a little bit of shopping and exploring, here are some of the sights we encountered. You will see that there are excursion vendors lined up on the dock, I am not in the know about them, but, I did want to let you know that they are there:

I was so excited to be able to find this little jewel of a shop…I’d heard about it many times in the Alaska Cruises on Princess group that I Admin on Facebook, so I was anxious to find it and to purchase some spiffy soap that was made from Glacial silt. Here are a few pictures and a couple of videos of our time at the Juneau Silt Soap Shop. 🙂

And here I am trying out some of that wonderful soap!! I highly recommend you go and visit this little shop and try some of the soap out for yourself. They do have a website as well, here is a link – Silt Soap Shop.

Here are a few pictures of the Mt. Roberts tramway, we’ve yet to do it…although I would love to do so, but, it was super cloudy on this day not to mention that my foot was screaming at me by this point and we needed to get back to the ship:

And then we had some friends (Bald Eagles) gazing down on us from the trees, never forget to scan those trees for those “golf balls”. 😉

Here is a little video showing those beauties along with a few other things.

Of course, I stopped into a couple of shops on the way back and purchased a few things, and, of course, I had purchased some of that spiffy, wonderfully smelling silt soap too! 🙂

We spent a little time out on our balcony that afternoon…there is always something to see..I love watching the ships come and go. The rest of the day went off without a hitch, we just grabbed some dinner from the Horizon Court Buffet, hung out on our balcony, and just r-e-l-a-x-e-d! This lady laid her satisfied head on her pillow without a care in the word or negative thought in her head…it had been a wonderful day!

Ketchikan

I could not believe when I woke up on this morning that this would be our last Port of Call on our trip…the time had flown by, I’d made tons and tons of memories, and I had a little twang in my belly that our trip would soon be coming to an end. BUT, I didn’t allow that sad feeling to overtake me, instead, I zipped on up out of bed—*well* that may be a little fib…I hardly ever “zip” out of bed, truth be told, I am not too much of a morning person…haha. I need to warm up to the day for a bit of time with my first cup of tea. 🙂 We were situated facing the water on this day, which was fine and dandy with me, I love watching the boats and floatplanes come and go, I could spend hours just doing that. 🙂 ANYway, this is the outfit that I chose to wear on this day, I knew that we’d be heading off of the ship to go and take a little walk back to Creek Street and over to the Outlet Store to meet a dear lady named Aimee that was so kind in our Alaska FB Group in that she actually took peoples addresses and sent out a fantastic coupon book before folks’ cruises…what a wonderful gesture…I knew I had to head over and give that lady a hug in person! ❤

And here I am out on the balcony with Holland America’s Nieuw Amsterdam and Princess’ Ruby Princess line up behind us. 🙂

We headed to Sabatini’s again on this morning, that breakfast was the one Suite perk that we enjoyed the most. 🙂 Here is the Princess Patter for this day:

We were ready to disembark the ship once we let our breakfasts settle a bit…it was quite crowded in Ketchikan on this day, but, pfft, it didn’t bother us too much. We stepped on the dock and made a beeline over to The Outlet Store where Aimee works as a manager. 🙂

And here are Aimee and I meeting in person for the first time…hopefully it won’t be the last!!! She is a lovely, sweet, awesome lady! ❤

I am standing right outside of Aimee’s store here, you can see how close we were…I believe we were in Berth #2 on this day:

Now, I will hush up and allow the pictures to do the talking, they are pretty self explanatory, Ketchikan is a colorful, fantastic town and very easy to get around in…we really enjoyed sauntering back to Creek Street and doing a little bit of exploring. Here we go with some pictures:

It was time for us to climb back aboard the Coral Princess. We’d had a lovely time exploring!! In all of the years that we’d been doing Alaska cruises, we’d never taken the time to just walk around this quirky little town, I loved it!! Once back on board, I noticed that I had great cell service, so I did a Facebook Live video…Here is that video–It includes a great look at the Promenade Deck–which btw you can walk on ALL the way around on on the ship–a little tour of the Atrium, and then an elevator ride up to the Dolphin deck and into our Suite and out onto our balcony. 🙂

As I mentioned in the video, I set up shop with my computer and camera on our balcony and that is where I spent the rest of that day…the sun was shining down on me and warming me to my very soul. Trust me y’all, I do not take for granted one second of our time in Alaska, and it doesn’t matter if I’m out on some grand adventure or if I’m simply sitting and watching the people, ships, and planes…I love Alaska! Here are some shots that I caught that afternoon.

I did purchase a few things while traversing around Ketchikan btw, here are some pencils that I purchased for our daughter’s Kindergarten students…

And here are some earrings, one pair for me, and one pair for each of our daughters that ended up in their Christmas stockings. 🙂

And I used a coupon out of Aimee’s coupon book to purchase these 3 spiffy magnets…that will of course be used to hold things on our future Stateroom walls. 😉 🙂

I also took a nice little stroll around the ship, this sign hangs in all of the elevators. 🙂

Someone sent this picture to me of us leaving Port…There we go, off for a day at sea…Check out that gorgeous sunset!!!

I have to admit that I had little bit of sadness as we were pulling out of Ketchikan, the thought that our cruise was truly almost over made me very sad. My only saving grace was that I knew that we had another Alaska cruise in the queue for the next Season!! Now *that* made me very happy and satisfied!!

Next up, our day at sea, a little picture tour of the Coral Princess, & disembarkation day. 🙂

A little scripture:

**If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there Your hand will guide me…Psalm 139***

~Until next time, y’all take good care!

~Arlynn

And here is a link to Episode #14!

Alaska: Back to Back Voyage of the Glaciers Cruises – Episode #6 – Juneau (Harv & Marv’s, Tracy’s Crab Shack, & More)

On October 6, 2017March 30, 2018 By ArlynnIn Vacations5 Comments

I’m telling y’all, there were times on this cruise that I felt like I’d never been on an Alaskan cruise 4 other times in the past. I don’t know why that is, but, this time, I seemed to pause many more times to take in the gorgeousness that surrounded us at just about every turn. Such was the case on the morning that we cruised oh so quietly into Juneau Harbor. There was a mist that was just dwelling in the crooks and crannies of the mountains and hovering over the city of Juneau…it looked almost mesmerizing. I had never seen it look the way it did that morning and in addition, I did not remember the Harbor being so pretty. Here are a couple of pictures that we captured that morning:

The Norwegian Jewel beat us into port…Here she is sitting prettily in the mist:

I stepped out on our balcony and did a Facebook Live video that morning…I’ll post that here for y’all to take a peek and listen at:

Once that mist lifted, the blue skies appeared and it looked as if we were going to have a lovely day in Juneau….Here are some pictures of Juneau Harbor as you look across that bridge to Douglas Island and beyond. Chris caught these while I was getting ready for the day:

Here is the Princess Patter for that day:

And here was my choice of outfit for the day…I added a jacket to this choice because I knew that it would be quite cool on the water when we went whale watching (and it was):

We lounged around in our Stateroom until it was almost time for our excursion with Harv and Marv’s Outback Alaska – Whale Watching.

We were so looking forward to this adventure! In the past, we had always taken the Mendenhall Glacier and Whale Quest excursion through Princess (4 times), and those trips were absolutely amazing, but, this time with Harv and Marv’s, we’d be on a much smaller boat (pros and cons…I’ll lament upon that further in a bit). We had made arrangements for this excursion online before we came, so we knew just what to look for once we disembarked and were on the dock…a Harv and Marv’s employee in a bright orange jacket holding a sign…we found that fellow pretty easily, I have not one picture of him though because I was busily chatting along with him and the others who’d be on the excursion with us that day. Anyway, he led us to a van where we climbed aboard and were transported over to Auke Bay and to where our smaller boat and her Captain were waiting to take us out on the water to find some humpback whales and as you’ll see, a few other creatures as well. 🙂 I neglected to take a picture (slacker that I am…lol) of that van, but, here is a picture of one just like we rode in that I pulled off of their website:

The driver gave great commentary as she drove us through Juneau on our way to Auke Bay, and we chatted with the folks from other cruise lines who she had picked up on her way to us. It was quite an enjoyable little trip. It took us every bit of 1/2 hour to get to our destination. When we arrived, all we could see was that mist that we had seen while coming into Juneau Harbor. It was ALL over the place. Come to find out, a family that was in the van with us had been scheduled for their whale watching trip that morning, but their boat Captain cancelled that trip because of the mist and thankfully there was room on our boat for them. The mist was *starting* to lift, but, it was an eerie little trip at first…haha…not.even.kidding. Here is one of Harv and Marv’s boats, and we rode in one very similar to this one:

I believe ours was called “The Alaskan”, here is a picture that I took of the inside:

It was quite a nice little boat, very clean, and the employees that we’d come in contact with including the Naturalist on board and the Captain were so very nice and welcoming!! This is a GREAT company and they bend over backwards to make sure your trip is awesome!!

Now, some thoughts about going on the smaller boat.

~Cons: It is a rockier ride…*much* rockier than on one of the bigger catamarans that we’ve always been on before, so if you are at all prone to sea-sickness (we are not), this probably isn’t the excursion for you. And it was a bit more difficult to steady ourselves to take our pictures. In all honesty as well, Chris missed having an upper deck which always provided him a higher vantage point for taking pictures.

~Pros: The personal touch is something that I enjoyed greatly, the Naturalist took time out to answer all of my geeky questions. He was a wealth of information that I just drank in. I told him about the bubble net feeding that we’d witnessed in Snow Passage and we figured out together that we had seen one of the whales in the books they carry with them of the whales that are regularly seen in Alaskan waters. Here are the pages we were scouring trying to find that whale tail from just the evening before:

(And just a reminder picture, here is the whale tail that we saw from the Coral in Snow Passage, a match to #1758 in his book):

To say that I was excited about that was an understatement. 🙂 So yes, a big PRO for me…Also, the smaller group of people was very nice, I believe we only had 16 people aboard. We all got to know one another pretty well and it was a nice atmosphere. Our Captain Gabe was *excellent*! He was determined to give us the experience of a lifetime, so we headed straight through that mist that was hanging over the water (no pictures…ugh to me) and was very successful at finding us some whales to view which of course was the biggest PRO of all. The first Humpback that we came upon was sleeping…haha…and was not awakened by our presence. It just rolled around and took breaths and obviously did not have a care in the world:

We moved on from this sleeping giant and were almost out to the Lynn Canal which apparently has a pretty intense current running through it which gathers up tons of good eats for the whales…and that is where we hit the jackpot. Here are some of the whale shots we caught on this very special day:

Here is one little video that I caught:

Well, it was just about time to return to shore, but, before we did, Captain Gabe took us over to this Coast Guard buoy on which Stellar Sea Lions *always* are vying for position to lay upon. 🙂 Here are some pictures and then I’ll add a little video that I took of these funny, loud, and pretty lazy creatures. I LOVED seeing them “chat” (honk and holler) at one another:

OMGosh, did they put on a show or what?!! I guess that’s what they do all day, every day, in-between meals. 🙂

As we were heading back in, the Captain pointed out Mendenhall Glacier to us…WOW, was it ever gorgeous to gaze upon from the water!! I was blown away…This is the first time that I’d ever seen it from that vantage point. Here is a picture that Chris captured:

Oh what a wonderful time we had had on Auke Bay with the folks at Harv and Marv’s. Here is a little souvenir that they gave to us as we were disembarking. BTW, we do give tips to our excursion hosts, so we slipped Captain Gabe a $10 bill as we were disembarking.

We climbed aboard a motor coach for the trip back to the cruise dock, the driver stopped so that we could get out and take a few more shots of Mendenhall Glacier:

And on we traveled back to the cruise ship dock:

Then the driver dropped us off at the end of the cruise dock–Traffic was awful on this day and he had offered to take us right back to our ship, but, we ended up telling him not to worry about and we walked on down the dock. Our next stop on our way back to the ship was going to be an amazing place to eat right there on the dock on our way to the ship and that was Tracy’s King Crab Shack, Here are some of the sights we saw while walking to Tracy’s.

And there is Tracy’s to the left:

Here is the menu, we both chose the “Crab Shack Combo” and Chris got an extra king crab leg:

To say that we had an awesome meal is a huge understatement! It was delicious!! As you can see, we ate outside in the sunlight…it was lovely. 🙂

It was time for us to head back “home” to the Coral Princess now; for the first time I wasn’t too sad to do so because I knew that we’d be right back here the next week. 🙂 I doubted if we’d eat at Tracy’s again though (it was pretty pricey…haha), so we caught these pictures as we were fixin’ to walk back to the ship:

There is Mount Robert’s Tramway:

And look who we saw gazing down at us from the trees. 🙂

Do y’all know what? I was pooped! But, we’d had a wonderful day in Juneau. I got to see the tops of the mountains for the first time ever (on this our 5th visit to the city), I went on a new whale watching adventure on a small boat with awesome people, I got to eat king crab legs outside on a beautiful sunny day with the love of my life. What more could a girl ask?! Not much I’d say, not much. 🙂 If memory serves, we gathered ourselves up some pizza later on that evening (Princess has the BEST pizza btw), settled in and just relaxed on our balcony for the rest of the evening. Again, I felt so blessed and thankful that we were able to be in that spot at that moment in time and I drank in every single second, holding on to those memories, tucking them deep inside my mind and heart. I know that sounds so sappy, but that is truly how I felt on that day.

Okie dokie, our next stop was Skagway! Wait till y’all see what I have to share with you from our adventures on that special day! Sneak peek:

***If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there Your hand will guide me…Psalm 139***

~Until next time, y’all take good care! ❤

~Arlynn ❤

And here is a link to Episode #7!

Voyage of the Glaciers-Juneau (Day 6)

On October 19, 2015March 26, 2017 By ArlynnIn Vacations1 Comment

Hi All,

I remember waking up on the morning that we pulled into Juneau (the State capital that is only reachable by plane or boat) with butterflies in my stomach because I was excited for our planned excursion. We were going to be taking the Mendenhall Glacier and Whale Quest Tour. Again, this was our 4th Voyage of the Glaciers cruise and yes, this would be our 4th time doing this very same excursion…*that’s* how much I love it. So we disembarked the Coral Princess and found our motor coach for this day’s excursion–we had a lady bus driver who thought she was “all that and a bag of chips”…okay, okay, she was slightly entertaining…slightly. 😉 She could sing nicely though and she directed in a sing-along…okay, so you had to be there…haha. 😉

Yes, I love to see glaciers and on this excursion, our first stop was at the very pretty Mendenhall Glacier; there is also a lovely nature trail that you can follow that winds around a stream and shows you some of prettiest foliage in the State. My hubby and I always take a leisurely stroll on that trail first, there are signs along the way to tell you about the wildlife and salmon, etc…For this geeky girl, Heaven! 😉 🙂

I believe this flower is called “Jacobs Ladder”:

And one year (2010), we got to see a Mama bear and her two cubs munching on a salmon…now *that* got my heart pumping. 🙂

I took a video of this encounter too, here it is:

Mendenhall Glacier is a glacier about 12 miles long located in Mendenhall Valley, about 12 miles from downtown Juneau. It is one of two glaciers that can be seen from Juneau’s road system. Mendenhall flows from the massive Juneau Ice Fields and is a retreating glacier. If you’re interested in knowing more about Mendenhall Glacier and other glaciers in and around Juneau, click here.

Check out Nugget Falls…My hubby took a quick video…It is pretty impressive!

Okie dokie, as always, we enjoyed our time at Mendenhall Glacier, but, it was now time to go to my favorite part of the excursion, whale watching! So back onto our motor coach we climbed and off we went taking the scenic route (because we were early and the whale watching catamaran wasn’t quite ready for us) with Ms “All that and a bag of chips” chattering the entire way. 😉 Again, she wasn’t *that* bad, but I think these motor coach drivers think that need to entertain you every second that you are on their buses when in reality, all you need to do is look out the window and you can be completely entertained by the breathtaking scenery in Alaska. Regardless, we finally arrived at the dock and climbed aboard our boat and off we went…it didn’t take us long to find our first humpback whale–you are guaranteed to see whales on this excursion or you get $100 cash returned to you.

OH wait, we also saw some steller sea lions, one in particular came right up to our catamaran, curious little dude:

This is a coastguard buoy and the steller sea lions are lounging on top if it sunning themselves. They are too cute and they are quite entertaining to watch. There is definitely some jockeying for position happening, but all in all they share the space well. 🙂

But, the stars of the show were the humpbacks, they are amazing!

One year we even got to witness Bubble Net Feeding <~~Great link from National Geographic…

This is a sign that they had hanging in the catamaran, it shows all of the humpback whales that routinely come back to this same body of water every year to feed and to raise their calfs. The humpbacks split their time between Hawaii and Alaska, calfs are born in the warmer waters of Hawaii and then mama, who hasn’t eaten since she left Alaska, and baby make the harrowing journey (about 2800 miles) back here to Alaska so that they can feed…amazing!

Once again, we were not disappointed with this excursion, seeing those humpbacks had made my day, I was once again contented and reminded about just how small we are and how big our world is and how wondrous it can be.

We were almost finished with our cruise, day 6 (of the cruise, day 7 of our adventure) would find us in Ketchikan and on the Bering Sea Crab Fisherman’s Tour–A fantastic experience!

***Update*** I’ve now completed all of my installments in the Voyage of the Glaciers Series and have included links to the next post in line (so to speak) at the end of each posting. So, here is a link to the next post and it covers our time in Ketchikan… 🙂

Until next time, y’all take good care! ❤

~Arlynn

I’ve also written two other blog posts that go hand in hand with these blog entries. Here is a link to my Alaska Cruise Wardrobe entry. And here is a link to my What’s In My Carry On, My Must Haves, & Packing Tips and Tricks entry.

⚜️ Arlynn's Country Craft Corner ⚜️

Tag: Juneau

Alaska B2B Voyage of the Glaciers Cruise: SB – Episode #13: Haines, Juneau, & Ketchikan

Haines Instead of Skagway!

Juneau

Ketchikan

And here is a link to Episode #14!

Alaska: Back to Back Voyage of the Glaciers Cruises – Episode #6 – Juneau (Harv & Marv’s, Tracy’s Crab Shack, & More)

And here is a link to Episode #7!

Voyage of the Glaciers-Juneau (Day 6)

Haines Instead of Skagway!

Juneau

Ketchikan

And here is a link to Episode #14!

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And here is a link to Episode #7!

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