Just back from a VERY relaxing and fun cruise to Alaska with about 20 KDFC listeners. For some it was their first cruise, but everyone seemed to have a great time. The neat things about cruising is that you can enjoy it any way you want. You can wonder about free as a bird during each port visit, sign up for activities like, fishing trips, kayaking adventures, zip-lining through the trees, float plane or helicopter sightseeing…whatever. Or you can just hang out on board and read, spa, walk, and, oh yes…EAT. I think we were better at avoiding temptation this time around, but not by much. The MS Statendam is a nice sized ship housing around 1200 passengers and nearly 600 crew who took great care of us. Alaska hasn’t had much of a summer, but we did get some sun at our last port of call, Ketchikan.

Jacquie and I signed up for some fun excursions since we thought this might be our one shot at the 49th state. Our first port of call, Juneau, saw us outfitted for glacial adventuring by helicopter. A listener called me months back to say that stepping out in the middle of a glacier was something almost “spiritual” so we had to splurge on the chopper flight. It was raining lightly through much of the flight, but the views were spectacular and the “glacial blue” is almost “otherworldly”(maybe a movie highlight of it later).

On to Skagway and an ambitious kayaking and train adventure that rousted us out of the sack at 6am! Hey, this is supposed to be “vacation”. You know, no early calls. Oh well. It was exhilarating to be on the lake up in the mountains and the train is one of the world’s engineering marvels. I do have a video of this ready to go. The music by Heitor Villa-Lobos is inspired by a train trip in Brazil.

Glacier Bay was our next stop and a must on everyone’s list. It was fascinating to float just nearby and watch a bit of the face “calving”, but after actually setting foot on a glacier it was more of a spectator event.

Our final stop was Ketchikan. We arrived with no plans, but it was a beautiful sunny day so we chatted up a salesman on  the pier and decided to take a float plane trip back into the “Misty Fjords” which on that sunny day were not particularly “Misty”, but they were breathtaking (more video of that, to come, I hope). Our pilot, Kevin, explained about the bear population around Ketchikan and if I remember correctly there are half as many bears as people. This explains this tee-shirt wisdom seen in Juneau.

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