Alaskan Cruise

My cruise was so spectacular and unforgettable. We went on tours of the small beautiful towns, went on an amazing glacier tour, my mother-n-law and I went zip lining, got a very relaxing massage and facial on the boat,I saw tons of eagles, whales, Salmon and a bear, saw a lot of shows on the boat and some real funny comedians. It was such and amazing place to visit and so beautiful...tons of mountains covered with snow and huge cedar trees. I will let the pictures do the rest of the talking. Lynn and I had a room with a balcony which made all the difference. It was so amazing waking up to the views we woke up to.

Below is a view of downtown Seattle from the boat as we were about to leave.

We watched 2 men carving and making fruit animals. They made them right in front of us, 5 each in about 10 minutes. so neat

Here are some of our group one night before dinner. Oh boy did we have some great food. It was five star dinning ever night. I tried so much stuff that I have never tried before and even liked a lot of them.

A whale...this was the only picture that I got of the many that I saw. Seeing those big animals so close was truly exciting.

A picture from inside the ship.

The art gallery on the ship

A view from our balcony one day.

Below are pictures from The Mendhall Glacier in Juneau Alaska. The Glacier was so pretty and I can't even explain how big and bright blue it was. The tour guide said they are blue due to the fact that they absorb every color, other than blue and they reflect the blues.

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This was in one of the towns we stopped in, Skagway, Alaska. It was a funny sight so

I had to take a picture. :o)

A view from the town back towards the boat.

A building in Skagway, Alaska. The front of the building was covered in over

6,000 pieces of drift wood.

The Red Onion Saloon in Skagway, Alaska. We took a tour of the town and learned all about the gold rush in the Klondike mountains and how it effected their town. The Klondike mountains are right outside of the town. We learned about all of the prostitution in the town and toured the old brothel, The Red Onion, which is now a restaurant on the lower level and the museum of the old brothel on the upper level. It was all very interesting.

Inside the Saloon

These pictures below are just some of the flowers and plants in the towns.

While in Skagway I went off on my own and saw that there was a hiking trail that went up a mountain. Toward the bottom there were signs telling about a lake and other stuff up the trail. I started to hike it and there were a few people on the way. Once I got up pretty high and the trail was going almost straight up and not passing any more other hikers I decided that I would stop and no go any further. I had seen a bear the day before in another town and didn't think doing what I was doing by myself was very safe. Below is a picture of the town, behind and below the water towers from the mountain while hiking it is hard to see how high I was but you can see the roof tops and that was on the way down from where I had stopped. It was neat on top of being a little scary.

The view from the hiking trail

A beautiful sunset. It was about 10:30pm at that point. The sun went down about 10:30pm and came up again around 4 m. It was hard to get used to. You would be tired and not know why if you hadn't looked at a clock in a while. It was hard getting back on schedule when I got home....not to mention that in Alaska we were 3 hours behind Texas on top of the sun issue.

Lynn on our balcony

This picture of Lynn on the deck of the boat shows how close we were to those huge mountains. We were not docked in this picture we were cruising.



These next pictures were taken while we were in Tracy Arm Fjord in Alaska. Our cruise ship past another princess ship that was the exact same as ours. The Fjord was am amazing place, full of ice bergs on our way back to the big glacier. However, we were not able to make it to the actual glacier since the icebergs were too many and too big. The boat was going very slow and actually pushing some out of the way. There was a naturalist on the oat from National geographic telling us some neat facts about the Fjord, like how you could only survive about 10 minutes in these waters, how the waters are 1,000 feet deep because it was formed by a HUGE glacier many years ago, and that the air in the Fjord is so pure that it the purist on Earth. Complete oxygen and some people will even get the giggles, almost like a high on oxygen. It was all so very interesting, pretty and very cold.

In the top one there are no people on the deck and that is becuase it was COLD and about 6am.
See how the enormous mountains dwarf the other cruise ship. Those ships are huge so, you get a real sense of how big the mountains were in this picture because it made the cruise ship with thousands of people look like a toy!!

As we passed the other ship you were able to hear them yelling hi at us and we all yelled back, it was funny.

Look how big the icebergs were that the boat was pushing out if the way. Remember, you only see 1/5 of the actual ice. The rest is under the water. This picture was also taken from our balcony.

This was the picture that I took while I was laying in my bed. So cool.
Me and Lynn just before zip lining

Lynn zip lining

Me zip lining, it was scary but A LOT OF FUN.

Below is the rock wall that I climbed, I thought I was going to die it was so hard. There is a bell at the top that you ring once you have made it and I almost gave up before getting up there. Then Lynn encouraged me and I did it. I rang the bell at the very top, then when they lowered me down. I just laid on the ground from exhaustion. But I am proud of myself for doing it.

A really neat hotel in Victoria, British Columbia. It was a very pretty town, out of all of the places that we visited on this trip this was the one town that I would like to live in.

This is the government building at night in Victoria, British Columbia. They have lights on the building that makes it stand out at night.

The public market in Seattle.

A shirt in Seattle that reminded me of Madison. :o)

I took this on the plane coming home. I was happy to be home but the plane ride was pretty bumpy due to heat waves. We left Seattle in sweatshirts and had a layover in Pheonix where it was 108. Off came those sweatshirts!!! :o)