Bon Voyage

On Friday we went to the Alaskan Native Heritage Center in Anchorage. It was quite fascinating – much more so than we ever imagined. We are heading to our ship on Saturday afternoon. The sixty mile journey to the port takes about two hours, and goes along winding mountain roads and through the longest railway & highway tunnel in North America. I arranged transportation with a van shuttle service for $265.50 (Yikes!), which, believe it or not, is $125.00 cheaper than the Princess shuttle bus would have been. Just another example of price gouging in Alaska. On the flip side, our 150 mile, four-hour Amtrak trip next week from Vancouver to Seattle cost only $110.00 for the five of us.

Here are some webcam links for anyone who would like to see our locations as we proceed on our voyage.

This is the webcam that is situated on our ship. Sometimes the view is straight off our bow, other times it is positioned looking backwards towards the stern.
http://www.princess.com/bridgecams/sa/sapphire_bridgecam.html

Whittier - This is the port city where our cruise begins.
http://whittierak.yukontel.com/

Skagway – We will be here on Tuesday.
http://www.weather-forecast.com/locations/Skagway/webcams/801

Juneau – We will be here on Wednesday.
http://www.juneau.org/cam/southcam.php

Ketchikan – We will be here on Thursday. http://www.earthcam.com/usa/alaska/ketchikan/

Vancouver – Our cruise ends here on Saturday, the 31st. http://www.vancouver.com/webcam/index.html

As soon as we have some captivating photos, I will post them. All five of us have adjusted just fine to the 4 hour time difference and to the “midnight sun” glowing throughout the night. The temperatures have been in the 50s and 60s, and are expected to be in the 70s as we cruise south from here.