What says welcome to Alaska better than two giant totem carvings. At the right: Alexis on the deck of the ship as we prepare to leave Vancouver. The ship terminal is the white peaks in the back. |
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Above is our ship -the Celebrity Millenium - all 2,138 passengers + 920 crew. Left is the skyline of Vancouver. It's a beautiful, clean city and we had one day there before our departure. |
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Our first port was Ketchikan. |
Among the sites we visited was the red light district from pioneer days. Dolly's House was quite famous. |
Here's Alexis with the current "madam." |
On the left, Alexis with the current "madam" of Dolly's House On the right, we found a totem pole. This one represents a Raven Stealing the Sun. |
Our ship from our whale watching trip. |
It wasn't a good day for whale watching though and the most we saw was a few tall tails splashing. (This is even a photo from Google) |
Alexis did get close to this bear. |
And we saw these sea lions. |
In Juneau, we headed to the Mendenhall Glacier which is just 12 miles out of town. The tourism center was excellent. |
Alexis got closer to a bear at the restaurant atop Mt. Roberts which is 1,800 feet above the ship docks. |
Left: The Mount Roberts Tramway took us high above Juneau.. Above: View from Mount Roberts. |
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It was sunset as we started down. |
Skagway was our next stop. |
Skagway is a totally tourist town.. |
We took the White Pass Scenic Railway which was well worth the price. We even entered Canada but quickly turned around. |
The Hubbard Glacier was incredible. |
The sound of ice breaking up inside the glacier was very loud. Our ship rotated so that both sides had great views. |
The view from our cabin when we disembarked for a brief visit to Anchorage. |
We were bused to Denai National Park. |
We had a warm room in the hotel but the fire in the lodge was appreciated. We were amazed at the nice quality of the hotels which were included in the cruise cost. |
We only saw a few meese at Denali and the peak was hiddent which is pretty normal. The hotel had a great painting of it with a lot of mounted aimals. |
At Denali we visited the Husky Homestead where Aexis fell in love with one of the dogs bred for snowsled competition. |
I tried to escape with one of the dogs but somehow they saw through my disguise. |
I was thrilled that we took the Wilderness Express train from Denali Park to Fairbanks. It was first class. |
We had a steak dinner on the train. |
Did I mention that we had a drink -- or two on the train? Right: It rained on our trip to Fairbanks but that didn't dampen our spirits. |
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We were amazed to see this in Fairbanks. It's an electric plug to keep your car's motor warm when it's under 20 degrees. Left: A fountain to the settlers and the Fairbanks church. |
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We visited Mr. & Mrs. Santa Clause at North Pole (Alaska) |
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Next stop was the Dredge 8 Gold mine which is now closed commercially but open for tourists to pan for gold. |
My Disneyphile daughter loved this t-shirt. |
Those little dots at top of the pan are gold flakes. The gold is still there but too expensive to get it out. |
Together, Alexis and I panned enough gold ($35 worth) to save in a pendant to reminder her of our trip. |
Above: Alexis at the Vistor Administraton Center which is in a large log cabin. Left:
Alexis met Big Foot in Fairbanks, accompained by two
pet polar bears.
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The Celebrity Millennium | |
The entertainment on the Millennium was first class. This ship had just been
refurbished six months
before our cruise and it was fantastic. There were a lot of
innovations and the service was great. Alexis said she loved
the
ship and
everything on our cruise.
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