Non Chan's Blog: Alaska, Here We Come!!! Part 2 (Cruise)

We cruised on the Princess Sapphire ship this time. It was a little bit different from our previous Celebrity cruise, but it was a very nice ship.

Our Cabins

Grandma and Ken had a mini suite, which was very nice. We spent a lot of time in their cabin, playing games, taking pictures of beautiful scenery from the deck, etc. Thanks, Grandma and Ken, for sharing your cabin with us!

The rest of us had Ocean View cabins with blocked view, but it wasn't bad at all. It was very nice and we enjoyed it very much.

This ship has so many swimming pools and Jacuzzis.

We sat on these chairs with wool blankets on, relaxed
and watched movies on a jumbo tron at the pool side
with popcorn and ice cream cones! Grandma and Ken
even stayed up to watch "Artist" till 11pm or midnight!
(Scott and I couldn't stay awake, so we went to bed
about 10pm.) We were a little worried about leaving
Grandma and Ken alone without a chaperon!!

Formal Dinner

Casual Dinner

Guess where this ship was made? Yes, in Japan by Mitsubishi! I knew they make
heavy equipment, but didn't know they made cruise ships.
This ship cost 500 million dollars to build!

This ship has sailed all over the world and, yes, Carol, this has even been to Busan!

Lots of beautiful art displays.

Art Gallery

One of the entertainers on the ship

Ketchikan:

We got up early to watch the ship approach Ketchikan. We had fond memories of coming here last summer to visit Jamie. It seemed kind of lonely this time around, without having Jamie to visit.

No personal helicopters on any of these ships this year, but the boat
on the left had their own float plane! One of these boats has
an original Van Gogh painting hanging inside.
Two million dollar painting!!!!

Downtown Ketchikan (Sorry, last year's photo)

We had lunch at the very famous Fish & Chip
(Last year's photo too - notice the blue sky!)

Like last year, we did kayaking in Orca Cove and sea plane ride to Misty Fjord National Monument. Even though it was raining, it was so much fun!

Last year, we had a beautiful day when we flew to Misty Fjord National Monument. But it was very "misty" this time around. I guess that is why it is called Misty Fjord(?)

Water falls everywhere

We landed by a small dock in a fjord and got off the plane
for a few minutes.

It started to rain hard...

Beautiful scenery around Ketchikan!

On the way to Juneau from Ketchikan, a Norwegian cruise ship
seemed to be in a hurry to get to Juneau. It was like this ship and
our ship were racing. They beat us. They were already docked
when we got there. It was pretty to watch that ship with lights on.
But at times it appeared to be a "ghost ship" through the fog.

Juneau:

Since Terry and Scott decided to sign up for "Behind the Scene" tour at the very last minute the night before and Maureen wanted to work out in the morning, so I picked up a minivan at the airport at 8:30am, picked up Mom and Ken back at the ship and went to salmon hatchery. It was a small hatchery, but it was an interesting place. We could see salmons swim up a long ladder. We even watched the workers slitting salmons' stomach to collect their eggs on live web cam.

Thousands of salmons crammed in the pond

Inside the small visitor center at the hatchery

There was a nice size aquarium with marine life in the visitor center.

As I was taking photos of fish and starfish, etc., this crab started
crawling towards where I was standing. It stopped right in front
of me and started staring at me and it did so for a long time. I don't
know why it started staring at me, but it was weird and funny...
It had seaweed growing on top of it.

After the hatchery we picked up Terry, Maureen and Scott and went to Medenhall Glacier.

I love glaciers. They are so spectacular!!!!!

This is an old photo of Mendenhall Glacier that an ranger took 25 years ago. See how close the glacier was to the waterfall (on the right).

This is the photo I took. Can you see how much it has receded in 25 years? It is sad...

We even got to touch 200 year old ice. That was cool (no pun intended)!

Then we went whale watching. We had a small boat to ourselves. Our captain was a cute 19 year-old girl. She grew up in Juneau and was the daughter of the owner of this whale watching company. She sure knew everything about the area. Her family lives on an island with no electricity and water, so they have solar panels for electricity. Only 14 people live on the island. They commute to Juneau everyday by motor boat. I don't know if I can live like that, but I thought it was cool that someone lives like that.

It was raining, but I was so determined to take photos of whales that I sat outside on the small deck with my camera wrapped in a towel for quite a long time. I was all soaked and freezing to death, but I had a great time!

Here are some wildlife we saw on this whale watching tour. (These are just a few of the hundreds of photos I took on this whale watch boat trip.)

Humpback whale

Going for a deep dive

We even saw young orcas playing.

See the fin of an adult orca on the very right? My goodness, that
was a huge fin! The captain said that it could be about 8 feet tall.

Another humpback whale surfaced.

Going for a deep dive

When I was looking for whales through my lens, this one suddenly surfaced. It was much closer to our boat. That was very exciting.

Sea lions, lazily sleeping on a buoy

Bald eagle

We wanted to go on Mt. Roberts Tramway, but we didn't have enough time...

Skagway:

We rented a minivan in Skagway and drove to the Canadian Yukon Territory. It was a beautiful ride to Yukon. Now we can say we've been to Yukon!

There were so may small lakes along the highway and they were all
an emerald green color.

Back to Skagway, had lunch and went on a helicopter ride to a glacier.

Here comes our helicopter.

All ready to fly!

This time they took us to a different glacier. We flew through a beautiful
fjord and headed southeast.

Approaching the glacier that we are going to land on.

Glacier was so dirty, it didn't look like ice. It rather looked like we
were landing on concrete in a parking lot.

She was our guide and was a very good one. She was from
Tennessee and has been doing the guide work for six years.
These guides spend 10~12 hours a day everyday on this glacier.

Group picture time. Cheese!

Our guide took us to a very deep crevasse, which goes 300 ft straight down.
We had to be very careful looking down in this crevasse.

Our guide had to hold on tight to the back of our life jacket as we
looked down to make sure that we wouldn't fall down
into this crevasse.

Water falling straight down into a 300 ft crevasse

I had to hold my camera out as far as I could
over this deep hole to take this photo,
standing on the very edge of the crevasse (Yes,
of course, the guide was holding very tight on
to my vest.) . It was so scary that I was feeling
kind of queezy. I was so afraid that I might
drop my camera into this crevasse...

Flight back to Skagway

Three huge cruise ships in the tiny town of Skagway. The town's population soars
from 800 people to 8000 in a matter of hours.

As we were exiting the fjord from Skagway, it was SOOO windy
at the front of the ship and very difficult to even stand still.

Glacier Bay National Park:

Beautiful National Park! Too bad the weather wasn't great. But it was still beautiful.

Some ice floating by our ship.

Approaching Lamplugh Glacier

There it is!

This glacier is about 3/4 mile wide.

This may not look tall, but this chunk is
at least 120 ft tall!

Just another beautiful glacier near Margerie Glacier.

There was a tour boat, trying to get as close as they could
to the glacier.

Margerie Glacier (World Heritage Site)

I was raining quite hard by the time we got to Margerie Glacier. Next two picutres are what Margerie Glacier looks like, if it weren't raining. (Photos from Internet)

This glacier is about 1 mile wide. (photo from Internet)

(Photo from Internet)

This glacier is standing about 250 ft above water and
100ft below water. Amazing! This is also
one of the most active glaciers for "Calving"
(it means breaking and dropping of ice walls
into the sea.)

I noticed that this glacier has more jagged and twisted form
on the top than any other glaciers I've ever seen.

As I zoomed in and was taking this photo of the top of the glacier (above), people yelled "There it goes!!! Wow!!!" So, I hurried and moved my camera down and this is what I saw. (Unfortunately I didn't see the big chunk of ice that broke off the glacier. I didn't even hear the sound of the ice breaking off till two or three seconds after they yelled.) I saw a couple of small chunks of ice fell before this one, but this was the best one and so exciting to see!

When a cruise ship comes into this park, National Park rangers from a nearby village come on board the ship and have lectures in the theater, put a lot of displays in the other part of the ship, etc. all day, so people can learn about this national park. It was very educating and fun.

Waiting for the lecture to start

This park ranger gave us a very nice presentation. We learned a lot.

At the end of the day, a boat came to our ship
to pick up the rangers. The Rangers had to climb
down on the rope ladder to get on this boat.
I am sure it was kind of hard to do. Our cruise ship wasn't
about to stop to make it easy.

Park rangers waiving good-bye to the passengers as they pull
away from the ship.

College Fjord:

Last day on the ship... We were feeling kind of sad that our cruise was nearing the end, but the sun came out for the first time while we were at sea (We were at sea for one day after Vancouver and for two days after Skagway) and that cheered us up. It felt SOOO good to have sunshine!!!

We just relaxed on the deck, tried one of Jacuzzis. As we sat in the Jacuzzis, we saw two whales that kept breaching over and over. That was very fun to watch, but sadly, I didn't have my camera with me, so no photos of that.

Scott taking a nap

Another nap

There are SOOO many beautiful glaciers in this fjord! I've never seen so many glaciers in one place!

For those who is wondering why this fjord is called College Fjord, here is an article from Internet.

College Fjord is a fjord located in the northern sector of Prince William Sound in the U.S. state of Alaska. The fjord contains five tidewater glaciers (glaciers that terminate in water), five large valley glaciers, and dozens of smaller glaciers, most named after renowned East Coast colleges (women's colleges for the NW side, and men's colleges for the SE side). College Fjord was discovered in 1899 during the Harriman Expedition, at which time the glaciers were named. The expedition included a Harvard and an Amherst professor, and they named many of the glaciers after elite colleges. According to Bruce Molina, author of Alaska's Glaciers, "They took great delight in ignoring Princeton."[1]

In 1964 College Fjord was the epicenter of the Good Friday Earthquake, the most powerful earthquake in U.S. history. It is a popular destination for cruise ships. From one place, it is possible to see eight of College Fjords Glaciers at once.

Breathtaking Scenery!

Grandma said "Now we can see the glaciers, so you'd better take some pictures." So I went to the deck in their cabin and WOW! I was awestruck by this breathtaking scenery! It was SOOO beautiful that I couldn't stop taking pictures.

Harvard Glacier

Harvard

We had a naturalist on board the whole trip. She talked about
the history of places, wildlife of Southeastern Alaska, and she
watched for wildlife and let people know through PA system
where we can see them. Here, she announced that she spotted an
otter. I got so excited, because I REALLY, REALLY wanted to
see otters. However, he was so far away, I couldn't even see very
good through zoom lens. But this is definitely an otter. (See below.)