This is our second day at sea on this cruise.  We left Skagway yesterday around 5:00pm and will be in Victoria BC tomorrow around 7:00pm, so its almost two whole days at sea.  

Today we're just taking it easy, we spent the morning, after breakfast, out on the deck taking in the sun.  It gave me some time to update the blog and Krista read.  She had a bit of a headache so it was best to just take it easy.

Tonight is the second formal dinner, and PCA is hosting one at 8:00pm.  The Canadians are going to get together for this dinner.

Tomorrow is going to look a lot like today in the sense that we will be just taking it easy until we get to Victoria, then we are not sure if we will do anything.  We've been there, and stayed a few days to take in the city, and the surrounding area so there isn't much for us to see or do that we have not done in the past, plus we only have four hours here anyway so it doesn't give us much time to do anything.  We will likely stay on the ship and do some last minute things like check out our photographs, and get ready to pack our stuff for disembarcation.

This morning we woke to find the ship dock side in Skagway.  We have booked a train tour through the white pass.  So after a quick breakfast at the buffet (first time we did a buffet breakfast) we headed to the Princes Theatre to meet up with the other PCA members taking the trip.

The PCA group taking this train tour was really quite large, they had us staged in the Princess theatre, the largest theatre on the ship, we were split into three groups probably of about 60 to 80 people each.  This was a great way to get us off the ship in an organized manner.  To get to and from the ship we had to all take a small bus because there were rock slides between where the ship was docked and town / where we pick up the train.

The train consists of older style cars pulled by a diesel locomotive, the cars have a small kerosene heater at the front and simple bench seats for two people each.   These trains have about 10 cars each.

The tour starts in Skagway and makes its way up the White pass.  The pass is how the original gold miners made their way up to find their fortunes.  The origial walking path was really not really a path, it was meant for traffic to go in both directions and was so narrow that it could barely allow anyone to walk in one direction.  The original prospectors had to carry all of their equipment along with their animals along this narrow path, many did not make it and of those that did very few made any fortunes to speak of.  

The train winds through the pass, starting at the town and working its way up the mountain until we cross Into Canada, so we did spend about 10 minutes in the Yukon where there is a loop on that the train takes to get us back to Skagway.  In total the trip takes about two hours.  

The scenery, the wide scoping views and the ride through the wilderness was amazing.  Really worth the trip.  The train left us where we started.  We decided to make our way into Skagway.

The town itself has maintained its klondike era charm with small the traditional small buldings along their broadway all turned into shops for the tourists.  Its worth mentioning that this is a very small town, and today they had four cruise ships in the harbour, and apparently during the height of the season this is normal.

Krista and I did a little shopping starting with some really good popcorn and taffy.  We were on the hunt for a few things, Krista wanted a Pandora charm for Alasks, I wanted a T-Shirt with some indiginous art on it and a christmas ornament.  All three gathered in no time.  

The crowds as can be imagined were insane with four large cruise ships in port so we made our way out of town in a hurry and decided to take a quick hike up where we could get some great views of the town and to their lower lake.  It was quite a hike up the hill, it was about a 500ft climb upward which took us about 45 minutes.  This might have been a bit much for me my knee does not work going down hill, and my hernia was not liking the stress of going down, I can climb but decending is not really great.

We then made it back to the ship around 3:00 the ship leaves at 5:00 everyone had to be abord by 4;30. 

Tonight we have dinner planned.  

Tomorrow we have a day at sea before we reach Victoria

Today we pull up to Juneau, this is again another early morning the day started at about 4:30am because we are getting off the ship before it docks in Juneau.  We are boarding a catamaran directly from the ship in the endicot arm (fjord) at about 6:00am.  From here the catamaran will take us to Dawes Glacier, we will then tour the glacier, and the arm before the catamaran retuns us to the ship in Juneau.

This tour of the Dawes Glacier was a PCA organized event and we filled the catamaran, there must have been a group of 60 people abord.  There was another catamaran group as well but not for PCA members. Where we boarded we could not see the glacier but there was quite a lot of ice in the water, just cubes not really anything to worry about, no Titanic events going on today with what was floating around.

We were only about a 20 minute ride from where we embarked the catamaran, but along the way we sailed along the shore line taking in the mountains and the shoreline.

When we arrived to the glacier, we did see some small calving happening, this is when the ice breaks off from the glacier.  We got quite close to the glacier, at the nearest we were probably about 2km away so very easy to view. The entire time I could hear the ice cracking and snappling.  

We did get to see quite a lot of calving, small sections of the glacier just giving way to float away in the fjord (arm).  There was one section though that was really quite active, we could see sections of ice falling from either side of this large section of ice that was just getting ready to let go.  Small sections would fall away, and those in themselves were quite spectacular but we all were on the outer deck just watching and hoping for the big pieice of ice to let go.

Then we saw a lot of small calving happening, sections to both the left and right were just letting loose then it happened, a huge cracking noise came from the glacier and the big section let go it was impressive.  When the ice hit the water it created a wave that was 2 or 3 feet high and it ran out from the glacier and along the face of the glacier.  The wave was high enough to create other small calvings along the face.  This was a great show.

Once the calving was done we then headed back toward Juneau.

Along the way the captain was really quite good stopping for us to see bears and eagles along the coast.  We first saw a single black bear on the shore just scavenging.  The next point where we slowed we saw three bears, a mother and her two cubs again just scavening.  The people that were with us really don't understand how to behave around animals, they all were yelling 'look at the bears' as if they would just stay there and let eveyone look at them, this is not a zoo, a lot of people did not see them because of couse as soon as the bears heard the humans they took off into the trees.

We continued our trip back to Juneau combing the shoreline for more life, we did not see anymore bears but there were a few eagles in the trees.   

We did stop at another glacier on our way back the Yusuke "You Suck" glacier.  This one did not come down to the fjord like the others but still impressive.  It was here that we did encounter a whale.  She would pop up ever now and then and did display her tail a couple of times.  We probably spent about 45 minutes just chasing down the whale.  Then we headed off to get back to the ship who has already docked in Juneau, at this point we are about 3 hours away.

The trip was pleasant, Krista and I spent most of it on the outer deck, this is Alaska we didn't want to be sitting inside on the boat just sleeping, there was way too much to see.  The mountains alone were just spectacular and the skys were pretty much clear except for a quick shower every now and then.

We arrived in Juneau at about 1:00, we embarked the ship here the same way we got off at the Endicott Arm and then headed to the buffet to get some food.  After a quick lunch we headed off to explore some of Juneau.  We decided to take a tour out to the Mendenhall Glacier.  Tour busses take cruise passengers out to the glacier.  There are limits to the number of people that can go out, and how long they can stay.  There is a limit of two hours at the site.  The glacier is quite nice, I would say that the Dawes Glacier that we saw this morning was more impressive, probably because we could get close to it. 

The mendenhall glacier though impressive also had a huge waterfall on site which I thought was nicer than the glacier itself.   We hiked around the site took some pictures then headed back to the bus to take us to our ship.

We debated wandering around Juneau, but it was raining quite hard and we were really quite tired, its been a long day and we both were ready for some food then some rest.  We made this a very early night.  

Tomorrow is another early morning, we will find ourselves docked in Skagway.