Cruise - Victoria, British Columbia

This is the Parliament Building and they turn these lights on every night at dusk.  It is really pretty if you can take the photo a little bit later than I did, but we didn't have very much time in Victoria so couldn't dawdle.  This is too bad because Victoria is a lovely place and a couple of weeks instead of a few hours wouldn't be too much.

This looks like a toy taxi, but it is real and can hold a couple of people.

There is a way cool totem pole park in Victoria.

This is a bear holding onto a man.

We were in Victoria years ago, before we started RVing, and took a photo like this.

Back to the ship for one last time.

Victoria is full of flowers and gorgeous plants and bushes and gorgeous Butchart Gardens was nearby, but there wasn't time to visit.

Cruise - Leaving Skagway

This unique rock formation was named for Soapy Smith, the most well known con man of the old west.  Soapy was born in Georgia, ran his cons in several places before going to Skagway, and was shot and killed in Skagway on July 8, 1890.  He is buried outside of town, too far out to have time to go see his grave.  We passed by this skull in the cliffs when we left and returned to the ship.

The Sapphire Princess docked in Skagway.  We are on our way back to the ship after our tour and some shopping for a Skagway collector's pin for me (I have over 100 pins now.).  If you look closely, you can find Lu and Galen.  Larry went kayaking today so isn't in any of today's photos.

Cruise - Skagway, Alaska

Yvette, Pat, Galen, Karen, and Lu in downtown Skagway.

The historic building is made of driftwood.  It was built in 1899 as the headquarters for Arctic Brotherhood Camp Skagway #1, a fraternal organization.  There were 30 of these camps established throughout Alaska, Yukon, and British Columbia. 

From left to right:  An employee from the ship who is from Russia, Lacey Knickers, our tour guide, Galen, Karen, and Lu.  We met near the ship for our ghost/brothel tour of downtown Skagway.

Lacey Knickers and Pat giving her a tip for a job well done.  Lacey is an actor from New York and gave an interesting and fun tour.  She would holler out to people on the street and tell them her streetwalkers, meaning us, were available at 8pm.  She also tried to hire a few tourists on the street to work in the Red Onion. 

The ghost/brothel tour turned out to be more brothel than ghost.  The building above was called a "crib" back in the 1800s and was shared by two ladies of the evening.  The girls in the cribs were a step above the girls who walked around with mattresses strapped to their backs but a step below the girls who worked upstairs in the Red Onion Saloon.

Two haunted buildings in downtown Skagway.  The woman who haunted the yellow building is a kind ghost who was kind in real life, too, and tried to help prostitutes find a better way of life.

Our tour ended inside the Red Onion Saloon.

One of the rooms upstairs.  The girls were allowed to decorate their rooms any way they liked and one of the rooms had 17 layers of wallpaper on it!  It sure is a skinny little bed.

Cruise - Juneau, Alaska

Juneau, AK.  I went into town by myself the first time on what I thought was a free shuttle.  It wasn't, but I didn't know that until after I got back to the ship.  Galen and I went to town together later and ran into a couple of Spurs fans from San Antonio.  Juneau is small, very pretty, and there are only two ways to get there - by plane and by boat.  There is no problem with grand theft auto in Juneau.  One of our guides said she went to her prom in a plane and the other guide told us that from 6th grade on his team went to all out of town games on a plane.    Juneau is the Capitol of Alaska, but a lot of folks think Anchorage would be a better choice.

Cruise - Tracy Arm

This highlight of our cruise was this side trip up Tracy Arm to Sawyer Glacier.  We left our big ship at 9am, boarded a catamaran, and didn't return to the ship until it was docked in Juneau.

Getting from the ship to the boat was easy.  This door opened on the ship and we just walked onto the catamaran.  Later in the season the catamaran might have as many as 150 people on it, but we only had 60 making it a lot easier to get photos.

The Sapphire Princess went as far up Tracy Arm as she safely could and then turned back.

A pretty piece of ice floating in the water.  The more compressed the ice is, the more blue it gets.

Galen and Karen about 1/4 mile from Sawyer Glacier.  The glacier calved half a dozen times while we stood there so it wasn't safe to go any closer.  We've seen glaciers before but never saw and heard one calve.  The glacier makes a very loud cracking sound called white thunder by Native Americans.

Sawyer Glacier

I believe this is South Sawyer Glacier.  There was so much ice we couldn't get any closer than this.

The Sapphire Princess leaving us behind.

One of several waterfalls we saw.  The catamaran pulled in so close to this waterfall, that we could stick our hands in the water.

We saw a lot of seals sunning on the floating ice.

A close up of Sawyer Glacier.

More seals.

Eagle

It is extremely rare to see a bear on this trip but we got to see one!

This is a humpback whale, one of a half a dozen of them that swam around the catamaran for a little while.  The best sighting we had of a whale was from the ship.  A juvenile whale was showing off and brought his tail up and slapped it on the water over an over again:  Nine times in a row one time but usually four or five times at a time.  Of course, I didn't have a camera handy.

Cruise - Ketchikan, AK

Ketchikan gets a LOT of rain and it was raining fairly hard when we got off the ship, but it let up and we even got a bit of sun by afternoon.

We liked this Liquid Sunshine Gauge.

You can see the Sapphire Princess in the background.

There are three historic totem poles in town.  This is part of one of them.

It would be fun to know how many thousands of times this bear has been photographed with a tourist.  :-)

Karen, Larry, Lu, Fred, and Kathy standing on Deck 7 as we pull away from Ketchikan.

Alaska Cruise - The ship

The Vivaldi Dining Room

We ate in the Vivaldi dining room on the fifth floor at 5:30 each night of the cruise.  Left to right:  Galen, Karen, Dimitar (our wonderful waiter), Margaret, Bill, Fred and Kathy.  Yvette, Pat, Larry and Lu are at the table behind us and to the right.   Each two tables had a waiter (red shirt) and an assistant waiter (green shirt).  They wore these shirts on Italian night but were more dressed up the other nights.

Yvette, Pat, Larry and Lu.  Yvette is the travel agent who set up the cruise and she is also Lu's sister.

Our home sweet home on the ship.  Some might think it is small but it is larger than what we are used to in our RV.

Another one of the pools.

The Horizon Room was on the 14th floor and was open 24/7.  We usually ate breakfast and lunch here and there was no specified time.  There were other little places where you could grab waffles in the morning and ice cream the rest of the day or omelets in the morning and pizza, hot dogs, and hamburgers the rest of the day.

The center of the ship.  There was shopping, live music, and a mini-bar/coffee shop.

One of the seven galleys on the ship.  Each day 16 tons of food and beverages were served.  We came on board as passengers and left as cargo! 

This is the hallway to our room, C234.  The C stands for Caribe which is the 10th floor.  Actually this is only half the hallway and it is about that long looking in the opposite direction.  Maybe all the walking up and down the hall is why I didn't gain any weight on the cruise.

One of the things that has been on my bucket list for years is to sit on the deck of a ship and read.  It was every bit as pleasant as I imagined it would be.

There were a number of pools and hot tubs on the ship.   This one is near the front of the ship.