Just a fair warning, I'm about to share way too many pictures. But how do you narrow down photos from your favorite vacation ever!? So enjoy just a few of my favorites from our Royal Caribbean's Radiance of the Seas Alaskan Cruise!
We started our trip in Vancouver, these first few photos are from the Port of Vancouver.
This is Lion's Gate Bridge. Our cruise ship went under the bridge with very little clearance. We bought a deck of playing cards on the ship (because even though I told Eric playing cards were at the top of my packing list, my packing list was in my head and I totally forgot them) and there was a card about this bridge that said that it was built by the Guinness family- you know, the ones who make the beer.
From our first formal night! Before the hives I got two days before we left took over my entire body. Thank goodness it was Alaska and we wore pants and long shirts almost every day.
Our first official stop was in Ketchikan. It was pretty rainy this day, but it really wasn't horrible. We heard a lot of people complaining about the rain, but honestly, it was more just a constant light rain, definitely not enough where we couldn't do anything. Some people must not get rain where they live ha! And it is Alaska after all.
We walked down historic Creek Street. When the salmon are running, they say that this creek is just red/pink from all the salmon in it.
Here's the salmon ladder that will be full of salmon come July.
We went to Saxmon Village Totem Pole Park. It was filled with replicas of original totem poles from around the area. The totem poles were so cool! The detail and design that went into these things was truly amazing.
The next day we were in Icy Straight Point/Hoonah. Now this town is tiny- two gas stations, no bank. But everyone we met was so incredibly nice. And it was so beautiful there.
We also did our favorite thing of the whole vacation here- whale watching! If you ever go, be sure to look up Shawn and Casey from Glacier Wind Charters. We had the best time, and Casey was so knowledgeable about everything! He took us straight to where there were whales, and we followed them around for the duration of our time. We were in a small, six person boat that gave me plenty of room to move around and take all of the pictures I wanted. And Shawn's wife Teresa made a super delicious salmon dip for us to eat!
I wish I could say that this was our boat, but we didn't get so lucky! We did get pretty close to the whales, but they never decided to swim under our boat.
Probably the coolest thing was watching the whales bubble feeding! I bet they bubble fed about 4 or 5 times while we were watching them. You could always tell when they were about ready to come up, because the birds would all swoop down to the water to collect the fish before the whales came up. (You can see that in the next picture.) The whales will blow bubbles, which traps the fish and brings them to the surface of the water, then they come out of the water with their mouths open to eat the fish. We also saw lots of fin slapping, where they lay on their side and slap their fin against the water, and one whale even breached, but I unfortunately didn't get a picture quick enough of that.
Our cruise ship from the whale watching boat.
There was a brewery on the side of the road on our walk back to the ship, so we had to stop in!
Did I mention it was beautiful here?
This is the old cannery. It used to be a running cannery, now its basically a museum with a few shops in it.
The next day we were in Juneau and we had the most beautiful sunshiney day! Which was good because we went on an 8 mile bike ride today, and that would have been no fun in the rain. We started our bike ride at the beautiful location below. The lake is called Auke Lake. Our guide told us that Auke means lake, so the lake is called "lake lake".
We rode bikes to this amazing view of the Mendenhall Glacier.
I can't get over the detail in these glaciers! It was truly something amazing to see. They told us that the glacier grows by 400 feet every year, but also recedes 600 feet a year, so overall it recedes 200 feet a year. We are planning to come back in 15 or 20 years, it will be interesting to see what it looks like then!
I had to catch the little white butterfly that was flying around on our way back from the glacier.
For lunch we had King Crab Legs! One leg was about 40 bucks, but it was so yummy!
I made Eric go back to the glacier after we ate, because I wanted to hike closer to the glacier and to Nugget Falls, which is right next to Mendenhall Glacier. You can see the glacier to the left and the falls to the right in the picture below. Note how tiny the people look next to everything!
This is a picture looking from the falls back towards the visitor center area.
Next up was Skagway. I think that this was the most beautiful area that we went to. Gorgeous mountains everywhere, it was picture perfect! The town buildings were made to look like they did during the gold rush, which was pretty neat.
On this day we hiked to the Gold Rush Cemetery and Lower Reid Falls. This was the view about a half mile from the cemetery and falls.
First up was Gold Rush Cemetery. I think the most well known people buried here are "Soapy" Smith and Frank Reid. Soapy was the bad guy of the gold rush era. He got in a duel with Reid. Reid killed Soapy, but he also died 12 days later from complications from a gunshot wound from that shoot out.
A lot of the headstones were just wooden replicas of the originals. But there were some original headstones still standing.
Just a short walk behind the cemetery were the Lower Reid Falls. It was a very pretty waterfall.
We didn't ride the White Pass train (and I'm having a little bit of regret over that- something we will have to do next time we go!), but I did catch it coming back into town. The White Pass Railroad was built towards the end of the gold rush era to help miners get from Skagway to the heart of the Yukon where the gold was found.
The view of Skagway from our ship in the port. I told you it was beautiful!
But the most beautiful part was the ride out of Skagway. Mountains on each side of the ship for miles and miles and miles. We spent a few hours out on the deck just watching the scenery and counting the glaciers we saw.
These next two pictures are of two of the glaciers we saw as we were sailing. In the second picture, you can even see the water melting down from the glacier forming small waterfalls.
This little island perplexed us while we were on the deck watching the scenery, but Eric found it in our playing card deck! It's called Eldred Rock. It's about twenty miles south of Skagway, and the lighthouse was built shortly after the gold rush started when many ships began coming up this channel to get to Skagway.
The last "stop" was at Hubbard Glacier. Our ship got up within a half mile of the glacier, which was so cool! And it might not look very tall, but they said that the glacier is taller than our cruise ship. And, they said that this is technically two glaciers, Valerie Glacier is on the left hand side. You can't see the divide from the front, but apparently from the top you can see the line where the two glaciers meet.
We had to drive through all of this ice to get up close to the glacier.
The detail in this thing is unbelievable. I love how you can see the pressed layers of ice at the bottom.
A splash from ice calving off the glacier.
Probably the coolest thing was watching, and listening, to chunks of ice calving off the glacier. It sounds like thunder when the ice is getting ready to calve. I caught a series of a pretty big chunk calving below.
^The ice chunk is right here. You can watch it falling in the next few pictures.
A few crew members took a lifeboat and brought back a small little iceberg floating in Disenchantment Bay.
And there it is, a small sampling of pictures from the cruise. I have over a thousand more pictures, so if you want to know more or see more pictures just let me know, I'd love to share!! We can't recommend an Alaskan cruise enough. It was our favorite vacation, and like I said earlier, we are already planning to go back-there's so much to do!
