Alaska Summer Solstice Cruise - Final Thoughts

There are some special places in the world that no matter how many times you’ve seen them, they always are more special than you remember.  I know how awe-inspiring Yosemite is, but every time I visit Yosemite Valley that first view as you drive into the valley is always better than what I remembered.  The same is true of Yellowstone, and on this trip, it was that way with Alaska.

In my mind I know how wild and scenic Alaska is, but seeing the snow-capped mountains rising up out of the ocean, the small towns dwarfed by the surrounding mountains, the rugged coastline, and all the wildlife once again surprised me as to just how awe inspiring and beautiful it is.

We spent twenty-eight days there and the closest thing we came to an urban area was Anchorage and even there you were minutes away from the wilderness.  Our weather varied from warm and sunny to cold and rainy, but the beauty of Alaska was always there.  We saw eagles, sea lions, otters, grizzly bears and whales on this trip.  We saw glaciers, we sailed up long fjords and visited a few places we’ve only read about or seen on TV.  This was truly a wonderful trip for us.

We enjoyed all of it, but I think my favorite experiences were our whale watching tour out Juneau and our visit to the grizzly bear sanctuary out of Prince Rupert.  Both of those tours were really special days for us.  My biggest disappointment of the trip was catching COVID and missing out on visiting Nome.  Nome isn’t exactly what you’d call a picturesque spot, but it so isolated it would have been interesting to visit and since we had rented a car, it would also have been very interesting to explore the surrounding area.  Oh well, maybe there will be another time.

It took me two months to publish this blog for a one-month trip, but we’ve been pretty busy and it just worked out that way.  No matter how long it takes, I always enjoy going back through what I wrote on the trip, picking out pictures and then publishing a post for each day – I get to relive our trip.

We have some upcoming travels planned, but not all of them will make it to the blog.  Soon we’ll be leaving for a week in Lake Tahoe, but we do that so often unless something unusual or special happens, I don’t bother writing about it.  After getting back from Tahoe, we take a short break and then head out for a month's trip to New Mexico and I will write about that.  We have been talking to my brother about a trip to Michigan next June to visit our family, but that is tentative, and then a year from now, Val and I have booked a two-month cruise into the South Pacific, but that may turn out to be tentative also as Val and I may have some big changes coming in our lives; nothing bad, but it would mean a big change.

I love having travel plans to look forward to so I’m glad to have a few things lined up.  Will we end up doing them all?  That remains to be seen, but whatever the case, we’ll see you on down the road.

Alaska Summer Solstice Cruise - Journey's End

Coast Starlight to Home Day 1

Monday, July 8, 2024

Our train didn’t leave until 9:50, but we could board earlier, and we wanted to have time to eat some breakfast before leaving for the train station, so we got up at 7:30.  After getting cleaned up and packing everything up we went down to the breakfast area.  Breakfast was complimentary at the hotel, and it was pretty substantial, so we had plenty to eat.

After breakfast we had a bit of time before we needed to leave so we relaxed in our room for a bit.  We had a strange thing happen (we thought so anyway) last night; around 1:30 AM I heard a booming noise and there were fireworks being set off a couple of blocks away from us.  They were not way up in the sky, but just off the top of one of the lower buildings.  The fireworks were pretty good and lasted for quite a few minutes, and after going back to bed, another burst was set off.  We didn’t see any activity around them and when we asked about it in the hotel this morning, no one knew anything about them.

It was finally time to leave, and we made the short walk from our hotel over to the station and waited for boarding to start.  The sleeper cars were boarded first, so we were in our room by 9:30.  Our car attendant was very nice and carried our luggage up for us.

The train left on time, but there was a lot of freight traffic and by the time we got to our first stop, we were an hour behind.  We never really made up this time and were anywhere from a half hour to two hours behind schedule the entire trip. We had a good lunch in the dining car and had another nice conversation with a couple who sat across from us.  

The afternoon went by quickly as we watched the scenery, dozed a little and read a little.  For dinner tonight we sat across a brother and sister from Pennsylvania and while they were nice enough, they mostly talked about themselves.  We spent the last half hour of dinner listening to them talk about which one of them lived in the most rural area – we were glad to get away when we finished dinner.

Once it gets dark there is not much to see, so we had our beds made up at 9:30 and called it a night.

We had a long stop in Portland so I got off to stretch my legs and look around.

Coast Starlight to Home Day 2

Tuesday, July 9, 2024

The final day on the train and the final day of our trip.  We were up early and neither one of us felt like going to the dining car for breakfast, so we had breakfast bar to eat and spent the morning watching the scenery go by.  At lunch we had another interesting conversation with a man who was traveling with his daughter.  Unfortunately, his daughter was suffering from motion sickness and didn’t join us for lunch.  After lunch we only had about an hour before we arrived where we were getting off.

To start the trip, we got on in San Luis Obispo that is about 20 miles south of us, but today we decided to get off in Paso Robles that is 15 miles north of us.  We are being picked up by Val’s friend Marsha and it will be a much easier drive for her this way.

We arrived in Paso Robles about an hour late and Marsha was there to meet us.  Thank you so much Marsha, we really appreciate it.  She also took care of our house while we were gone, so we are much indebted to her.  It was quite shocking to get off the train as it was 108 degrees.  Here we had been freezing in Alaska and now we were cooking.  It had been quite warm in Seattle, but nothing like this.

We were home before four and after doing a little unpacking we did nothing for the rest of the day and evening.  Our trip is over, and we have a lot to do this week, so a little rest this evening feels good.  This is the end of a wonderful trip, but it always feels good to get home.

Alaska Summer Solstice Cruise - Debarkation

Seattle

Sunday, July 7, 2024

I woke up around seven this morning and we were already docked in Seattle and in fact they were starting to let people off the ship.  They don’t let everyone off at once and depending on the time of flights and other factors, they assign you into groups and you don’t get off until your group number is announced over the PA system.

The first group to leave is always people that carry all their luggage out themselves, so they were called immediately.  Because we are in a suite, we have priority and were the next group called, but we are staying overnight and had no reason to rush off so we stayed in bed until 7:30.

After getting up, dressed and cleaned up, we made our way to the Neptune Lounge and had our final breakfast there and then returned to our room until 9:00 when we decided it was time to get off.

We are taking the train back home and it leaves at 10:00 in the morning, and we just weren’t sure we would make it off the ship and to the station in time, so we decided to play it safe and stay overnight.  It turns out that this was one of the most efficient and quick debarkation we have experienced, and we probably could have made the train, but you never know.

At nine we left the ship and made our way to the terminal to claim our luggage.  There was a steady stream of people leaving, but it was quite orderly and there was no standing in line waiting for anything.  We found our luggage, but we had a scare when we couldn’t find one of our bags, but that was my fault as I was looking for the wrong one; another senior moment for me.

Besides our smaller luggage, we had two large bags we were shipping home using a company called Luggage Forward, so we found a porter that loaded everything onto a cart and took us out to find the Luggage Forward representative who had been texting me his location.  We had no trouble finding him, but it was a long walk, and I don’t know how we could have gotten our luggage out there without a porter.

After dropping our two large bags off with Luggage Forward, our porter hauled the rest of our luggage to the cab line where we found a taxi.  I have to say I tipped the porter generously as we had quite a load and were grateful for his help.  We are staying at the Hilton Embassy Suites in the Pioneer Square area of Seattle that is close to the King Street Station where we’ll catch the train tomorrow.

It was quite a ways from the ship to the hotel, but there wasn’t much traffic and we made to the hotel before ten.  That was an easy debarkation, it took us less than an hour from the time we left our room to arriving at the hotel.  One bonus for us was that as we got out of the taxi, we saw that the train station was right across the street from the hotel, an easy walk.

We checked in, but as expected our room wasn’t ready so we checked our luggage and settled down in the lobby to wait.  The hotel is also very close to the Seattle Seahawk stadium and the Seattle Mariner stadium.  We noticed there were a lot of people wearing Toronto Blue Jay jerseys so we looked it up and sure enough, the Blue Jays were in town playing the Mariners.  We talked to one lady who said she had come in with over 100 others on a chartered flight from Edmonton in Alberta, Canada.  She said she had run into quite a few other tours in town from various other locations in Canada.  They had come in Saturday and watched the game last night and after going to today’s game, they will leave for home.  It created a real hubbub in the lobby.

Val and I got tired of waiting and decided to walk over to the Amtrak station and see what time they would start boarding tomorrow morning, but other than tickets agents, there were no people at the information booths so we gave up and returned to the hotel lobby.

It had been a while since breakfast, so we decided to get some lunch at the 13 Coins Restaurant that was attached to the hotel.  Val had read some reviews, and it seemed to be very popular.  It was very crowded so we had to wait a bit to be seated, but we had a good lunch and would eat there again.

During lunch I received a text saying our room was ready so after we finished, we checked into our room.  Our room is a corner view room on the 14^th floor with great views of the city and harbor through the floor to ceiling windows.  The room is quite small but will suit us just fine for our one-night stay.

 

Our ship is still docked in the distance (furthest to the left).  Just past the Ferris Wheel is the area where we stayed before the cruise.

The clock tower and the building with the green roof is the train station, we were very close.

A nice view of Mount Rainier.

We relaxed a bit and did a little luggage repacking, and I brought the blog up to date and then we decided to take a walk and explore the area.  We revisited the Amtrak station and this time there was someone at the information desk and they said we could expect to board about a half hour before departure so now we know about when to get there tomorrow.

From there we walked a few blocks, but it looked like kind of a depressed area as there were many empty storefronts.  There were a few shops, and we found a promising restaurant, but the was about it.  We returned to the hotel and relaxed for a while until we started to feel hungry and decided to return to the 13 Coins Restaurant as we had enjoyed our breakfast, and it was very convenient.  It was very busy, and we again had to wait a little while, but we eventually got seated and had a delicious dinner.

After dinner we mostly just relaxed until we called it a night.  We were both tired as it had been a hectic day.  We don’t have to get up too early tomorrow as we start the final leg of our trip.

Alaska Summer Solstice Cruise - Sea Day

Cruise Day 28

Saturday, July 6, 2024

Today is the day we look forward to the least on a cruise – the last day.  On one hand we are looking forward to getting home, but on the other hand, this has been a wonderful cruise and we hate to see end, but the worst thing about the last day is having to pack everything up and make it all fit in our bags.

We were tired so we slept in until almost nine and then after getting something to eat, we started to do our packing.  After tiring of that we decided to go down to the shops.  We had a lot of onboard credit on this cruise, but the “have it all” promotion that was included with this cruise covered about everything, so we used very little of it.  Consequently, we had over $1000 left and we either had to use it or lose it.

After that, it was back to our room for more packing.  Our room stewards came by to clean our room, so we said goodbye to them and thanked them for all their hard work.  There is an automatic charge every day for gratuities for the crew that is spread to all the crew members throughout the ship, but we wanted to give them more so we gave them a separate tip, they really deserved it.

It was time for lunch so made our way to the Lido for our last lunch onboard.  To be honest, we are getting a little tired of the lunch fare and will be glad to get home to our usual lunches.

After lunch, we decided to head to the casino and kill a little time and put off our final packing.  Little did we know at the time that this would be our last visit to the casino, but more on that later.

Back in our room we did our final packing except for the odds and ends that would have to wait until the last thing tonight.  We have been busy the last couple of days, so I spent much of the rest of the afternoon catching up on the blog and then relaxed a little before dinner.

We have had some of the best food we have eaten on a cruise and enjoyed almost every meal.  Our last meal was no exception, and we finished our cruise with a great dinner.  Just before our desert the dining room and kitchen staff paraded around the dining room singing an Indonesian farewell song.  They were met with a lot of applause and gratitude as they all work so hard with no days off and very little time off during the day.  After dinner we said goodbye to Aris and Hendric, our dining room stewards, and gave them a little added gratuity and after a picture with them, we said our final goodbyes and made our way to the casino.

Aris and Hendric were great dining room stewards and they made our dinner more enjoyable.

We got to the casino and were very surprised to see that it had closed.  Usually on the last night they are open until at least midnight, but not on this one.  We have sailed into the Strait of Juan de Fuca with Canada on one side and the US on the other close enough to have to close the casino.  We had missed the announcement and just assumed the casino would be open late and now we had a problem.

On the ship, you don’t use cash, you load cash onto your key card and then put your card into the slot machines and get money that way.  When you cash out, anything you may have won is put back onto the card and to get that money, you have to go to the casino cashier and get paid the cash that was on your card.

The problem for us was we still had cash on our cards and the cashier was closed.  We were afraid we had lost that money, but it turned out that we would just have to wait for them to send us a check that would take six to eight weeks.  I was disappointed as I had been winning the last week or so and built up a nice little amount on my card, but now I will have to wait to get it.  Oh well, at least we won’t lose it and we have learned a lesson not to assume anything.

We returned to our room and did our very final packing as we had to put our larger bags outside our room by midnight when they would be picked up and the next time we would see them would be in the terminal tomorrow morning.  Finally, everything was ready, the bags were put in the hallway, and it was time to relax until bedtime.  Tomorrow morning we’ll be in Seattle and leaving the ship.

The sun sets on our last night of the cruise.