Worst...Blog...Ever: Alaskan Cruise Part 1

First of all a big Thank You to Quinn's Mom for wanting to take all her kids and their wives on a cruise for her birthday. We had a blast. Best vacation ever without kids. We love you! So we flew out Friday June 20th for Seattle to board the Celebrity Solstice for a 7 night cruise.

Day 1

Our ship.

Here are few shots of our room. We are being spoiled on our first cruise and will never be able to book an inside room.

Our balcony.

Here we are on the ship very excited that our kids were not with us. We knew they were well taken care of with Grandma Van Bibber. Thanks Mom, we owe you big!

So long Seattle.

After sitting on the deck watching the ship pull away from port and enjoying the sun we headed to the dinning room for our first dinner. Our waiters were both from the Philippines and were so great. We started the week off right, Quinn had prime rib and and I had Salmon. It was very yummy. We enjoyed the food for the most part through the week. We all tried something new. It was very fancy, sometimes too fancy but overall we enjoyed everything. We also slept great on the ship. I guess that can happen when you are not being interrupted by kids. We were also very lucky not to be bothered by motion sickness apart from me having a headache the first day.

Day 2 - At Sea

Hot chocolate on the back deck.

1st formal dinner - Quinn didn't get the memo on how fancy we were going for. His brothers and showed up in dress shirts and ties. Oops. The show that night was Broadway Hits. It was wonderful, Quinn even liked it.

This day was spent relaxing and eating, loved it.

Day 3 - Ketchikan

Any vacation we go everyone always crowds around one paper map to make our game plan and I missed getting the picture so Shawn, Quinn and Diane reenacted it for me with the map on the wall. Not the same, sorry guys.

Guess what, it rained. Can you believe it. But it didn't just rain it was a downpour the entire day. I didn't even think about that when I packed my tennis shoes. They are mesh on the sides so every step I took my whole shoes would flood with water. No very comfortable and cold. (It rains 300 out of 365 days a year there for a total of 13-16 feet of rain.)

But we headed out down Creek Street and through the red light district.

On the board walk and river.

The highlight of the day was The Great Alaskan Lumberjack Show. It was so much fun.

You just have to know that it is all planned out and it will have really cheesy jokes but go with it.

Carving a bunny that he really turns into a chair.

Because of the rain they could only go to the yellow line but still fun to watch.

Quick feet.

Oh yeah, those are lumberjacks.

After the lumberjack show we had planned to go to Totem Bight State Park after a brief stop at Walmart to get me some new shoes and socks but that stop took too long so we didn't make it. But that meant we could do some shopping and Quinn was able to get back early to the ship and watch the 2nd half of the U.S. World Cup Soccer match.

View of Ketchikan from our balcony. Great view!

That night the show we this guy called Bronkar Lee. He is a rhythmic juggling beatboxer. He was amazing. Look him up on you.tube. Awesome.

Day 4 - Tracy Arm Fjord and Juneau

This morning we just cruised up this inlet to the Sawyer Glacier. Because we had a balcony we were able to just sit and relax and watch the beautiful scenery go by. It was wonderful.

Once we got as close as our ship could go we needed to go up on deck to get a better view of the actual glacier.

There it is, we weren't worried about going on a short excursion to get close to this one because we knew we were going to one in Juneau.

Really cool!

There were a few seals up on the ice chunks getting ready to give birth and one that already had. That is the best my camera could do. I really could have used a telephoto lens on this trip.

The color of the ice is just amazing.

During lunch we cruised to Juneau

We had hoped to take the tram up the mountain to get a view of the city but ran out of time.

Our first stop was Mendenhall Glacier. Truly amazing. We had exactly 1 hour to spend here and the signs said it takes about 45 minutes round trip so we did this walk at a very fast pace but it was well worth it.

Mendenhall Glacier is over 1/2 mile deep.

Nugget Falls is also right next to the Glacier.

While waiting for our bus to take us to our next excursions we ran into Quinn's cousin Jason and his wife Jill. They live in Arizona and we haven't seen them in a while. We knew they were also on this cruise on a different ship and that we would be in Juneau at the same time but didn't know if we would see them. It was great to chat for just a moment.

Next Quinn and I went whale watching. It was amazing. The pictures do not do it justice. Our camera is not the best and has a delay. Even though we didn't see much of the Humpback Whales it was still amazing to see these large animals come up to breath.