Welcome back! Would love to hear about your cruise!
Hi Tom, here is info on our trip. Definitely quite an awesome adventure for us.
The trip to Alaska was great! The natural beaty is magical and magnificent. We did excursions to see lighthouse, bald eagles and totem poles in Ketchikan, which is a beautiful fishing town.
In Junea we took a dog sled ride, visited the dog training camp, learned about how they are trained for Iditarod race, and played with puppies. In Skagway, we took a domed narrow-gauge train ride to “the Summit” (high point) and turned around to come back. Views of mountains, trees, gorges and Fall colors were beautiful… saw a large Eagle drop down to waterway catching a fish and flying away.
The Coral Princess cruise did go into a bay to see a glacier fairly close. I was surprised by the sound the glacier was making… cracking and thunder-like sounds…eerie sounds!
When we reached Whittier we deboarded and started land tour. We took train to little town of Talkeetna. Ate awesome salmon sandwich and unique flavored ice cream made from FireWeed. From there we took bus coach to Princess’s Mt McKinley Lodge, then a day later we went on to the Princess Denali Wilderness Lodge about 2 miles from the Denali National Park. Took early morning 7AM bus tour (17 miles) into Denali—early to have better chance at seeing animals. It started snowing and we did see a huge bull moose that meandered right up to the bus before crossing road… that was awesome! We could not see the Denali peak as the mountain makes its own weather. We met a native Athabaskan-Han tribesman who gave us some history and very touching story about his people. Brought a tear to his eyes and to mine and others---definitely a person I will never forget. Spoke with him afterwards. Unfortunately, our planned small aircraft flight to the Denali summit that afternoon was cancelled about 30 minutes before flight due to weather.
In Fairbanks we took a discovery boat tour and saw replica of native Athabaskan village---very beautiful. Later that night we did excursion to try to see the Northern Lights, but it was very cloudy… except we did see a small portion …a teal blue light above the horizon in one area of the skyline. The lights changed in intensity for about 15 minutes before clouds obstructed view. So, we did see it but it was not a full sky view. We plan to go back again to try again. We also went to North Pole, AK near Fairbanks to shop at their Santa Clause store and to get letters mailed out to our families from Santa in December!
The natural beauty in Alaska is breath-taking. My eyes were very happy! Unforgettable---Magical---Unbelievable!
I will post some pictures in the coming week.
