Alice has always wanted to go to Alaska and was disappointed when Bill said that they would probably never take their boat that far north. True, it IS far north and at the rate of 10 miles an hour it would take a long time to get there! When she saw an ad for a cruise up the Inside Passage of Alaska Alice approached Bill about making the trip in 2008, since they were already planning on being in Washington State. August 3 found us cruising out of Vancouver B.C. on the Zaandam, one of the smaller Holland America Line vessels. The weather was glorious as we headed north. Our first stop was Ketchikan, where it rains 12 FEET a year. It was a bright, sunny day for us as we took in a Logger Show and toured a Totem park. Then it was on to Juneau, the capital, where one must either fly in or float in: no roads in or out! We enjoyed a day of snooping around the town and seeing the capitol. By the time we reached Skagway the weather was gray, though not cold. We took the famous Yukon and White Pass Railway ride to the border of Canada and back, returning disappointed since the cloud cover ruined good photo opps. Bill's favorite part of the entire trip was Glacier Bay! It was a beautiful day and since our ship was 'small' the captain was able to get quite close to Margerie Glacier, which dwarfed us at 250' tall- as in photo above. The other picture above shows how dirty glaciers actually are since they carve out their pathways through the rock and dirt of the mountainsides. We can't even count all the glaciers we saw, but it was both amazing and saddening to see them gradually melting away. Our cruise ended in Seward where we toured the Sealife Center and then rode a bus to Anchorage. As we passed Turnagin Arm we spotted an entire pod of Beluga whales, now endangered! We stayed at a bed and breakfast in Anchorage and checked out the city for three days- one misty day and two more beautiful ones to top off the trip north~ and what we saw of the great state of Alaska was well worth seeing!
