Our Alaska Cruise Itinerary

We've been to Alaska twice before, both times on cruises. Our first cruise to Alaska, was, in fact, our first cruise. In August 1997, we both had a week of vacation scheduled, with no plans to fill it. I was determined not to stay home and do housework/yard work, so on Wednesday evening of the week before our vacation, I came home and said, "Guess where we're going on Saturday!" I had booked us on a 7-night cruise to Alaska. We were leaving in three days. (I later decided that this was the right way to do it. We had no time to plan or stress over what to pack/what to see/what to do. We just...went.)

For 14 years, G had resisted cruising. He thought he wasn't old enough, he thought he'd get seasick, he thought he'd feel cooped up on a ship and bored. But I knew that, even if he didn't like cruising, he would like Alaska, and I didn't see us getting there any other way.

Well, by the end of that vacation, he did like Alaska. But he loved cruising.

Our next two cruises were transatlantic cruises, 15-nights long with lots of sea days in a row. And after them, he loved cruising even more. By 2000, when we cruised to Alaska for the second time, we already had three cruises under our belt. We were truly addicted to this new (to us) type of vacation.

Over the next 12 years, we completed another 51 cruises, with 574 days at sea and counting. We've been all over the world in those 12 years, more recently finding our favorite niche in the Caribbean islands in the winter. But this is our first trip back to Alaska since 2000, and we're thrilled to be going. Our two previous Alaska cruises were only 7-nights long, we had only one day of glacier viewing, in Tracy Arm Fjord. This time we have four days planned, and that is what we're most looking forward to.

As on the Emerald Princess last winter, we're taking back to back cruises, two 7-night, one-way cruises doing almost the same itinerary, leaving from and ultimately returning to Vancouver, B.C. While the three port stops are the same on both cruises, and we also repeat cruising in Glacier Bay National Park, on our northbound trip we'll visit College Fjord, and on our southbound we'll be cruising Hubbard Glacier. We'll have a turnaround day in Whittier, where we're hoping to do a wildlife/glacier viewing cruise on a much smaller boat, weather permitting.

The long range weather forecast looks a bit bleak. This is a typically wet, rainforest area of Alaska.  In fact, the town of Ketchikan receives an average of 153 inches of precipitation each year (really!). But we're prepared for the weather, and after what we've experienced this summer, a bit of cool rain sounds a bit nice.  However, we did just receive an updated weather forecast for Vancouver tomorrow, and the weather will be 83 and sunny.  Sounds like a picture perfect sailaway to me!

You can follow our progress by checking the ship's webcam at http://www.princess.com/bridgecams/ip/island_bridgecam.html