Our Alaskan Cruise-August 2009

 Jason and I were lucky enough to take a cruise to Alaska this summer with some of his family.  His Grandma Schmahl has been battling cancer for many years now and she decided she wanted to take this cruise before she was no longer able to.  So off we went.....Grandma and Grandpa Schmahl, Jason's dad Ray and his girlfriend Catherine, his Aunt Sheryl and her husband Jim, and Grandma and Grandpa's good friends Jack and Dee.

We started out with the typical drill......

We passed the Celebrity Cruise ship evacuation drill with flying colors and we were on our way!  There was so much to explore our first day on the ship and somehow this is where we ended up......martini tasting.

Dinner followed and then off to bed. The next day was partially a day at sea and also a stop at Ketchikan.  We walked the streets of Ketchikan, got an Alaskan non-fat, sugar-free Vanilla latte (my favorite from any local starbucks) and had the most delicious halibut fish tacos. The weather was beautiful-in the 70's-and the views were amazing.  Unfortunately, I didn't get many photos in Ketchikan, but this one of the marina was my favorite.....

We left Ketchikan and started our sail up to the Hubbard glacier.  The scenery was absolutely beautiful, and Jason and I actually thought much of it reminded us of a mix between the Lake up in Ely, MN and the mountains in Colorado. The best of both worlds!

That evening we found a spot on the ship that ended up being one the best memories of our trip..... Michael's piano bar.  He played and sang it all: showtunes, Sinatra, jazz, blues.  Every night after
dinner we had a drink at Michael's and listened to him play.  The room had big columns and was painted Italian style.....Venice canals and all.......perfection.

We arrived at hubbard glacier the next day and there really are no words to describe its beauty.  My pictures definitely don't come close to capturing the size and magnificence of the glacier.  Our ship got unbelievably close to the glacier and as we were sailing towards it visions of the Titantic were popping up in my mind.  There were icebergs everywhere you looked, however, the captain assured us we were never in any danger (so he says!).  It stunning and something we may never see again.

The First "ICEBERG"....

We sailed through the evening and into the next morning to arrive at our next destination...Juneau! We had the morning to explore the city and then we were booked on a whale watching extravaganza.  We walked around the city for a bit and came to realize that these Alaskan port cities are INTENSE.  Every other shop is a diamond/jewelry shop.  They try to entice you with all of these amazing deals.....which in reality are not such amazing deals.  We wondered through a few shops, but figured we were good with the jewelry we had :)  Once again we found a delicious spot for lunch with fresh seafood......fish and chips and the grilled prawns were our favorites.  The view from lunch was beautiful.

And so was the beer.......

After we finished lunch we boarded our tour bus, complete with one cheesy Alaskan tour guide, and we were on our way.  Our first stop was to see another glacier/fjord outside of the city of Juneau before we boarded our sailing vessel to whale watch.  We learned a lot about Juneau on that very infomative bus ride.....including where retired Governor Sarah Palin's house was.  When we arrived at the glacier we walked through a bear park where we were able to see a mama bear and two cubs.  They moved too fast for me to post a picture worth looking at :)  The glacier there was beautiful as well, however, we couldn't get as close to it as we would have liked.

Our next stop was the whale watching part of the tour.  Now to be honest, I wasn't quite sure what to expect and truly wasn't sure we were going to see a whale at all.  It was amazing! We saw humpback whales and killer whales.......such beauty.  We actually saw a humpback whale breach which is extremely rare and of course I wasn't able to capture that with my camera.  A breach is when the whale comes all the way out of the water and sort of flips over......AMAZING.  It was difficult to get pictures of these massive creatures so eventually I gave up and just put my camera away.

Humpback whales......

Killer whales.....

Our trip to Alaska was wonderful.  There are so many memories that we shared with Jason's family and his grandparents. His Grandma had a good trip and it was the last one she could take with us.  Her battle with cancer finally ended on October 14, 2009.  We are so grateful for the memories we have of this trip with her.  From winning name that tune (more than once!), to fancy ship dinners to our family photos with our Celebrity Cruise bathrobes on. She was an amazing woman, wife, mother, grandmother and great-grandmother and she will be deeply missed.