29 July - Friday - Cruise Day 7 - Inside Passage to Vancouver

G'day All,
Well the cruise is almost over and it has been a great adventure. Today was a cruising day en-route to Vancouver so the day was filled with ship activities and repacking. We went to bingo to try and win a seven day cruise for two and the odds were good as there were only 50 in the room but alas it wasn't to be. We tried bingo again later in the day but came up sort again. Penny ducked out to have a look at the towel folding demonstration, where they show you how to fold all the towel animals left in the room after each room service, it was a fun presentation. We caught up with two couples we met on the Rocky Mountaineer; Bill and Dot the Scottish couple and the Kiwi's Mary and Keith, we swapped addresses and had a good laugh before heading our own ways. Penny and I went to the last cruise stage show and they had a couple of very good singers and the show was quite good.

On our way to Vancouver in the morning so it was time to repack. We decided to do the quick exit in the morning and take our own luggage as we have to meet the transfer to Victoria in the morning and didn't want to have any luggage go missing again. This turned out to be a good strategy as there was minimal line up and the pick up for the transfer to Victoria on Vancouver Island was 8:30 am and not 10 am as the transfer voucher indicated, which was good as it meant minimal waiting time for transfers.

Cheers
Gay and Penny

28 July - Thursday - Cruise Day 6 - Ketchikan

G'day All,

We arrived at Ketchikan at around 10 am, we had breakfast before docking and headed into town for some more trinkets and a browse around town. We were told that this was the town for Alaskan carved soap stone, which was something Penny wanted as a memento from Alaska, so soap stone hunting was on the agenda for most of the morning before we had to meet to go on the Cultural Tour at 1 pm. We found a great place for Soap stone called Alaskan Fine Art and found a couple of pieces to bring home. The sculptor / carver (Eddie Lee) was on site and greeted us at the counter, he has been sculpting for over 30 years and is very proud of his work.

Ketchikan harbour and township.

A unique thing in Ketchikan is that the stairs are actually streets.

We caught the bus to the Ketchikan Cultural Centre and received a full history and description of local totem poles and their meaning. Interesting stories and nice to know what the meaning is behind each pole.

Despite what Penny thought this guy is holding a fish in his left hand :-)

From there we visited a re-creation of a typical First Nation village and told about the building construction and village lay out.

First Nation handiwork

Art work on a traditional hut

Main hub for a village

Internal decoration of the main village hut

One of the many totems.

The tour finished up at around 4:30 pm and we set sail again at around 6 pm. Time got away on us and we missed main service for tea so ended up at the pizza bar for tea and had a nice pizza with a refreshing drink (rum and coke). This was our last land stop before we head back to Vancouver on Saturday morning.

Cheers
Gary and Penny

27 July - Wednesday - Cruise Day 5 - Scenic Cruising through Glacier Bay

G'day All,

Before heading down to Ketchikan the ship headed north to Glacier bay to view several of the glaciers found there; Lamplugh, John Hopkins, Grand Pacific and the biggest of them all Margerie Glacier. The day was very misty and bleak and viewing the distant glaciers at times was difficult. We arrived in glacier bay at about 6 am and I didn't hold much hope that we would be seeing too much of Margerie Glacier and given all the hype by the crew on-board that would be a real shame since the glacier is over 110 metres tall and 1.6 km long. The day didn't get any clearer however as we approached Margerie Glacier we saw a few then hundreds of small icebergs until out of the gloom reared the glacier in all its glory. We parked in front of the glacier for 30 mins on each side of the ship to allow guests from both sides of the ship to see the view from their rooms. I have to say that the view was amazing and it was impressive to hear the cracks and groans as the ice ever so slowly flowed to the ocean. We witnessed a few slabs fall from the front of the glacier into the sea and saw a couple of kayaks, dwarfed by the shear size of the glacier, paddling through the small icebergs along the length of it.

John Hopkins glacier.

The blue hues of the ice combined with the darkness and gloominess of the clouds made for a surreal scene and hopefully some great photos to come after I get time to review them.

Margerie Glacier

Centre section of Margerie Glacier

We turned from the glaciers at about 4:30 pm and headed for Ketchikan, tomorrow's destination.

Cheers
Gary and Penny

26 July - Tuesday - Cruise Day 4 - Skagway - Shopping and Haines Eagle Raft Ride

G'day All,

We arrived at Skagway around 6:20 am and we slept in a little and had a breakfast delivered to the room so had a later start than normal. It was out for a bit of shopping prior to our 1 pm pre-booked Raft ride at Haines, a sanctuary for the Bald Eagle. It was another rainy day but not too cold so we headed out as planned. Shopping wasn't too exciting so we were really looking forward to seeing the bald eagles along the shallows of the most heavily populated area of bald eagles in the world. Another 40 min ferry ride to the township of Haines to take the raft ride down the river. The rafts held up to 8 people and is a gentle float along the river avoiding any rapids. The river is a spawning ground for salmon and feeding ground for the eagles. Unfortunately for us very few salmon were running and we only saw a handful of eagles over 300 metres away in the trees. A little disappointing for me as I was really looking forward to taking some great photos of the eagles :-( best I could do was to snap one a we passed by the tree it was roosting in.

One of the few Bald Eagles we saw.

None the less the raft ride was nice and relaxing with the guides doing all the rowing and us taking in the views and information. The river is in the form of a delta and ranges in depth from over your head to a few inches, yet because of the silt you couldn't tell the depth, the only hint was the dead trees lying in the river.

Rafting down the river in Haines, Alaska.

From the raft ride we returned back to the ship around 7 pm and had something for tea, the ship departed at around 8:45 pm. Next destination was a day on the water cruising viewing the glaciers of Glacier Bay from the ship.

Cheers
Gary and Penny

25 July - Monday - Cruise Day 3 - Juneau - Whales, Glaciers and Bears

G'day All,

Quite morning preparing for the day trip to Juneau the Capital of Alaska and our whale and glacier tour. We docked at around 12:30 pm and left the ship to meet our tour operator, Adriane, on the dock and took a bus to the tour boat for a 2 hour whale watching tour. The money back guarantee (if we didn't see a whale) wasn't required (and apparently hasn't for 15 years) as it wasn't long before we saw whales. We got to witness a rare event, humpback whales performing bubble net feeding. I had recently seen this on one of David Attenborough's wildlife shows; a small number of whales have perfected a method of hunting herring that is only performed in Alaska. It entails a lead whale circling a school of herring and blowing bubbles as it circles causing the herring to bunch into a tight ball and in a coordinated attack the other whales in the group form a circle below and lunge upwards into the school of fish on an audible signal from the lead whale blowing the bubbles. We saw no less than 10 humpbacks in the group perform this method of feeding about six times.

We had been watching the seagulls, they anticipate a free feed from the whales from this form of feeding, and they seemed to be heading our way when, to our astonishment we heard the lead whale's signal to attack from under our boat and in an instant, no more than 30 metres from our boat, the group performed another bubble net feed. I had only just added a 2x tele-converter to my lens to capture them further away when this happened meaning that they were nearly too close for me to capture the action. It was an amazing thing to witness.

Humpback's bubble net feeding

The tour boat captain (Jen) and Adriane had not see this sort of action so close to the boat before either, so it was a special day for them as well.

After the excitement of the whale watching we headed back to shore, on the way seeing a few sea lions on a buoy and couple of other whales in the distance, getting ready to take a gentle walk to see Mendhall Glacier. Another quick bus trip to the park trail for the short walk to see Mendenhal Glacier. No sooner had we hit the trail and we saw red salmon swimming up a small stream and not far away a black bear enjoying fresh fish. The bear was about 20 metres from the pathway when it decided to cross over to the other side of the path behind us. All the while Adriane urged us onto the small bridge over the stream to get out of its way. I don't think it was too interested in us as it headed straight for the stream after crossing the pathway. As I reached the bridge I turned and got of a quick photo (not a very good one) as the bear was only about 5 - 10 metres behind us. We left that bear behind and walked on about 15 metres to find yet another bear below us devouring a fresh catch of salmon in the forest below.

The bear that crossed behind us (not the best photo but was taken on the move)

Chowing down a fresh salmon away from prying eyes.

We left the bears behind to continue a short way to the observation deck to view the Mendenhall glacier, there had been quite a lot of rain over the past few days so the lake in front of the glacier was swollen and lightly flooded.

Two Aussies with a Mendenhall Glacier backdrop

We headed back to the bus but not before seeing a porcupine sleeping in a tree and yet another bear walking below the viewing platform alongside the stream. After the tour we walked through the town of Juneau collecting our "free" gifts and ducking and weaving from the several store attendants looking to sell us a "bargain". Back to the ship for a late dinner and sleep before we head to Skagway tomorrow, ship departed Juneau around 10 pm.

Cheers
Gary and Penny

24 July - Sunday - Cruise Day 2 - Alaska Inside Passage

G'day All,

A day to work out what we would be doing after arrival at 12:30 pm tomorrow in Juneau, I had pre-booked an afternoon trip on a "Whale watching and Mendenhall Glacier photo safari" so planning was more about what shops to check out following the side trip as we weren't scheduled to leave Juneau until 9:30 pm. We attended a "what's what" of shopping presentation, all about free gifts and the "exciting" shopping opportunities on offer at each of the destinations. You all know the drill, "You'll only find this here", "an opportunity only available to cruise patrons" etc . . . Needless to say the "opportunities" required some very healthy bank balances. Our plan . . . attack the stores with the free vouchers and make off with all the "made in China" freebies we can :-) if there wasn't a memento we had in mind available. The weather is looking like it is closing in and it could be a wet day tomorrow. Clocks set back an hour as we crossed into yet another time zone.

What else do you do on a cruise, eat of course. . . he meals as always are great and any weight lost with all the hiking I fear is gong to be replaced :-)

A nice merlot

Food glorious food. . .

Little did we know this was the last of the blue sky to be seen for quite a few days.

The weather closes in...

Trying to get an early night for the big day tomorrow.

Cheers
Gary and Penny

23 July - Saturday - Vancouver & Cruise Day 1

G'day All,

A good rest up at the Rosedale on Robson overnight then off to catch the Hop On Hop Off (HOHO) bus. Challenge here was that, unbeknown to us, the route had changed this summer and what was stop number one (50 metres from the Rosedale) was now stop number 24 and the route had been split into two routes (inner city and Stanley park). The scheduled start time for the HOHO was 9 am and the circuit goes for about 2 -3 hours so we thought this would be a good time filler as we needed to be at Canada Place at the Vancouver Port to check in to Holland America's ms Nieuw Amsterdam ship for the cruise. However after a 30 min wait at the HOHO bus stop with no sign of the bus we headed back to the Rosedale to google what was going on. It soon became clear that we would run out of time to try and catch the bus, especially with it running two separate loops. Since I had pre-purchased a HOHO voucher back in Australia I feared we had done our money but after ringing the company they indicated that as long as the voucher hadn't been exchanged for tickets we could use them on our return to Vancouver after the cruise (insert sigh of relief here). By now it was fast approaching 10:30 am so we decided to chill out for the morning at the Rosedale and rest up in preparation for the cruise.

Around 12 pm we jumped into the taxi for a $10 ride to Canada Place to check in to the ship. We arrived at 12:10 pm and it was about 2 pm before we cleared through check in and US customs and opened the door to our lodgings for the next week :-) The room (8040) was spacious and the bed very comfortable, nothing like the last cruise we went on which was very cramped. 

View from Balcony

View towards balcony

Our luggage was already in the room, well most of it as one of our suitcases was missing, the cabin staff looked into it for us but couldn't find it so I went down to Admin to check through some of the suitcases I noticed being held there. While I was looking around Penny received a call in the room from Admin to say they had the suitcase and to come and claim it. Penny went down to Admin where they told her security had wanted to inspect the contents further and that was why it was not delivered directly to the room. However the suitcase still couldn't be seen anywhere, Penny headed back to the room with an assurance that it was definitely on board. It was looking like I was going to have fun dressed in the same clothes I walked on board with for the rest of the week as it was my suitcase that was missing. It was an hour or so after boarding that I returned back to the room to find the suitcase sitting on the floor and it wasn't a minute or two later that Penny returned. Turns out that the cabin staff (Dony or Wahan) had picked up the suitcase for us and dropped it up to the room. Looks like my camera tripod had warranted further investigation by security who had held the bag and opened for inspection. With that sorted we headed for lunch on board and then unpacked and flopped onto the bed to read the day's activity sheet. I didn't seen long before it was dinner time at the restaurant and then an early night after a big day. The ship departed at 4:45 pm and it was smooth sailing as we headed up the inside passage to Juneau, a day and a half away.

The Ship (obviously not my photo)

Tomorrow is a day at sea and getting to know our way around the ship.

Cheers
Gary and Penny

20 July - Wednesday - Rocky Mountaineer Day 1 - Jasper to Quesnel

G'day All,

Today we said farewell to Samantha and Oliver bright and early at 5:30 am and headed to the train station to board the Rocky Mountaineer.

Carriage with a view.

This leg was from Jasper to Quesnel (with a silent 's') and took most of the day to do the trip. Along the way we saw severl townships including "Penny".

Penny Station

View along the train

Drink time.

Here is the dining car serving restaurant quality breakfasts and lunches

We arrived at Quesnel and did a quick tour of town before hitting the sack as it was another early rise to catch the train to the next stop, Whistler.

One of the landmarks of Quesnel

Some big wheels in town.

Quesnel also has some unique painted fire hydrants.

 
Next stop, Whistler.


Cheers
Gary and Penny

19 July - Tuesday - Lake Louise to Jasper

G'day All,

Today marks the last day of the Calgary to Jasper leg of the trip with Samantha and Oliver and there are a few sights to see; the edge of the world and Edith Cavell mountain glacier. A nice walk to Edith Cavell glacier with its small lake with icebergs.

Edith Cavell Glacier with iceberg lake at the bottom

Next we headed to a hidden (or at least unmarked) trail to a place called the edge of the world. The trail leads to the edge of a massive drop off with a view to Jasper city in the valley below. The edge just drops away to over 1000 feet below.

Edge of the world - a massive drop off overlooking Jasper in the distance.

After we got back there was enough time to put some washing on and try and get this blog updated. The internet was playing up so obviously that's why we ran out of time to update the blog. We did make time to get to the washing done and readied the luggage for the Rocky Mountaineer train trip tomorrow. At the last minute Oliver suggested a place to hopefully see some bears so he and I headed out, along the way we found several interesting photographic sites.

Medicine Lake - Jasper

The setting sun lit up the trees burnt in a forest fire, started by lightning in July 2015.

We went as far as the road could go, to Meligne Lake, without seeing a bear but about a quarter of the way home we saw some action about10 - 20 meters from the side of the road. A mother bear and her cub foraging for food.

The strength these bears have is amazing as this one tears through an old log.

. . . and the baby

Coming closer for a better look...

We spent about 30 mins watching them before the light had started to fad and the animals headed for the forest out of sight.

Cheers
Gary and Penny

18 July - Monday - Lake Louise to Jasper

G'day All,

Today we left Lake Louise and packed up for two days in Jasper. This is the last leg of the trip with Samantha and Oliver before we catch the Rocky Mountaineer train across to Vancouver.

On the way to Jasper we dropped in on a few scenic places along the highway and pulled in for look at Peyto lake before doing the Columbian Icefields glacier tour.

Peyto lake

The icefields are about 200km north of Lake Louise and 100km south of Jasper. We had pre-booked tickets but not a tour time and although we arrived around midday it was a mad house at the booking desk and it was a two and a half hour wait before our tour would depart. So we had a bit of lunch before heading up to stand in line for the tour. Met a couple of Aussie tour guides while waiting to board the coach and had a nice chat. The coaches take you out to edge of the ice field where you jump onto the heavy duty ice buses that take you out onto the glacier.

The Ice Bus

 Just as we were about to head down to the glacier the driver informed us that there was going to be a bit of a delay due to one of the vehicles losing some oil which required a clean up before tours could recommence. 30 mins later we headed off, the descent to the glacier is about on par with some of America's steepest, so another 'exciting' moment for Penny ;-) Had a wander over the glacier and learnt a bit along the way, also filled up our water bottles and camel backs with the purest water ever.

Standing on the glcier

Looking up the glacier

From the glacier the tour dropped us off at the skywalk, a viewing platform that juts out from the mountain over a huge void. To make the skywalk even more attractive the floor is made of glass. And Penny thought all the height activities were finished with! 

The Skybridge

Looking through the floor to the valley floor 1500 ft below

To her credit Penny put her fears behind her and walked the entire length of the glass bottomed platform and even managed to take a few photos while at it. By about 5 pm we finished the tour and headed to Jasper to catch up with Samantha and Oliver as they left us to do the tour and went on ahead as they had previously done the glacier tour.

Accommodation was at the Bear Hill Lodge in Jasper and it has become obvious that the peak season in Canada is Summer and you pay a premium for the privilege of needing a roof over your head during the peak period. Might look at trying to do the next visit closer to the off season :-)

Cheers
Gary and Penny

17 July - Sunday - Lake Louise & Banff Revisited

G'day All,

Since the weather has cleared up a bit we decided to head back to Lake Louise and Banff today to see the lake in better lighting and use the voucher to do the Banff Gondola ride. Definitely much nicer in the sunshine and a nice hike around the lake.

Lake Louise - Looking from Fairmont

The Fairmont Lake Louise

Next it was back to Banff to jump on the Gondola and it was an impressive view from the very top.

Penny did very well up and down in the gondola as it is a very steep ride and very high. Not sure she wants to do too many more high altitude activities lol :-)

Banff Gondola - Going Up.

View from the top.

Safely at the top,

As we were leaving Banff there was some commotion just past an intersection which turned out to be everybody taking a look at a group of three elk not more than 10 metres from the road. This guy walked straight towards me and was abut 5 metres away before he decided to turn away.

An Elk watches me closely

On the return trip to Lake Louise we did a side hike to Johnston Canyon upper and lower falls.

Johnston Lower Falls

Johnston Upper Falls

A big day for my Garmin step tracker with almost 18km racked up buy the end of the day.

Cheers
Gary and Penny