Cruise to Alaska!

On the plane

As our cruise director, Stu, would say, "Welcome aboard the beautiful Carnival Spirit!"

Views from aboard:

Icebergs

pristine water and mountain

waterfalls and ice seams

Port of Call: Skagway, AK

Liam and Lila ready for adventure

cousins fresh off the ship

Totem pole in town

Waiting around at the gold panning/dogsled info place

Liam sports the gold nugget hat

The kids play with newspaper and rocks while we wait for the gold panning tour

getting a lesson in how to pan for gold

finally our turn to try!

and we get to keep the gold!  Most of us found five or six gold flakes.

On to the dog sledding exhibit!

We learned about the dogs, sleds, and races and then met some actual sled dogs

And we got to hold some sled dog puppies!

And then play around the dog yard

Back on the ship:

towel frog

Port of Call: Juneau, AK:

Another totem pole as we wait to take a cable car to the top of a mountain.

And a bear, too

Eagle!

The view

Mendenhall glacier

huge chunk of ice

Alaska State capitol building

Back on the ship:

Dinner!

And a surprise birthday cake! (thanks to Darren, we got the staff singing to Will and everything.  His birthday is really in February.)

Room service for breakfast so we will have time to see totem poles in Ketchikan!

Port of Call: Ketchikan, AK:

Turns out the bus to the totem park doesn't run on Sundays when we were there.  But since All Reese had been asking about the entire time was totem poles, I felt obligated to spend copious amounts on a two-hour bus tour which ended up being an hour and forty minutes of looking at nature, ending with twenty minutes at the totem park, where we heard the stories of Abraham Lincoln totems but didn't have time for the Native American or Animal stories.  Also, by the time we got there, Reese was so tired she spend a good amount of that twenty minutes playing in the dirt with rocks.  At least we got a couple good pics before she got completely pooped.

Oh, and we saw some eagles from far away.

Back on the ship:

The kids sing "I Am a Child of God" for our Sunday churchy meeting

The state room

Port of Call, Victoria, Canada:

A bus tour around the city, some shopping and one or two buskers.

And then back on the ship, for bed and debarkation in the morning.