Our Day in Juneau

September 19, 2012--

I woke up and looked out the window and saw that we had docked in Juneau.  We will be here all day.



 

We decided to ride a tram up the mountain just outside our ship.  The tram went straight up the mountain.

 

 

The cable of the tram we rode up the mountain.

 

 

This is the view of the ship from the tram..

 

 

 

View from one of the over looks on our hike on the mountain.  Wasn't a really long hike, but steep!

Views from the top were great!

 

 

One of the views from the top!!!

 

After the little hike we did up there, we went back on board for lunch then explored the town of Juneau for a bit.

We ended taking a tour of the Alaskan Brewing Company where we could sample the different types of beers they brew.

 

 

We had a fun day in Juneau.

 

Sailing through Tracy Arm

Tuesday,  September 18, 2012

After breakfast, Don and walked 1 1/3 mile on the outside deck.  It was brisk and foggy.

Later it cleared up and we now have a mountain view from our stateroom.

The way Alaska is, it can be foggy one minute and clear the next, then foggy again.  That is what happened by lunch time.  If it is still foggy when we get to the entrance to Tracy Arm, we won't get to go in.

This is a look at some of the fog.

It was still foggy when we got to the arm, so the Captain turned around and tried again and this time the fog had lifted.  We are going in!  They opened the bow of the ship and let everyone go out there for a look. 
Don and I stayed on the bow for a long time enjoying the views, waterfalls and cool weather!

One of the waterfalls we saw on this journey.

 

 

Lots of ice in the water as we sailed towards a glacier.

 

 



The blue in the background is the glacier.  This is as close as we got to it because of the ice.  We were in our stateroom viewing it as we turned to sail out of Tracy Arm.  The weather really cooperated with us on this day!

Things I liked about crusing

This is our first cruise and we loved the time we spent on board.  I will write about port of calls later.  This entry is about what I liked about the ship experience.

First of all, we had a really nice state room with a balcony.  It was nice to go out there and watch the ocean and scenery go by.  After the first two days, we had great views of the shore line.

The bathroom is also spacious with a separate shower and jetted tub.  It also had two sinks.

We really liked sitting on the Lido deck by the pool.  It was an indoor/outdoor pool area.  It had a retractable roof that they would open on warm in port days and close on cooler sailing days.

We loved the in room food service.  We did order dinner in the room one time and breakfast one time, but mostly ordered in room coffee in the mornings!  We would drink our coffee and look out at the ocean.

We walked the walking deck a few times which was a good way to get fresh air and spend some time.

We went to a couple of shows and they were good.  Two were comedy acts and one was a song and dance show.

Of course the food was good.  Everywhere we ate, there was good food.  We ate about 3 times in the main dining room.  Other times we ate in the other venues on the ship.

All in all we had a great experience on the ship.  !!

Views on the ship.......

Cruising from Seattle to Juenau

We got on the ship before noon on Sunday without any trouble... In fact we were at the front of the lines most of the time and got to our room and lunch without any trouble.. :)  Here we are getting ready to board the ship!.

 

This is the view from our stateroom in Seattle!  Pretty nice!

 

 

Sunset from our stateroom the first night of sailing... Beautiful!!!

 

 

Ocean Views!

 

 

 



Catching up 3

Another lazy morning.  On the early part of the trip, we were having longer travel days.   Now they are a bit shorter.  Today we are driving through the North Cascades National park and will camp at another state park on the other side.  We found out that the nights in the park are very cold and they do not have power hook ups for our heater. 

This a very beautiful drive with awsome views!

This next group of pictures are from an overlook just after topping a pass.  We are in the Cascades Mountains, but not in the National park yet.

 

 

The interesting thing about this overlook is that it was build right out on the rocks.  You can look right down on the highway.  You feel like you are almost flying!

 

 

That is the highway we drove up down below.  I am standing behind a very strong and sturdy rail or I would not be doing this.

 

 

Don just had to take my picture!!

 

After we went up the two passes, we started going down!  We went down for a long way.  In fact, we were just about out of the park we were finally down at the bottom.

 

There are two Dams and two lakes in the park.  Ross Lake is down below in the valley and the only way down there is to walk.

 

 

 

 

 Next stop was at a water fall area.  Both were very pretty.

 

 

 

We finally made it to the visitor's center where we took a 2 mile hike down by the river.

These are pictures of that trail.



That is about it for now.  We are in the Seattle area for a layover day and rest.  I also had to do laundry after camping for a week.  The little pop up camper has done great and we have gotten pretty good at setting up and breaking camp.

 



Catching up 2

We took our time getting up this morning (September 12, 2012)  We have been through many different types of landscape.  Today, we went through areas of huge wheat fields with some rolling hills.  We had left the interstate behind us heading towards North Cascades National Park.

We come to an area with large gorges and two dams.  One was the Grand Coulee Dam and the other was Chief Joseph Dam both on the Columbia river.

We also saw miles of Apple orchards which were part of the Gerber Apple Farms.  The apples were ripe and they were just beginning to pick.

We start following the Methow River towards Wintrop, Washington.  This river is very clear.

Between Pateros and Twisp, we saw a fairly large forest fire (smoke bellowing above the mountains)

This is the first glimpse of the smokey fire.

 

We pull over when we got even with it and took some pictures.

 

 

This is our view from the highway.

 

 

This is a picture of the helicoper  that was dipping water from the river just in front of us.  He would then go to the fire and dump the water and come back for more.

We were told there were a few more fires around the area.  This made the sky really hazy.

 

We stay the night at Pearrygin State Park just outside of Wintrop, WA. 

Another surprise we found at Washington State Parks, is that we had to pay extra for showers.

 

Another view of the lake.

 

Catching up--

Most places we have stopped have not had internet, even if we did have some phone service.
So now that we are in Seattle, WA at the Hampton Inn for tonight and tomorrow night, I will try to catch up on the blog before boarding the ship.

After we left Bozeman, we continued up the interstate through Montana.  This is a very pretty part of Montana with mountians all around.  We went up a pretty pass just before Butte. 

We saw just a few pronghorn on this drive. 

 

Our camp this night was at Riverside State Park in Spokane, WA. This is the Spokane river.

It was a pretty nice campground. The thing that has surprised Don and I is that the state parks have been pretty full. There are a lot of us "seniors" traveling around.

We enjoyed our stay here... and even though the state parks are nice, they are not as nice, so far, as Arkansas State Parks.