Way Up North

Alaska, the great-white North. The largest State in the Union. In seven days I visited 3 cities and still only saw a sliver of the thing. I saw Ketichican, Skagway, and Juneau. Alaska is a big friggin’ place. I saw a whole bunch of wildlife, and ate a lot of food.



My ship was the Norwegian Sun, but I didn’t see much sun. It was cold, windy, rainy and not exactly what I thought a cruise would be. I did enjoy myself and I can definitely see the benefits of cruising. If a cruise down south were planned, I would most definitely be on board.



The trip really started out on a downer. My Aunt Jeannine planned the trip, emailed everybody countless times, followed up with everything, booked tickets and organized literally everything to get all 21 of us up there including my Grandparents, their children and grandchildren. A huge kudos goes out to her in getting this crazy crew of 21 together. My Grandma, after a few days on the ship was not feeling well enough to continue and finish the cruise. Jeannine, Dan and my Grandparents then got off the ship and flew home. Things like this just happen and you have to do what you have to do, but the whole family really missed all four of them for the rest of the vacation.

The ship sailed out of Vancouver. That is an awesome city in and of itself. I had no idea how big it was. It was cold and rainy there, but the clouds lifted enough to see the skyline. The only way that city could have been cooler was if it weren’t in Canada.

The first stop was in Ketchican. My brother and I got up early to go salmon fishing. The river we fished was way cool, and it was fun to throw a fly in Alaska. That fulfilled one of my things to do before I die. The only thing I guess I could have wished for, was fish to fish to. There were fish in the river, but they were further down from where we were. We tried to move down into another hole, but another guide with another group kept us from catching anything.

The highlight of that trip came while we were fishing a bear crossed a downed tree. I was watching my line, and my brother called out, BEAR! We all looked downstream and I snapped this shot. When I grabbed my camera and turned it on, the bear was just climbing onto the log. He was running at full stride, and I “bear-ly” had enough time to take the picture. Bears are cool, and I think that the black bears are best.




Its a good thing it didn't come close to me, because I would have brought out my mean face.





Other than the bear, the fishing trip was a bust. My other siblings went on a kayaking trip that day, and while the prospect of catching a fish in Alaska had a huge draw… we did get screwed.

The second stop was Juneau. I wish we had stopped in Juneau for longer. Juneau is the only state capital that has no roads in or out. In all of Juneau there is only like 92 miles of road total. Our bus driver/tour guide on our excursion was from Pleasant Grove, and was one of a large group of LDS boys working as tour guides this summer. That would be fun, for a few weeks. But I think it might get old pretty quick.

In Juneau I saw whales. Wow, whales are awesome. I saw them “bubble feed” which isn’t terribly different than when the Stripped Bass “boil.” They circle around the fish or shrimp or whatever they’re eating, then blow bubbles corner them into a huge circle and then they all surface and eat. I know that’s not the best description, but what we saw was about 13 whales surfacing head first all at the same time. It was pretty cool. They’d be gone for about 5 minutes and then all of a sudden BOOM 13 whales jumping. That was cool. I didn't get a great picture of it, but in this one you can see a few tails, a back or two and a bunch of puffs of air from the whales blow-hole.



The third day was possibly the most scenic. The town was Skagway and the boat stopped (in some ways regrettably) there for the longest period of time. Juneau would have been in my opinion the best city to be in for a whole day because of the variety of tours available there. Skagway was still very nice. My immidiate family and I went on a train up a huge glacial formed canyon saw a glacier, visited a gold mining town, panned for gold, had smoked salmon and visited a brothel museum. The brothel museum was an interesting experience. One sexual innuendo after another, after another, after another. These places tell the same jokes every 15 minutes or so, but everyone we were there with certainly thought that every joke was funnier than the other. I could only handle so much.




One great thing about this cruise was the food. My cousin Andi cannot eat gluten and the crew in the restaurants were so good to work with her. Other than that, my stomach hasn’t growled in a week. All day there was something to eat somewhere. Room service was apart of the whole thing, so my cousin that I roomed with, Brett and I ordered pizza just about every night.



Now that I’ve mentioned Brett I do need to talk about him for a little bit. This kid is a crack up. He’s going to be a senior this year at East and could go pretty close to anywhere he wants for college. He got some award from the Governor a few years back, and is just wicked smart. We roomed together and he nearly got me to spit milk out of my nose more than once. Funny kid.

The weather was good for most of the days I was off of the boat, but while on the boat there was a lot of rain and wind. One night my cousins and I were soaking in the hot tub and the weather was so intense it was nearly impossible to sit facing the wind without getting pelted in the eye with a 90 mile-an-hour rain drop. That made getting out of the hot tub even less appealing. We only got out when the guy closing the hot tub down for the night kicked us out.

The weather was colder than I anticipated, and even without my Grandparents, Jeannine and Dan the ship still continued to sail on, and the cruise turned out to be really fun. I would definitely recommend it.