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I have always wanted to visit Alaska after hearing Johnny Horton’s song, North To Alaska, where he sang about the Yukon River and the gold rush.
In June, 2018, my wife and I decided to take an Alaskan cruise and it came with a visit to the Rocky Mountains (or Rockies) in Canada. We flew to Vancouver, Canada first, and crossed the border to Seattle in the United States, where we boarded a cruise ship called Ruby Princess.
During the cruise, we had two “formal nights” where we had to dress in formal attire. There was also the usual casino and art galleries by Parkwest Gallery.
Our first stop was supposed to be Ketchikan, but because there was a medical emergency on the ship, we had to land at the nearest port for medical evacuation. We lost valuable time and by the time we arrived at Juneau, all we could do was wander around the stalls near the port.
There was no time for our shore excursion, but fortunately, our money was refunded.
We then proceeded to Skagway, where we chose an optional excursion to Yukon. There, we were fortunate to see a black bear in the forest!
We visited an animal museum, where there were many taxidermic specimens, including a mammoth.
We continued to cruise and ported at Victoria, British Columbia. Our shore excursion was a city tour, where we saw nice houses with old-world charm and beautiful trees and flowers, with deer wandering the streets.
From here, we turned and headed back to Seattle. We stopped at Tracy Arm Fjord, located about 80km southeast of Juneau to watch the spectacular glacier-carved fjords with sheer vertical walls.
The last stop was Ketchikan, the southernmost port city. Our shore excursion took us to the Alaskan Rainforest Sanctuary, where we were met by forest rangers who explained about the flora and fauna there.
Early in the morning, we went to the Colombia Icefield and had a ride on the ice- explorer snow coach to the Athabasca Glacier. We had a casual walk along the multi-million-year-old ice field, before spending some time at Banff. We wandered around the town and found a shop selling ammolite, a fossil which I have never heard before.
Ammolite is one of the rarest gemstones in the world. It is actually a brilliant opal-like gemstone found only in the Rockies around Southern Alberta. It is formed from aragonite, deposited inside the fossilised shells of the common ammonites.
I was happy to buy a large semi-precious ammolite for my fossil collection.
In the final leg of our tour, we visited Lake Louise, Vernon, Kelowna and Lake Okangan Waterfront Park, where we stopped by a nice vineyard for wine tasting. We were impressed to see a giant wine bottle suspended in the air pouring wine into a wine glass.
It was a lovely tour, and I hope we will be able to travel safely again soon.
The views expressed are entirely the reader’s own.
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