Cruisin' Alaska

Tim and I had an awesome opportunity to take an Alaskan cruise in September. We have both decided that cruises are the ideal way to vacation. You only have to unpack once, every morning you wake up in a new city, and you don't have to worry about rental cars or hotels. Oh yeah, and there is lots of food to eat whenever you want! Our cruise was roundtrip to Seattle and we stopped in Juneau, Skagway, Glacier Bay, Ketchikan, and Victoria, BC. The scenery was AMAZING! Alaska is beautiful and we had a great time exploring each city. We took lots of pictures but I will just post a few of our favorites.
These are from our first couple days at sea.

The weather was so warm and clear the first day. It got colder and colder the further north we got.

Here is the outdoor movie screen by the pool and hot tubs. We were about to watch Kung-Fu Panda: Kaboom of Doom on this particular afternoon. Below: During the movie, they announced that a whale had been spotted. Everyone swarmed to the edge of the boat with their cameras drawn in seconds. I admit I was part of that swarming crowd, camera and all. :)

The sunsets were breathtaking even on cloudy nights. They said that if it were clear, we could have seen the northern lights but that didn't happen at all during our trip, it was too cloudy. The picture below is from our first formal dinner night.

This was our view as we came into Juneau.

That light-colored mass between the hills is a glacier.

Okay, so much for a "few" favorites. It's too hard to narrow it down so I will make this part 1. Our first port and my next post will be Juneau and the Mendenhall Glacier.