Cruise to Alaska Begins in Canada

Posted on January 29, 2018January 29, 2018 by Dusty Roads | 2 Comments

The Alaska Adventure starts in Vancouver

Our Alaska Cruise departs from Vancouver, Canada. We flew into Vancouver the day before we had to board. This time we were cruising on Princess Cruise Lines. So far I’ve been on Royal Caribbean, Carnival and now Princess. I had been to Vancouver years ago for a convention. Its a beautiful city.

We didn’t have much time to explore but we did get a chance to walk along the waterfront after breakfast and before we headed to the ship. The staff at our hotel, The Best Western Sands, were awesome; helpful with our luggage and transportation to the ship.

Strolling along the Seawall

Our morning stroll started in a sculpture garden. The main sculpture is A-Maze-ing Laughter by the Chinese artist Yue Minjun.

laughter

Even though it was raining the gardeners were working on the landscaping so flowers were abundant.

gardening

So were the birds. There were Herons, gulls, ducks, geese and loads more that I couldn’t identify. I shouldn’t have been surprised about the rain. Vancouver and much of southwestern Alaska are part of a temperate rain forest! Who knew? I think of rain forest as the Amazon or Brazil but the Pacific Northwest is also rain forest! Little did we know that the rainy Vancouver morning foreshadowed what we would experience on our cruise.

Time to head to the ship

The morning flew by and before we knew it, it was time for lunch and then we needed to find the ship. The hotel concierge told us we were close to the port but with our luggage we felt a cab was a good choice. The front desk made a call bringing a cab right to the front of the hotel. It really wasn’t far to the port but there was a lot of traffic. We probably could have gotten there faster walking but I’m pretty sure we would have gotten lost! Taking the cab was the right choice.

Welcome to the Yukon

Posted on June 12, 2013June 12, 2013 by Dusty Roads

Move over Dudley Do-Right!

We are standing in the famous Yukon Territory! ( Not really. Its actually British Columbia but don’t tell the tourists) There be gold in them thar hills! Or so the stampeeders believed but once they reached Lake Bennett with all of their supplies they had to wait for the snow to melt. Then they built rafts and waited for the Yukon River to melt. Once spring came, they sailed down the rapids into gold territory.

According to the exhibits located at the visitor Center , miners put boats in the Tutshi River near the canyon where the suspension bridge is today. Looking at the rapids as they swirled down under the bridge and beyond its hard to believe they could take fully loaded boats and survive. Many didn’t survive and many other lost everything except their lives.

Tutshi River and Canyon today is one of the top white water rafting spots of North America.

It was cold here. The wind was blowing. This is the start of spring in the north and it was cold. I’d tried to imagine how cold it must have been when the miners dragged their supplies here to wait for the spring thaw.

But enough exploring the exhibits. It was time to cross the suspension bridge. That was what we came here for. No chickening out.

This was a pretty sturdy bridge as suspension bridges go but when you got to the middle you were at the mercy of the wind that gained momentum as it raced down the canyon from the icy tops of the surrounding mountains.

On the far side of the bridge was a platform and at the rear of the platform a wooden boardwalk that led to a tiny cabin. Just the basic 4 walls,a stove for heat, a bed frame and a tub for washing if you dared; this tiny cabin illustrated the conditions the stampeeders experienced as they waited for spring.

Chilled to the bone we returned across the suspension bridge to the visitor center to warm up and explore the souvenirs. The hot chocolate was pretty good too.

This was where we had out passports stamped with the Yukon Suspension Bridge stamp.

A Rainy Vancouver Morning

Posted on May 26, 2013May 26, 2013 by Dusty Roads

Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada is living up to it’s reputation for rain. Vancouver is Canada’s third most rainy city, with over 161 rainy days per year! Even so we were determined to get in a bit of time exploring Stanley Park.

Stanley Park is Vancouver’s first, largest, and most beloved urban park. We stopped at the front desk for directions and to find out where we could leave our luggage until we left for the cruise ship.

Continuing in the friendly tradition I mentioned yesterday the desk tagged the luggage for us and placed it behind the desk. That way we could check out, they could get the room ready for the next guest and we could call for our luggage later.

The clerk also told us we were just steps from Stanley Park. I’m not sure if we went in the wrong direction but we ended up in a park that followed the water front. We didn’t get to the normal Stanly Park attractions like the Totem poles, the botanical gardens , or any monuments. I believe that we ended up following the Seawall.

The Seawall is a scenic 22 km path that lines Vancouver’s waterfront. We got caught up watching the birds that seemed to be everywhere, mostly herons and ducks.

There were also plenty of dogs jogging with their owners.

In spite of the cool weather, the landscaping was well underway.

Our walk started with a sculpture of laughing men.

A bit of research identified the sculpture as A-Maze-ing Laughter by the Chinese artist Yue Minjun. It is well named as it had us both smiling as we explored the bronze statutes.

The huge sails that dominate the waterfront were built for the 1986 World’s Fair . These sails are Vancouver’s equivalent of the Sydney Opera House or the Empire State Building. Located on Canada Place you can’t miss them.

We also passed a sculpture that looked like it was right out of Stonehenge.

This is an inuksuk which is a stone landmark or cairn built by humans. Such monuments were used by the First Nation People of the Artic Region. An inuksuk was used as the basis of the Vancouver 2010 logo and the construction of inuksuit around the world have led to increasing recognition of them.

The time passed quickly and before we had even scratched the surface it was time to get lunch, retrieve our bags and get a cab to the main event….the cruise ship. The friendly desk clerks helped us gather our bags and even called a cab for us.

The time had come for the adventure to really begin.

A trip of a Lifetime

Posted on May 25, 2013May 25, 2013 by Dusty Roads

How does one start to tell a tale of a trip of a lifetime? Maybe I should just say that this was the 2nd trip of a lifetime for me. The first was The Big Island of Hawaii.

Now I can add a cruise tour to Alaska as my 2nd “Trip of a lifetime”.

This didn’t just happen overnight. This trip was in the planning and discussion and saving stages for over 2 years. We finally said lets just do it before the glacier’s melt!

A big part of it was the saving part.

This was, without a doubt, the most expensive venture I/we have undertaken yet but Alaska is so big the task of putting together a vacation there seemed overwhelming. So after my sister and I hammered out the basics of what we wanted to do and see I turned the problem over to the professionals at AAA.

The trip I am about to describe to you is the result.

The first decision was do we cruise to Alaska or fly in and vacation like we usually do on our own. Since this was my sister’s Dream Vacation I let her choose. She had only 2 requests; to see the glaciers and to spend 3 days in Denali National Park. A cruise tour would accomplish both goals.

We settled on a “shoulder season” because it’s less expensive and money was certainly a factor. In May the animals are just coming down out of their wintering grounds and having babies. In September they have the northern lights (aurora borealis). We chose to go for the animals. We also chose to go south to north to give the northern locations a chance to warm up a bit more. In Alaska a couple of days can make all the difference. As it turned out spring was about 2 weeks late this year so we had a lot more snow and cold weather than is usual for this time of the year.

I think by far the hardest decision was which cruise line to use. They all cruise to Alaska these days, even Disney, and they all offer some combination of land and sea. I was leaning toward Royal Caribbean but Sandy liked Holland America. In the end we went with the travel agent’s recommendation of Princess Cruise Lines.

I drove from my home in Massachusetts to my sister’s in New York on Saturday May 11. I left my 3 cats in the capable hands of my long time pet sitter, still this is the longest I have ever been away before. My fingers were crossed that there’d be no complications for Diane to deal with.

That Saturday night we took our mother out for Mother’s Day dinner and then headed back to my sisters for an early night. We had an early cross-country flight from Albany Airport into Vancouver in the morning. By arriving a day early we sacrificed the airport transfer but got a day in Vancouver before we had to board the ship on Monday.

Our flight was uneventful and we spotted a rainbow as we flew into a misty, wet Vancouver. Our hotel , The Best Western Sands, was a block from the waterfront and very nice.

I had been to Vancouver once before many years ago and I remember the residents being very friendly, warm and helpful. That hasn’t changed at all. I still think it is one of the most friendly cities I have ever been in. What I do think has changed is the fabric of the city. We saw a great melting pot of people of many different nationalities and ethnicities. This only serves to make an already lovely city more cosmopolitan. Vancouver has really come into its own.