Princess Cruise to Alaska for 25th Anniversary – Part One

We departed from Seattle and returned a week later with the best memories!  Our concierce travel agent, Julie Drouin, and Princess Cruises made our silver anniversary illustrious. Our ports of call were Seattle, Ketchican, Juneau, Skagway, Victoria, BC, and our on-board adventure was to the Mendenhall Glacier through Tracy Arm Fjord.

There was a lot of planning involved with this vacation, and we knew to expect a few hiccups along the way. The first was getting to the Seattle dock in time to board the ship.  We made it by the skin of our teeth after driving up from visiting family in Portland and stopping along the way to rebuy formal clothes which we forgot to bring.

Seattle was beautiful by day and by night, see pictures below.  How do we know this?  After leaving for Alaska, the captain had to turn the ship around and we had a 4 hour delay.  We kept busy and didn’t realize what was going on until we were underway again, the crew made up the time as we slept, keeping us on schedule.  Way to go, Princess Cruises!

One of the many entertainers on the ship were the incredible ice sculpters.  They created these wonderful creatures, an eagle and a fish & sea weed, in less than a half hour.  They worked old school, using hammer and chisels and made it snow while they raced each other to finish their sculpture.  It was amazing!

Once we made it to our first port, Ketchican, I was enamored by the Alaskan scenery.  Not seen in the picture below is the mountain beyond the treeline.  While it never rained on us, there was some fog. The cooler temps felt great to this southern girl. At this stop we got to eat fresh crab and “hunt” for bears, visit a bird of prey sanctuary, feed caribou, and watch a totem carver at work, as well as learn some native Alaskan stories from our travel guide.

These stained glass pieces, above,  lined the boardwalk from the ship dock to the visitor center.  Rich in detail and color, there we several scenes that represented Alaskan natural resources.

You want to stop time in it’s tracks with a sunset like this one.  Our trip had many of these and we made sure to see them all.

Getting up at 6:00am was TOTALLY worth it to see the  beautiful Tracy Arm Fjord and get to the Mendenhall blue ice Glacier.  The lapis lazuli blue is much more spectacular in person.

The ship did two 360* turns so that everyone on deck could get a picturesque view of the glacier.  Passengers and were taking pictures of each other to get that perfect “Christmas card shot.”
Next stop, Juneau…