Glenn and I flew to Seattle two days before our cruise to Alaska was to begin. We arrived quite late—with the time change, it was equivalent to midnight for us—and spent the night downtown at the Westin, where we were to eventually meet with Bob and Mary, friends from Fort Myers, who would be cruising with us.
The next (Sunday) morning, we left the hotel to see if we could find some breakfast at the Pike Street Market, but it was only 7AM on the west coast, so we watched vendors setting up their flower stands and arranging fish and octopi (probably 8 feet, tip-to-tip) on beds of ice, preparatory to opening. 
Wandering around the nearby streets, we passed up the ubiquitous coffee shops and found a bagel shop, instead, that offered an egg and cheese sandwich, which served our purposes very nicely. The weather was clear and beautiful, promising to get unseasonably warm, with temperatures of 93 forecast. We were fortunate to be able to see Mt. Rainier that morning, but didn’t realize how much so until clouds settled in and completely hid it for the rest of our time there. 
We strolled north to the sculpture park to see all three (!) of the pieces exhibited there, and then back along the waterfront, where we spent some time enjoying the aquarium and eventually boarded a local cruise boat to tour the harbor.
Monday morning, August 16, we met our Bob and Mary, who had been doing some touring on their own in Canada. The four of us explored the Pike’s Place Market and the surrounding area some more before checking out of the hotel and catching a cab to our ship. We were to take Royal Princess, one of the smallest of the Princess fleet, with a passenger contingent of only about 770, as opposed to the 3,000+ passenger ships we’d always taken before. So we were interested to see how differently various services would be handled. One difference we discovered immediately was that embarkation was much faster than usual, with so many fewer passengers to run the security gamut.
Because we had booked together, our friends’ and our balcony staterooms were adjacent, near the stern on the port side. They couldn’t have been better situated. We felt minimal motion in the stern and were to discover that the port side afforded much better views than starboard did (which we learned by venturing onto the open decks during our days of scenic cruising). Lunch was served buffet style on the Lido deck as we boarded, and then, following the mandatory safety drill, we were free to settle in or explore the ship as we wished.
Once again, the weather was beautiful, though a heavy haze hid Mt. Rainier from our view. The water was unbelieveably calm, almost as though we weren’t moving, and as flat as early morning on Lake George, with only gentle surface ripples. The water got a bit choppier when we left Elliott Bay and turned northwest, past the Olympic Mountains, which we could see from our balcony. Through the afternoon, the air grew noticeably cooler, dropping from 90 into the 50s.
Tuesday was spent entirely at sea. The air was cooler and quite foggy. It felt odd to suddenly be resorting to long slacks and flannel shirts. The water was rougher, too. Though some passengers experienced mal de mer, our party suffered no serious discomfort.
We found that the ship offered all the amenities of the larger vessels, including evening entertainment (though there were fewer singers & dancers for the “big” shows), and even included a “resident” naturalist to provide informative talks throughout the cruise. The entertainment venues were large lounges with stages and/or dance floors rather than a real theater (as on the larger ships), and the Lido buffets offered fewer options, but I’m not sure either was a detriment to our cruising pleasure. The former provided a more intimate feeling, and food supplies were still ample and varied enough to suit anyone. We even had three formal nights, so Glenn could strut his tux at dinner and afterwards dance to a salsa combo in the upstairs lounge.
Wednesday, anniversary balloons appeared in the corridor to recognize our anniversary (though they were placed outside the Bob and Mary’s door rather than ours—there was some confusion about who was in which cabin—but we got some good laughs out of that).
That morning we found ourselves in Ketchikan. We strolled through town, stopping to marvel at the salmon huddled, as far as we could see, at the base of the Ketchikan River, all nose-to-the-river, patiently waiting their turn to swim upstream. The river itself was so crowded there was literally no room for one more.
The water’s surface appeared cobbled with the backs of the fish already struggling to work their way upstream.
A fisherman stood on the bridge at the base of the river, his line cast into the harbor (since the river itself is off limits during spawning season), his wife cleaning their quota of fish on the rocks below.
We followed the stream uphill to watch the salmons’ persistence in struggling their way to the spawning grounds, through and over one another, thickly packed, over boulders, through rapids, many being hurled onto the rocks or bearing open wounds like battle scars from having been battered so often.
On and on they strove, gradually thinning their numbers as some died in the battle; others succeeded in reaching the next quieter step where they could rest before struggling on.
As we ventured further, we met a little boy named Brendon— “I live in that house”—who chatted with us awhile, kindly warning us that “fishing in the river and snagging fish is against the law.”
It seems that the fish experience physical changes as they move from salt into fresh water, including a change of color in some varieties. We are told that the difficult spawning runs and all the jumping actually serve to prepare the females to lay their eggs. We have no doubt that it helps to ensure survival of only the fittest. Downstream, most of the fish were small, well under 18 inches; those who made it upstream averaged considerably larger. Within days of spawning, of course, all of them die, no matter how large or strong they are, which seems a shame but is the natural course of their life cycle.
Temperatures warmed slightly as we walked, fog settled in, and we felt intermittent sprinkles. So we felt we got a pretty representative taste of the weather’s changeability, the moderated climatic conditions in that region, and a variety of atmospheric visual effects without the discomfort of heavy rain, wind, or otherwise inclement weather. The day’s overcast inspired Glenn and me to take advantage of an end-of-season clearance sale to buy a couple of hooded jackets, which we put to good use in the following days.
Thursday was spent in Juneau. We had been surprised at the continuous stream of bush planes that flew in and out of Ketchikan. Waterfront properties all seemed to have boats, which wasn’t surprising, but an extremely high proportion also had seaplanes moored just offshore, even if there was no car in evidence. But in Juneau it made sense, since the capital city has no roads to the “outside world.” It is accessible only by air or water.
Visibility was poor when we arrived in Juneau, so rather than taking a cable car up Mt. Roberts to view the city from above, the four of us caught a local shuttle bus to the Mendenhall Glacier. We were surprised at how blue the fresh ice at its face appeared, and learned that it had calved only the day before, so the blue hadn’t yet faded to white, as it would eventually do. Some of the “calves” in Mendenhall Lake were downright turquoise, though the lake itself appeared murky, the effect of glacial dust that precipitates out of the melting icebergs.
I was surprised that the upper surface of the glacier appeared so irregular, not as smooth as I had suppose it would be. We viewed the glacier from several different angles and followed a trail along the edge of the lake. A light rain made the granite rocks of the trail treacherous once we got off the prepared path.
Mary decided to stay at the visitors’ center to get out of the rain, while Bob, Glenn, and I followed another trail into the woods. The “rain forest” growth there was quite different from what we tend to think of because, of course, this was not tropical. Tall evergreens predominated, covered with mosses and lichens, and undergrown with ferns and small shrubs.
The trail crossed a stream where we found green-headed, red-bodied salmon spawning—coho and king salmon, mostly, I understand, with some colorful Dolly Varden trout mixed in. We stayed and observed their behaviors for quite awhile before continuing along the loop trail.
When Mary rejoined us, a ranger directed us to another path that had a salmon viewing platform. This route seemed less interesting until Glenn spotted a black bear making his way down the stream in search of fish. We watched him for quite a long time as he worked his way down toward the salmon gate and then back from whence he had come. He never did manage to catch a fish, but lumbered through the water, up onto the shore, and then pounced down into the water again, amid great splashing and to-do. He’d lumber through the water, pounce on something, lumber some more, back and forth across the stream, paying no attention whatsoever to the crowd of people watching him from the open walkway above him. He wore a blue tag on one ear, which marked him as a troublemaker—apparently he had a tendency to get into people’s trash, so the rangers were keeping an eye on him; if he gets too bold, he’ll have to be removed, but that’s a last resort. We also caught a glimpse of a porcupine. The others got a better view of it than I did—I spotted only the tail as it disappeared up a shrub-covered hillside.
After a drink break at the Red Dog Tavern back in town, we reboarded the ship and attended a talk by Libby Riddles, the first female Iditerod winner, who spoke about sled dogs and her experiences working with and racing them.
Friday morning, we anchored off Icy Strait Point and tendered in to the pier. 
The Icy Strait pier is used primarily by fishing and crabbing vessels, which delivered their loads to the processing plant right on site. It included a demonstration set-up to show how salmon are processed and canned.
Soon the four of us found a foot trail along the shoreline, where we hoped to see some kind of wildlife—harbor seals or maybe some whale spouts; beyond a domestic cat and a number of birds, we were disappointed in that respect, but the trail led into another rain forest, which we thoroughly enjoyed exploring on well maintained paths.
This forest consisted of tall, thickly grown evergreens and mosses. The second-growth forest seemed to be formed on stilts; we learned that the trees grow out of the stumps of the previous generation’s growth. When the stumps eventually rot away, the second-growth tree stands on bowed legs that had once straddled the now-missing stump, leaving a rather odd appearance.
After finishing the loop, we walked into the little Tlingit fishing village of Hoonah. It consisted of weather beaten houses, fishing boats, a tiny cemetery (though some of the houses had neatly engraved stones in front of them, as well, not as headmarkers but as memorials), a few compact churches, a shop or two, and crabbing piers, with crab pots stacked neatly outside, each stack marked for a specific boat.
By the time we’d walked to Hoonah, the air had warmed considerably—probably into the low 60s—with less wind than near the pier, though even there both water and wind had been surprisingly calm. The sun tried to break through the clouds, and we all removed our coats before we turned around and walked back to the ship. Bob pointed out a bald eagle once—the white head and tail were quite distinct.
Later, back onboard, we saw a number of whale spouts, arching backs, and tail flukes, quite near the ship while we still lay at anchor.
Saturday was a day for scenic cruising. We watched for whales as we approached Glacier Bay, where only two cruise ships a day are permitted to enter.
Two park rangers and a designated pilot boarded the ship by rope ladder as we entered the bay, and stayed with us for most of the time to guide us through and explain what we could expect to see, including whales, sea otters, seals, and Stellar sea lions.
There were plenty of birds, too, and spectacular scenery.
It’s hard to imagine how those mountains should have come to be named the Fairweather Range, but we were indeed very fortunate to experience fair weather on our only day there. We’re told that that area typically gets only about 50 days a year of clear weather. Our day started cloudy but cleared up and gave us blue skies and sunshine the rest of the way—a very rare occurrence in this region.
We spent more than an hour at the base of the Marjorie Glacier, the captain rotating the ship so everyone could get a good view of it from their balconies. The ice here was quite blue because it breaks off so consistently and frequently it has less time to age to white before it sheers off again.
We watched a number of small calvings occur, but no dramatically major sheerings-off. Glenn figured, based on what the rangers told us, that we had watched it move nine inches toward us in that short period of time. The upper surface of the glacier was so ragged it reminded me of hoodoos.
We also stopped by the Lamplugh Glacier, but that wasn’t being actively uncut by the sea water as the Marjorie was, so there wasn’t much active calving occurring there.
Sunday was another day spent entirely at sea. The Gulf of Alaska was unusually calm but the sky was overcast, and it rained most of the day.
We reached Seward on Monday morning, the half-way point of our two-week cruise. The town itself had very little of immediate interest to our party beyond the SeaLife Center.
So the four of us rented a car and drove to Exit Glacier, where we hiked in to the Glacier itself. The trails, as we have frequently found here, are in excellent shape, well maintained and clearly marked.
Once again, the weather was unusually good, and we soon stripped off our heavy coats. Later, back in Seward, we passed the high school track team running, bare-chested, in the warm sunshine, and campers basking in shorts and tank tops to enjoy the unusual weather. One ranger told us they had had 31 consecutive days of rain this summer, which had flooded and closed down one of the major roads. So the sunshine was understandably a most welcome change.
The scenery and mountains on the Kenai Peninsula were spectacular. The mountains were quite clearly demarked for vegetation zones: the tops bare rock, followed by a stretch of mosses and lichens, then a zone of low shrubs, and then a band of trees around the base. Mount Marathon overlooked the port, and we could see the trail the marathon runners used to the top—much appeared to be at more than a 45-degree angle—not my cup of tea, but it was impressive to look at. Even in August, a lot of the mountaintops are still gleaming with snow and ice.
After seeing the glacier, we turned westward on Route 1 to Cooper Landing, which we had been told was a fishing village. We thought it sounded picturesque, but it proved to be a tiny little lake village, whose main attraction appeared to be vacation fishing.
We stopped there at a roadhouse for lunch (I passed on the $15 hamburgers; a cup of warm soup sufficed for me) and then returned to Seward.
We wished afterward that we had headed the other direction on Route 1, toward Anchorage, to see the Alaskan Wildlife Conservation Center in Portage, which we had been told was a great way to see some of the larger land animals more common in the interior than along the coast.
The next day in Kodiak helped to make up for the missed opportunity. Once again the weather couldn’t have been better, clear skies, warm temperatures—both extremely rare occurrences here, since “It rains every day in Kodiak.”
We rented a car and drove first to Fort Abercrombie (beating the cruise ship tour group by an hour or more) and followed several of the hiking trails there on our own, looking into some abandoned bunkers that overlooked the coast. The Military History Museum offered displays of various weaponry, WWII communications equipment, uniforms, and maps of the area. It was focused more on Kodiak, specifically, than on the Aleutians in general, but it was still interesting to me, in view of family history.
The forests were so heavily covered in moss that they reminded me of something from a fairy tale or an intergalactic fantasy world.
Once again, we got lots of pictures, and considered it a highlight…until we drove south past the town of Kodiak, and around Women’s Bay.
As we rounded the tip of Women’s Bay, we stopped at one of the creeks that crossed the road to see if the salmon were running.
We followed a local woman along the creek bank; soon we came across fresh bear tracks and an abandoned, landed salmon. (Aside from her long-lensed camera, which appeared the primary reason for her outing, over her t-shirt our friend wore a gun and a band of ammunition.) “Annie” (we never learned her real name, and I kicked myself afterward for not getting a picture of her) turned back to talk with us, saying she spotted a bear in the distance, near a second creek that crossed the flats we were on.
We followed her back toward the road to get a little closer for the sake of photos. The bear—“that’s not a brown bear;” (she told Glenn) “that’s a Kodiak bear,” (In other words, Ya gotta appreciate what we’re facing here!) —had caught a large salmon and spent a long time on the graveled river side savoring it while we watched from a considerable distance. Once devoured, however, the fish remains were abandoned and the bear lumbered back toward the stream from which we had just come, so we followed along the road.
By this time a lot of local passersby had stopped their trucks and other vehicles to watch and enjoy the action, so quite a large crowd was gathering. The bear ignored us entirely except when a particularly noisy car engine roared. He continued his salmon hunt, sometimes successfully, sometimes not. Once he carried a prize well away from the stream and lay down in the deep grasses to enjoy his catch before returning to search for more. Sometimes he strolled leisurely beside the water, sometimes he sloshed through it, sometimes he pounced or lunged through it, always focused on the fish that were so large that their backs and the upper part of their tails showed above the surface of the shallow stream. The bear passed beneath the road bridge while dozens of people watched him from overhead. He continued to hunt, unfazed by either our proximity or our voices. At some places he’d lumber up onto the bank, round a shrub or clump of grasses, then stand poised, focused on the fish, until he’d suddenly pounce, landing with a great splash in the water, sometimes catching, sometimes losing his prey. Apparently this was a rare enough sighting that even the locals got excited about it and were phoning friends to tell them about the experience.
Wednesday was, once again, a day at sea to recross the Gulf of Alaska, which was again unusually calm and kind to us. We felt very fortunate to have had so little rain, cold, and rough going. We passed up the opportunity to relive the gold rush era in Skagway. The year-round population of a mere 200 was easy to believe. We did stroll through town, and enjoyed the costumed “dance hall girls” who hung out of upstairs windows inviting passersby in to see their shows, but opted instead to check out some hiking trails.
We chose one that led to a small lake. The trail wasn’t as well groomed as most we’d been on, more like the muddy tracks we’d expected—narrow, rocky, muddy, and steep as we worked our way up the hillside overlooking the town. At one turn, where the trail looked particularly difficult, both Mary and I turned around while the men continued up the track. We girls spent the next hour or so browsing through shops in town until the men returned and assured us that we had chosen wisely not to continue on that particular trek. Though they’d reached the lake, it was difficult going and not as satisfying as they had hoped.
After lunch, we headed the opposite direction and followed a trail to Smuggler’s Cove and then back to a point overlooking the channel. This proved a much easier hike, though still a bit hilly.
I was interested to watch the dramatic changes as the tide receded and returned in the few hours we were in port. While photographing some of the changes, I spotted some otters and harbor seals swimming near the ship. When we had left the ship to walk into town in the morning, the ebb tide had exposed a great wall of red seaweed. By the time we returned a few hours later, the seaweed was entirely submerged. We hadn’t been so aware of the tidal fluctuations at our other ports. The shoreline at Smugglers’ Cove was also covered with the same reddish, ribbony type of seaweed, which was smelly and squishy to walk on (we refrained from testing it very extensively).
Scenic cruising through Tracy Arm Fjord began about 6:30 on Friday morning. We immediately began to see “bergy bits” in the water. For once, the viewing was better off the starboard side, so we didn't try to see it all from our balconies.
Glenn and Mary watched from the Royal Lounge in the bow of the 10th deck (indoors). Bob and I both shot pictures from the open decks on 10 and 11, but froze in the wind so had to periodically go inside to thaw out.
The Sawyer Glacier was calving more actively than usual, and the water became so increasingly ice laden that we could proceed no closer to the foot of the glacier than Sawyer Island. There we turned a revolution and a half so everyone could see all sides, which included not only the Sawyer Glacier but a hanging glacier high up, seemingly in the clouds on the south side.
Sea Princess, which, with Sapphire Princess, had been in port with us in Skagway, had also been scheduled to cruise the fjord that day but turned around when they encountered so much ice. That ship is less maneuverable, so it would have been considerably more dangerous for them to try to traverse the narrow channels. As it was, our speed was radically reduced, and an officer stayed out on one of the lower decks to monitor the ice as it collected and scraped along the side of our vessel. The 17-mile round trip transit of the fjord took us more than the scheduled five hours.
But that gave us time to enjoy not only the spectacular mountains and glaciers but the waterfalls that cascaded down the steep slopes.
We spent the next several hours warming up. Then about mid-afternoon, we were getting into whale-sighting territory, so once again we bundled up and went out on our balcony.
The pod of whales we passed through must have been enormous because we watched spout after spout after spout until it looked like a geyser show at Yellowstone, with a humpback breaking the surface here, a tail fluke arcing there, and often several appearing at once. Some started breaching, though I caught only the great splashes that followed.
And some, quite close to the ship, began rolling, waving their fins as though to hail us. It was quite exciting as long as it lasted. But then the whales were left behind, and we saw no more of them. Around suppertime we reached the open ocean to head southward.
Saturday was another full day at sea. The water was surprisingly calm for being in the open ocean rather than in the Inner Passage. There was a little chop with some whitecaps, but there were no real swells.
Sunday we reached Victoria, British Columbia, around 2PM. We had passed and briefly paralleled an escorted nuclear sub as we approached the outer harbor but soon left it behind.
Although our primary goal in Victoria was to visit Butchart Gardens, Glenn and I also wanted to see something of the city and to stroll along Fisherman's Wharf. The ship’s tour to the Gardens wasn’t to take place until evening, with a scheduled return to the ship well after 10PM, so we decided to see everything on our own in daylight and return to the ship in time for dinner. Bob and Mary went off on their own, having visited the garden shortly before the cruise began; so Glenn and I walked into town, passing the Empress Hotel and the Inner Harbor waterfront, then caught a bus to the gardens.
The iconic sunken gardens were beautiful and proved to be Glenn’s favorite area. We climbed up into the viewing tower, but the view wasn’t as good from there as from the main approach.
I particularly enjoyed the Mediterranean Gardens, which reminded me a lot of my Grandfather Leonard’s terraced gardens with its stone walls and grassy expanses.
The Japanese garden also appealed to me.
And we both enjoyed the rose garden, into which tall delphiniums, in a variety of blues, had been intermingled.
All in all, we thought we made the right choice to see the gardens first in daylight. We were sorry only to have so little time to spend there before having to catch another bus back to the ship. But we had to finish packing and wanted to turn in at a reasonable hour for the next day’s early arrival in Seattle.
Monday morning, August 30, we disembarked in Seattle. In order to catch our flights, we had arranged for self-disembarkation (lugging all our own bags rather than entrusting them to porters), which preceded all other passengers off the ship. The four of us shared a cab to the airport, where we had to part at last. Bob and Mary went directly back to Fort Myers summer heat while Glenn and I flew to St. Louis to visit our kids and spend a couple more weeks in Wisconsin, where we brought the cool, wet, Alaskan weather with us, before returning home.
Copyright 2010 by Charlotte Mertz. All rights reserved.
