Alaskan Cruise
That was our family’s vacation for this summer. I am writing while still on it, in fact. Everyone we knew had done an Alaskan cruise and said it was a MUST. I have to agree.
The first day on the ship, which is quite nice, I went out to our balcony to look for creatures in the water. I scoured the ocean for what seemed like hours, willing ANY signs of life to appear. I was finally rewarded when giant basking sunfish showed up here and there, looking like enormous floating shark heads in the water. They stare rather stupidly back up at you. When I’d see them, I’d call our son to put down his iPhone game for all of 5 seconds to come look.
Then a group (pod?) of dolphins appeared and surfed in the boat’s wake. That was really cool.
The first town we docked at was Juneau, where we went on a nature hike. Lots of trees and moss. The absolutely best part to me, and NOT to our son, was when a bear family showed up on the trail ahead of us. A mom and four cubs. I’d always heard a mother bear was the most dangerous thing to encounter, but the one on the trail was not too animated. She took one look at our group, which made no effort to approach her, and waddled off into the woods, her incredibly cute cubs following behind her. THAT was awesome.
After that, we went on a boat to whale watch. As we’d done this before in Hawaii, this was not as new. What we saw that day was, though. We got to see a killer whale sailing around, a very cool sight. Then our tour guide heard of something good on the radio, and we sped over to it.
There was a group of 8-9 humpback whales bubble-feeding, and it was a sight right out of National Geographic. Bubble-feeding is when a group of whales surrounds a school of fish, swims in circles and blows air all the while. This confuses the school of fish. Then a whale at the bottom of all this activity gives the signal for the group to close in and chow down.
Another neat sight was sailing up to a glacier at Glacier National Park. As we floated closer, large ice chunks appeared in the water. We had to keep some distance from the glacier, but it too was still amazing to see. Periodically, huge chunks would fall off the glacier into the water. After a delay of several seconds, a sound like very loud thunder could be heard. It was like the whales to me, a sight I’d seen in magazines or on TV, only right in front of me, which made it incredible.
My husband and son went salmon fishing. Lots of that around Alaska, as salmon are everywhere up here.
In between these excursions, we are on the ship. LOTS of good food, and the ship itself is very nice. Most people with kids opt for the Disney cruises, but we did not. Our ship is geared towards the older set, to be sure, but that has been okay. Our son is pretty excited about this afternoon’s bingo tournament.
