We boarded the Crown Princess on a warm, clear, sunny Autumn day in Seattle. Balcony Stateroom, Aloha 608, was super comfy, and it gave us the opportunity to stay in the comfort of our room while still viewing glorious Alaska if we didn’t really want to go up on deck.
Juneau – Alaska’s Remote Capital
It was a grey, rainy morning when the ship was pulling-in to our first port city, Juneau. We all had our layers, gloves, scarves, hats and waterproof jackets, so off we went to find our way to the Mendenhall Glacier park, 12 miles out of town. The original plan was to take a city bus to the park (the most economical option, compared with the private shuttles, taxis and ship excursions). We hadn’t counted on the fact that it was Labor Day, and the buses were not running! As we were about to ask the closest taxi/van for their rates, another group of four asked if we wanted to share. Sure! Small world – when we introduced ourselves along the way, we discovered that all of us are from Santa Clarita! One of the other group’s members graduated from Saugus High (where our kids also attended high school).
The first stop at the park: a short walk on a mostly-raised boardwalk along the creek, where salmon were still spawning. We really hoped to (safely) see a bear (or two or three). Turns-out, we missed seeing a mama bear and three cubs by about 15 minutes! We did see salmon, of both the swimming-upstream and spawned-and-dead varieties, along with the wide vistas of mountains, evergreens and the beginning of Fall colors.
The Mendenhall Glacier is part of the Tongass National Forest, and there is an easy, level, 0.8-mile hike from the parking lot of the Visitor Center to the beach of the lake where one can easily view the Glacier, as well as get up-close and personal with towering (377 feet high) Nugget Falls. (Side note: we have friends who got engaged right on this beach about a year ago!)
Skagway – Gateway to the Klondike Gold Rush
At Skagway, our second port, there was a light rain most of the day – but off we went. I have to say, it is crazy how large these cruise ships are when they’re docked at the end of the main street of one of these little towns. I wish I’d taken a photo, because the ships absolutely dwarf the buildings (and there were two next to each other, as well as another two on the other side of the inlet). With over 3,000 people on each ship, that was 12,000 tourists descending on Skagway, a town with a peak summer population of just under 1,000 people! Right off the ship, we hopped-onto the local SMART shuttle ($5 bucks for an all-day pass – have them stamp inside your wrist, so it doesn’t wash off!), and took it out to the stop nearest the town’s historic cemetery. 1898 Gold Rush-era scoundrel, “Soapy” Smith, along with less infamous citizens, were buried here on the slope of a forested hillside.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soapy_Smith
There were a few old, original headstones, but most of the headstones were actually new, white-painted wooden markers. Kind of like the ones you’d see in the neighborhood on Halloween. I know that the cemetery is authentic, and heck, the wooden “headstones” probably were made of wood and had degraded over time, requiring the new ones. However, if you’re looking for a really old, charming cemetery, this is not it. Keep walking up the hill, though, and you can take the trail to the waterfall. It is a short, simple hike up the hill to the falls, and look in the water – you might even see little flecks of gold!
From the falls, we walked over to the entrance of Jewel Gardens, where we caught the SMART shuttle back into town. The whole downtown area of Skagway is actually part of the Klondike Gold Rush National Historic Park, with its charming buildings, dating back to the 1800s, lovingly restored.
After a lunch of locally-caught halibut fish & chips and a Spruce Tip Ale at the Skagway Brewing Company, we took two park-ranger-led tours of downtown. These tours run throughout the day, and have several different themes. The tours are free, but can fill-up, so visit the park Visitor Center on 2nd and Broadway to get tickets ahead of time. The tours we chose were about an hour-long, and while both included Skagway’s Gold Rush history, one was focused on how goods and services were (and still are) brought into the remote location for the use of the citizens, while the other provided information on the lives of minorities during the Gold Rush era (including the African American “Buffalo” Soldiers sent here to serve in 1899, as well as the Japanese (and other) women enslaved by the sex trade.
After about 20,000 steps around Skagway, it was time to warm-up and enjoy dinner on the ship!
Glacier Bay National Park & Preserve
This was the highlight of our cruise – the day the ship spent in Glacier Bay National Park. The ship arrived in Glacier Bay in the morning, after being boarded by Rangers from the National Park Service, who would set-up a temporary Ranger’s Station onboard and broadcast information about the glaciers, bay and wildlife throughout the day.
Most of our time was spent in the bay next to the tidewater glacier, Marjorie. The face of the glacier (about 20 stories high) was crackling and crunching while we watched, and it calved several times while we watched. The sound was fascinating to experience, and unlike anything we’d heard before. As large chunks calved off of the face of the glacier, the deep rumbling boom was followed by more crackling and a wave of new icebergs flowing into the jade-green water. The water of the bay, as with any body of water near a glacier, is full of ultra-fine particles of glacial silt (powdery sand). Silt is created when the glacial ice grinds the rocks as it moves past/over land, and is deposited into the water, leaving it quite opaque.
Moving further into the park, the ship entered Johns Hopkins Inlet, giving us a more distant view of the Johns Hopkins glacier.
Ketchikan – Alaska’s First City, The Salmon Capital of the World, AND The Rainiest City in the US
With up to 200 inches of rain per year, we were happily surprised with a sunny Autumn day on our visit to Ketchikan. Pulling into port, we spied bald eagles in the shorleline trees (look for their white heads in the evergreens) and floatplanes taking off over the bay.
Today, we walked from the ship, through downtown Ketchikan, to the tourist shops along the creek. Filled with spawning salmon, there was a lone seal in the creek, barking at greedy seagulls. This path leads to the salmon ladder, where you can watch as they choose to either climb the ladder, or swim up the natural waterfall to the wide, shallow creek above. They were there, spawning and dying by the hundreds (no fishy smell, I promise).
Walking along the creek, we took a few minutes to visit the Totem Heritage Center ($5, not a lot to see, but it was cool to view some of the oldest surviving totem poles in Alaska, along with some Native Tlingit, Haida and Tsimshian art).
Victoria, British Columbia, Canada
Our final port for the cruise was a night-time visit to Victoria. Primarily a sea day, we arrived in Victoria with just enough time to visit downtown and stop at a pub. We had all been to Victoria before, so missing-out on Butchart Gardens wasn’t a disappointment. While it would have been fun to see more of this pretty Canadian city, the capital of British Columbia, we enjoyed a nice post-dinner walk on a clear evening.
