The entire first day of my Carnival cruise to Alaska was spent slowly sailing up this majestic water canyon that is the Tracy Arm Fjord. A woman was announcing over the sound system when whales or other interesting wildlife would come past and say hello to our ship passing by. (It wasn't very helpful. For some reason the whales didn't realize it takes a few seconds to whip out a phone or camera to snap a pic or video to show all of our friends and blog readers that "Look, I saw a humpback whale!!" and would dip back into the water very quickly).
This was my first look at Alaska as well. It was relatively warm (mid 60s on August 28, 2013 when we were there) considering I was expecting it to be frigid and snowy the entire time. I mean, isn't that what those of us in the continental 48 are told to expect from Alaska?
Let me be the first to tell you that was hardly the case. The only time the air was really biting was when the wind blew, but with a corduroy jacket I was fine.The water was just as turquoise and sparkling (though not see-through) as any Caribbean waters I've seen- and I've been to seven of the islands down there. The trees on the cliffs were a rich but earthy green. Speaking of the cliffs, they were very steep and only at the very tops were covered in snow. We saw chunks of blue-looking glacier ice float past us (hopefully not breaking off due to global warming!) and occasionally saw eagles or goats living their lives oblivious to the 2000+ people gawking at them from a big white ship.
We ended at Dawe's Glacier at the end of the Fjord. You could pay ($400-500) for excursions to take a smaller boat up to the glacier and see the wildlife up close and personal. I didn't have $500 to spare so I watched from the main ship with the majority of the other passengers and shot a pretty nifty two minute video that I uploaded to YouTube. I few couples my god mother and I befriended did take the excursion and they showed us pictures of seals chilling on rocks and glacier chunks. Pretty neat.
Nothing left now but to leave you with the pictures I was able to snap while in the Fjord and other waters of Alaska as well as my YouTube vid I mentioned earlier.
As always thank you for joining me on my journey across America.
