A wrap up of the Alaska cruise

Tuesday, June 27, 2023

I am going to add some pictures from the cruise that were taken on the camera and that we weren’t able to include in the blog while we were traveling. It already seems like a long time ago – and it’s only been 5 days since we got off the boat. I have shared with lots of people that we won the trip, but also had to pay taxes on the value. It was valued at nearly $18,000, although if you had bought the airline tickets we got and booked a room for the week we went, you would not have paid that much. (Our week was advertised at $7500/person) It doesn’t matter to the IRS, though. You pay what the “value” has been determined to be. So, we paid about $4750 for the cruise we won. We knew that before we accepted the winnings and thought about it before accepting. Even though it is more than it would cost to take a large ship cruise to Alaska, we decided it was worth it to go on a big adventure cruise.

If you are reading this, you probably read about the cruise as it was happening and know that it wasn’t really much of a big adventure. I saw more whales on my Princess cruise eight years ago, but spotting nature if always just happenstance. You are lucky if you do, and it’s just a regular day if you don’t. One of the benefits of the small ship was that we were able to follow the group of orca that we saw – a large ship just goes where it is going and doesn’t stop or slow down. Unfortunately, none of the followed whales decided to jump out of the water for our amusement, but that isn’t really their primary occupation. The biggest benefit was the Zodiac boats. The day we got to go to see the Sawyer Glacier was really fun. I thought it was really cool (no pun intended, but there it is) to get sort of iced-in in the ice field. We weren’t actually much closer to the glacier than we had been on the big ship, but we were closer to the water and it felt exciting. The day we chose Zodiac over kayaking turned out to be a great decision – we saw lots of otters (and really didn’t see too many any other time. I really like otters) and eagles (one quarter of the eagles in the world are in Alaska. We saw a lot of them that day and other days. Every time I see an eagle it is good) and seals. Zodiac boats are not comfortable. You sit facing toward the other people on the boat and when you try to twist around to see behind you, it is uncomfortable, and you never really see what you were looking for. The best rides were when we chose to do it when others were kayaking and there were only a few of us on the boat – we could move around a bit and see much better.

The food that I liked was terrific! Breakfast buffet every morning was delicious. The night I had steak (the fall back meal if you didn’t like the main entrees) I got three slices of meat that were great – but no other part of the meal tasted good (steamed brussel sprouts, tasteless polenta, orange and olive oil cheesecake), so my only option was to have two granola bars from the lounge. The time nothing on the adult lunch menu appealed to Keith or I, we ordered the kids’ menu chicken tacos. They were delicious! But two tacos made from 4 inch tortillas are not very filling. As one friend said, we didn’t have to worry about gaining weight! (Although I don’t think granola bars are really a great basis for a diet).

There was nothing to do most of the time. The staff was always telling us to look on the shore for bears – but sometimes we were quite a distance from land or sometimes the clouds and mist were covering the land – or for whales. It is always fun to see the distant spray from a whale’s blowhole.

I’m definitely a big cruise girl. I can find food that I like when I am hungry and find things to do when I want to do them. I learned that I can hire a Zodiac ride from just about every port in Alaska, so I could do that if I wanted to. I am very glad that we went. It was definitely an experience I wanted to try. Everyone that I asked (maybe 30ish people) had never been on any type of cruise before and I guess it was the experience they wanted to try too. I hope they enjoyed themselves.

PS Please notice picture 70 appears to include the largest potato of all time.