06/26/23 Alaska Cruise

 

Wow, what a fun fast week!!

Getting here was unbelievably awful but since the bad start, it’s been AMAZING!!

First of all…weather…perfect! I carried my winter jacket all the way to northern Alaska and Canada and never even put it on!! Even more…no rain all week!! Sunny and beautiful every day!!  Even T-shirt weather most days!! We even went swimming and hot tubbing several times!!

Sunday we made it to the ship without incident…took a shuttle and got in pretty quickly and easily. We got a wheelchair and special treatment due to gpa. Dad with his cane and Diane as well…we got the handicapped special treatment.

Our room was nice…smaller than our last cruise (no couch) but comfy and well-kept. Our dude did up our room twice a day!!  We had an obstructed view but it was ok. I probably wouldn’t do that again.  It did help me to not want to be in the room too much which was good since we were wanting to do stuff with the family.

Sunday we enjoyed the buffet and checked out our rooms and the ship. We went to a comedy show in the evening and he was actually clean and funny. I love comedy shows!!

Monday was at sea day. We were able to have meals together and hang out. There was another comedy show and we stayed up late playing Qwix and golf. We hung out with Michael and Wendy…everyone else went and did their own thing.

Tuesday was Ketchikan Alaska. We watched the lumberjack show and shopped around the town a little. The show was really interactive and fun!! We found a couple of shirts and some fuzzy slippers.  We took a public transit shuttle and took a loop around the town…which was free and actually pretty cool!! (We were trying to get to Walmart but took the wrong shuttle!! Oops! No Walmart for us!!)

Wednesday was Juneau Alaska. We rode a bus to the Mendenhall Glacier. We had about two hours to hike around and explore the glacier. So beautiful!! Then we rode a tram 1500 feet (I think?!?!) up the side of a mountain and had a beautiful view of the city.

Thursday we went to Skagway and rode a train for about two hours up a mountain. Reminded me of the Heber creeper. So much spectacular scenery. Also so many people!!  We were able to walk around Skagway afterward and found Dr Pepper…there was none on the ship and all our people really wanted it .

We found a store that was like a little Costco…they had tons of products from Costco they were selling.

I bought a couple of kid's books to add to my collection about Alaska and the train.

We had about a day and a half at sea after Skagway until we made our way to Victoria Canada. At Victoria, we went to Butchart Gardens which is so nice.  

The week kind of runs together in my head but we were able to go to several comedy shows, jazz bar, theater production rock opera…so cool!! And singing. 

There was a dude that told us all about wildlife. We saw some whales and sea lions over the side of the ship.

We’re currently on a shuttle getting ready for a long day at the airport.

CONTINUED: 

A couple more Travel stories:

We were scheduled to leave Seattle at 6 pm Sunday evening and arrive in St. George at midnight. Shortly after arriving at the airport, Eldon received a text that the flight was postponed for two hours. We knew that would mean that we would probably not have time to make our connecting flight home. 

We rushed when we got to Seattle but missed the 11:35 am flight by minutes. I don’t know if there was room anyway but we were too late to even try. 

The next flight was 1:30 pm.  Diane and I went and tried to get us on standby … 7 of us… the lady said to come back in 45 minutes. We went to the help desk line. 

(First, we tried a couple of gate agents…they all said no they couldn’t help us)

There was only one agent assisting and a pretty decent-sized line. The poor lady must have had a tough one at the front because we stood there for about 45 minutes before the line moved again. A second and third agent finally came.

Unfortunately, Diane got on the phone and her app to try to fix things herself and accidentally booked herself for Monday at 1:30 pm instead of Sunday. (In her defense she asked for Sunday and the computer flipped the dates). By the time the agent answered the phone her seats were gone.

When I finally got everything arranged and called to tell everyone to report for the flight…they had all gone to find lunch. Ahhhh!!!

Luckily Andy was babysitting the bags and was able to get them all to come back quickly!!!

I was able to get the other five of us on standby and by the miracle of miracles we ALL got on the flight. We were all over the plane but we were all flying!! A tender mercy!!

Turns out the flight we were supposed to take was delayed so much that had we not been on the earlier flight we would have been stranded in slc overnight again. 

A special thank you to the guardian flight angels that made it possible to get home!

When we arrived in SLC we missed the connection by about 7 minutes…seriously !!! ( there was about a 20-minute delay because a girl threw up on her way into the plane…poor GPA had to sit next to her and she threw up a couple more times in the flight…it will be a miracle big he doesn’t get the flu!!!). Instead of getting home by 6, we got home at midnight.

That did allow us time to eat smash burgers and hang out for about 6 hours together!!!

(As we were all leaving to catch the flight to St. George they called Eldon back and he had to take a separate shuttle. Thank goodness he made it!!

Another little tender mercy:

Eldon, Diane, Gpa, Andy, and I all came over together on our edge to the airport last week. We loaded up with all our luggage and tried to exit the lot tonight…expecting to pay about $70. When we tried to get out the machine said to read the bar code reader…only there was none. In the Sun it disappeared and was completely white!!! Oh no!!

There was a call button for help and we got super lucky. We explained the situation and he said…I’m gonna help you out! And the gate was raised and we didn’t have to pay at all!!