Alaskan Cruise Vacation

The Westerdam - Holland America Cruise Line - Cruising the Alaskan Inside Passage

Round Trip Seattle September 20th - 27th

Glacier Bay ~ Juneau ~ Sitka ~ Ketchikan ~ Victoria

So, we have been back for a week and a half and I am finally getting to posting the blog update of our trip. I was great about posting the pictures to Facebook but it has taken a bit more effort to post a blog summarizing our trip. I will post some of the best shots here but if you want to see the album it is located on my profile. All the pictures have caption which pretty much tell the entire story.

For my mom's birthday and our yearly vacation we decided to take a cruise to Alaska. It was really fun and my mom was such a sport on her birthday as we tormented her with all sorts of party paraphernalia . We left Seattle on a beautiful warm sunny afternoon on September 20th and had pretty much nothing but rain and fog until our last full day at Sea as we headed back into the Puget Sound. We returned to another beautiful warm sunny day in Seattle and enjoyed the last bit of warm weather that this summer offered us.

Here is Hailey from our room.

Our trip first took us to Glacier Bay which was amazing. Here are my favorite shots of the largest of the glaciers that we saw. Note that the pictures were taken from the top of the ship that was 10 stories above sea level.

A funny picture of Hailey in what I dressed her in to go look at the Glaciers.

A cute picture of Hailey and Grandma

The next stop was Juneau where we enjoyed the town and did a bit of shopping. My mom and I found a great fudge shop and we were able to keep it a secret the entire time. For some reason we really liked this bear and got a lot of really cute photos with it. Here we also took a gondola up the side of the mountain to a nature area where we saw a captive bald eagle about 5 feet away and learned about the native tribes. It was very windy going up and we experienced a bit of swaying but it was super fun.

Here we are on the way up.

Here we are at the top of the mountain.

We then pulled into Sitka which was our favorite as it was a very quaint, quiet town with much more character and not as touristy. As we were pulling into Sitka the scenery was just gorgeous with many islands all around.

Our last stop in Alaska was Ketchikan. It was raining sideways and we had terrible wind this day so we didn't get to venture out much by foot but we did see a logging show. Hailey is now the proud new owner of a log chair that the loggers wanted to give her. They carved it as an act during the show and you can see Daddy sitting on it. We also took a horse drawn buggy around town which was really fun. We got a great tour of the town and Hailey had a great time knowing that there were horses pulling us.

We did stop in Victoria but becuase the boat pulled in so late in the evening and we live so close we decided not to venture out and to make sure that we plan a full weekend there soon.

As for all the fun activities that we did on the boat. Hailey loved the shows and asked about them all day, every day. She even saw one of the singers that was on the boat on TV last night and started saying "show, show, show" I am going to have to make sure that we go see more shows this holiday season as she is quite a fan.

We did get a bit seasick the first full day and then one of the evenings as we hit some very rough water and about 60 MPH winds. I went to bed early to sleep it off but the rest decided to go to the show where Hailey proceeded to loose her dinner all over Daddy and Grandma. Greg was such a good sport about it. He cleaned up everything. All I had to take care of was Hailey who was pretty much fine the entire trip, I just think it was a bit too much activity right after dinner combined with some rough water.

My mom and I enjoyed the afternoon tea, we walked the 5K On Deck for a Cure for breast cancer and we enjoyed a few of Hailey's nap times just hanging out in the room relaxing.

As for the naps and bed times, Greg and I worked it out really well. It just happened to always work out where one of us would stay in the room with her and the other would be able to do something that they wanted to do. There was not one time where there was a conflict and they were split up quite evenly. I think Greg took a few more naps and I took a few more evenings but it was perfect.

Hailey loved the towel animals that were in the room every night and looked forward to finding her new one each night, a few of them were a crab, lobster, octopus and her favorite, a hanging monkey.

We also basically ate our way through the trip, the food was fantastic and we definitely enjoyed ourselves. We had some of the best wait staff who all were just enamored by Hailey. By the end of the trip she was pretty tired and seemed ready to get off the "big boat." I know that she really enjoyed herself but there were constantly people, staff and guests, that were always in her face. She is the cutest thing ever and definitely made an impression on everyone that we passed. Had a few meltdowns but what can you expect from a 2 year old on a vacation. I have to say I was quite impressed with her as we did push her limits just as much as she tested ours.

Here we all are at our first formal.

We did have one accident though, Hailey fell and hit her head on the deck the day we were in Glacier Bay. She got quite a bump and had a bruise for the rest of the trip. She only cried for a bit and then was off again. We called the nurse and she said that as long as she was acting normal, she was most likely OK but to just keep an eye on her. She is so squirmy when she gets mad that she just squirmed herself right out of my arms, of course this happened in front of about 50 people. It made me feel better when a few of the people came up later that day and said that they saw what happened and know that she wiggled herself out and that I did not drop her. I though, feel like I dropped by baby.

The bump is just above her right eye, this picture makes her look a bit worse then what she really was but it captures the bump pretty well.

All in all we had a great time and cannot wait for our next.