Alaska Cruise Part One: The Adventure on the High Seas Begins

On Saturday, June 21, we departed from Vancouver on Princess Cruises – specifically on the Crown Princess, surely the nicest ship I have ever been on. The ship departed from Vancouver around 5pm, sailed under the Lions Gate Bridge (built by the Guinness Family), and up towards the last frontier, Alaska!

Our port stops included Ketchikan, Juneau, Skagway, and eventually Whittier/Anchorage. 7 nights aboard the Crown Princess. That’s a lot of time to write about, but I’ll try to be brief and just sum this trip up in a few themes: the port stops and excursions, the entertainment on board the cruise, and the magnificent scenery of Glacier Bay and College Fjord. This blog will talk about our first port stop in Ketchikan and the first part of our day in our second port stop, Juneau.

I think during the entire cruise, unlike cruises I have been on in the Caribbean, we pretty much always had sight of land. What was truly stunning by the end of the trip was the sheer number of mountains (snow-capped, as well) that we saw all along the way. Considering that we went through just a very small part of Alaska and that Alaska is two and half times the size of Texas, it’s just hard to imagine how much more vast it truly is!

Port Stop #1: Hiking in Ketchikan

Our first port stop was on Monday morning in Ketchikan. It was an early day, as we were in port from about 6:30am to 2:30pm. Tony, Ann, Jesse, and I got off the boat around 8am or so. We took a very short taxi ride to get us to the start of the trail. Ketchikan is famous for the amount of rainfall it gets each year (about 200 inches on average). Their “liquid sunshine” sign at the port noted that in 2014 they had already received 142 inches of rain. And, on this June day, it was also raining. We expected this though. After all, the main attraction in Ketchikan is the rain forest. The four of us took a hike up the mountain, through the wet rain forest, to get a great view of Ketchikan. It took us about 90 minutes to go up and about the same amount of time to go down.

The trail wasn’t too inundated with other people, though more so as we started making our way down. Apparently we were probably a little earlier and a little faster than most on the trail. We were warned of possible black bears along the way. The only wildlife we saw, however, was a cute little chipmunk and some birds. And the view from the top was amazing! After we hiked down, we walked through the town for a bit. Mostly there were a lot of touristy shops and it was actually hard to find a lot to eat. Ann and Tony stopped in at the Arctic Bar for a beer and to catch the Brazil game. Jesse and I sat with them for a few minutes, then proceeded on to a sandwich shop to eat. Then, not finding much else to do in Ketchikan, we decided to get back on the boat. I spent the rest of my afternoon relaxing in the Skywalker Lounge (at night, it’s supposed to be a club, but by day, it had a great view and was a nice relaxing place to read). Most of my vacations are pretty action-packed, so it was nice to actually relax a bit! (Well, after that 3-hour hike, that is).

During the same time that we were hiking, my parents had gone on a guided walk through the rain forest and to see some other sights, including some animals in natural habitats.  One cool thing about the cruise and all the excursion options is you can do the same things as others in your group or find something that interests you. There are too many good options – so you have to mix and match throughout the trip and that’s what we did.

Port Stop #2: Glacier Sea Kayaking in Juneau

The cruise continued to sail north through the Inside Passage. The next day, our port stop was Alaska’s capital city of Juneau. This was a full day in port, from about 7:00 am to 9:00pm. The weather in the morning was fantastic. No rain and mostly blue skies. The people in Juneau said it was the best they had seen all week. Once again, Tony, Ann, Jesse, and I had our own excursion – we were going glacier sea kayaking. My parents had the real highlight of the trip – they did a helicopter tour, landing on a glacier and hiking around it for an hour or so. Jesse’s parents, Craig and Suzanne, did their own excursion as well, they went zip-lining. Alaska truly is about the outdoors and we were all about to find out.

We did an excursion through Princess Cruises and this meant they had a short 20-minute bus ride (right from the ship!) prepared for us to get to the kayaks. Once there, a local company took over. Most of the employees of this local kayak company were in their 20s and there were about 11 of us from the cruise who were out there for this particular kayaking time (10:30am to 2pm, though the kayaking part of it was from about 11:15 am to 12:45pm). They gave us very little instruction, but during the quick intro to the kayaking adventure, one instructor said “you all look like you know what you are doing.” Jesse and I said to each other: “We do?” Well, off we went.

We got the hang of it pretty quick and Ann and Tony were in a kayak next to us. They pulled a little bit out in front of us and Jesse said to me “hey we can’t let those co-eds beat us.” So, we rowed a little faster and got out in front of the entire group except for these two “professionals” (as we dubbed them) who were well out in front of everyone. There was one “guide” with us who was sort of telling us which direction to go. On the very far end of this “sea” there was a glacier in sight (that’s the glacier our parents’ helicopter landed on). And we all paddled in that direction. Then at one point, the “professionals” had sort of stopped by this little island to take a break. Jesse and I then caught them. But as we were catching them, we looked around and none of the other kayakers (including Tony and Ann) were anywhere near us. Slow pokes, we thought.

Finally one of the employees with the kayak company came out towards us in a motorboat. She told us and the “professionals” that we had gone too far and to head back towards where the rest of the group was – it seemed the “guide” in the kayak had changed course. As we started making our way back there, something happened. That sea of “glass” that was so calm had all of a sudden whipped up. The winds were getting stronger, clouds were rolling in, and the current was against us. Then, every time we tried to turn in one direction, it kept pushing us in another direction. We saw the group of kayakers going one way and as we started to catch them, they then turned and went another way (back towards our starting point). So we started in that direction, but again, we were getting frustrated trying to get the kayak to go in the right direction. The professionals? They had been long gone.

The employee in the motorboat came back over to us a couple more times, asking if we needed help. At one point, she put our rudder down (all of us started without the rudder). I had no idea how to work that and asked her if I needed to do anything different. She said no. I think that was a mistake on her part. About fifteen minutes later she came back by and asked us if we needed a tow in. We both replied “no” with pride. We wanted to make it back on our own. Then, I added, “well check back with us in about 10 or 20 minutes.” (I didn’t want to throw a lifeline away!)

Then about five minutes later, we looked off in the distance and saw a storm coming our way. “Oh crap,” I said. Jesse, on the other hand, was loving it. Initially he wasn’t sure he wanted to go kayaking, but now he was loving this adventure. He said something like “Wouldn’t it be awesome if it started raining now?” Since the water below us was freezing cold and we had left our rain jackets on shore (it was warm and sunny when we started), I was like, “No I don’t think so.” Plus, we weren’t making any progress. And we were getting tired.

So we started trying to get the attention of the employee in the motorboat who was pretty distant from us now. It appeared she couldn’t hear or see us waving our arms. Finally about five minutes later or so, she came back towards us to give us a tow. She hooked some straps from her boat to our kayak and we threw our oars into her boat. Then we started our way towards shore, water hitting us both in the face. After a minute or so she asked us if we wanted to get on the boat. Yea, that seemed like a good idea. Then after we got into the boat, that kayak filled with water. I’m glad we were in the boat.

It was a good 15-minute ride back to shore – in a motorboat. The kayak I think slowed the boat down a little and it also wasn’t the fastest little wooden motorboat. As water was hitting us in the face, Jesse just had the biggest smile on his face. He was loving this. I said to him and the kayak company employee, “Hey we got a boat ride out of this too.” I wish it wasn’t so wet or I would have taken a photo of that ear-to-ear smile on Jesse’s face. He was so damn happy.

Once we got to the shore, we helped her bring the kayak up onto the dock. It was quite heavy with all that water in it. We dumped the water overboard. About five minutes after we got back to shore, it started raining and they canceled all the kayak tours for the rest of the day. Our adventure on the glacier seas started so calmly, with clear skies and within an hour, the winds, sky, and seas changed their course. Even the young employees at the kayak company were amazed.

It rained pretty much the rest of the day in Juneau. Tony and Ann had gotten in about twenty minutes before us and they said some of the kayak company employees seemed a little nervous that Jesse and I might be mad about the trouble we had getting back. Not a chance. I actually tipped the employees. And Jesse was just ecstatic. You don’t get these kinds of adventures staying home or on the ship.

Stay tuned for another blog (or maybe two if I can’t learn to consolidate my writing) about the conclusion of our journey in Alaska.