Sat 8th - Seattle Aquarium

6/8 is apparently World Ocean day, so the aquarium was just a wee bit busy. Even so, we had a good time. We had lunch on the pier where we watched the wheel go by. Afterword, we went back to the room to get away from the crowds.

Sun-Mon 9-10th - Departure, At Sea

Sun we boarded the ship around noon and found our cabin. I took a few pictures from the balcony and we were surprised that "the mountain was out" that day. Usually it's too overcast in Seattle to see Mt Rainier.

Mon was an at-sea day as we headed up towards Juneau. I did a little whale watching and saw a few spouts and one tail through the weather. The guide on the ship said they were probably Minke whales. We attended the fancy dining room both nights but decided we liked self-service eating better and had the rest of our meals up in the Lido Market.

Tue 11th - Juneau

Rainy day in Juneau so we both got soaked while waiting for a tour bus to take us up to see Mendenhall glacier. Kellie camped out in the visitor center while I hiked with my camera in the rain. The rain cleared out for a while while I was hiking and looking up in the tree tops hoping to maybe see a bear. No bears, but I did spot a porcupine! That made my afternoon.

While waiting in the rain a lady in another group was "entertaining" us by trying to sing Abba tunes that she couldn't remember. Every time she dropped a word, I'd watch Kellie cringe. At one point the missing word was "Fernando" which she said with a perfect deadpan even though the lady wasn't listening to us. For the rest of the trip, all I had to do to make Kellie giggle was to lean over and say "Fernando". Yes, we're easily amused.

Wed 12th - Hubbard Glacier

A lazy day of watching the beautiful scenery go by from our balcony while we sailed up the bay to the foot edge of Hubbard glacier. We saw a few really big chunks calve off while we watched, but I only caught one of them in pictures. The tour boat in front of the glacier had 3 decks of people, so it was about 30ft above the waterline. By that estimate, the wall of ice that calved was probably 150ft tall!

Thu 13th - Sitka

For our Sitka tour we chose "Birds, Bears, and Barnacles", which included a visit to the Alaska Raptor Center, the Fortress of the Bear rescue, and the Sitka Sound Science Center. It was a really nice tour and I got quite a few really good pictures.

On our way again towards Ketchikan, Kellie saw a whale flank too fast for me to get a picture. But, I had plenty of time to catch the otter as she floated by.

Fri 14th - Ketchikan

We chose not to take a tour in Ketchikan. We got off the ship and shopped through town at our own pace. Kellie found the yarn shop that she wanted to visit. I enjoyed the scenery. We visited the Southeast Alaska Discovery Center which is a small National Park Service museum about the Tongass National Forest.

As we left town in the middle of the day, there were a lots of wild eagles everywhere. I took a few shots of this one fishing cabin that was very cluttered, but also had 15-20 eagles decend on it to fight over some fish that they'd found there. After dinner that evening we sat on the Lido deck and watched the ocean go by. We saw a few small pods of dolphins and one really big pod with a few dozen of them in it. Kellie spotted a really tall spout quite a ways off that we figure was from a humpback whale.

Sat-Sun 15-16th - At-Sea, Return to Seattle

For most of the day we just rested and napped. Kellie had a cold for most of the week and I just picked it up from her as well. Sat evening we briefly docked in Victoria, BC but neither of us got off the ship. I did go up to the bow to watch the sights as we came into port and take a few pics of scenery and seagulls.

Sunday morning we left the ship to take a half-day Seattle tour. Our flight didn't leave until 11:45pm that night, so it was nice to have something we could do while someone else watched our luggage. We visited the space needle and grabbed some more goodies from the Pike Place Market. The rest of the day, 11 hours worth, was spent in the Delta Sky lounge at SEATAC while we read the hours away. The mountain was out again and there was some nice sunset color on it.

Video Clips

Occasionally on our trip I tried to take some videos with my phone or with the Nikon while it was on the tripod and the boat was moving. These are the ones I wanted to share.