Cruise - All Aboard!

July has been a busy month with a fair amount of time spent outside of Bethel, but not outside of Alaska.  Just before the 4th we set off to meet with my family for an Alaskan cruise, something I have always wanted to do, just never thought I would do it while living in Alaska.  The cruise set off from Seattle... that's right, we flew from Alaska to Seattle to get on a boat and come back to Alaska...  We met up with my parents, sister and several of my aunts and uncles.  It was great seeing everyone!  Some I had not seen in years!  We were however, the only crazies in the group to bring two children under the age of 4.
After setting off Saturday afternoon from Seattle we spent the whole next day at sea.  "Great!" we thought, "We'll take the kids swimming" (Swimming is a luxury for our kids.  There are no pools in Bethel, so the only chances they get to swim is when we stay in a hotel or, in this case, go on a cruise.)  Luke and Gianna loved every minute of the few that they got to spend in the pool.  It was only a few minutes, because not long after they got in and really got playing, the pool police told us Gianna wasn't allowed to be in the water on account of her still being in diapers.  They didn't care that she had a diaper on specifically made for swimming.  So sad to have access to so many pools for a whole week and not be able to let them go in.

Our first port of call was Juneau.  I was so excited about this port because Mark and I had an excursion set up for just the two of us.  My parents were going to take the kids and go to a salmon bake while Mark and I went whale watching and to Mendenhall Glacier.  Our excursion was specifically geared toward amateur photographers.  Our tour guide was a professional photographer who had been shooting in the Juneau area for almost 30 years.   I had my camera ready with fully charged batteries, extra memory cards and all my lenses.  The weather called for beautiful partly cloudy skies and temperatures in the low 70s.  Then we disembarked and my heart sank as we stepped out into rain and a heavy fog.  I tried not to let it get me down too much.  I live in Alaska, I know first hand how fickle the weather here is.

Bald eagle

True to Alaska the weather did improve, only to get bad again, only to improve.  I guess the whales must have known that the weather was crummy because they weren't doing much of anything other than coming up for air.  We did get impressively close however to a mother and her calf, but no matter how much I willed the whales to leap out of the water, none did.

Our first view of the glacier... no really... it's there,
look close at the left side of the photo

By the time we got off the boat it was absolutely pouring.  We drove out to Mendenhall where we were then supposed to take a trail that would bring us to the glacier.  It was still pouring rain.  Even though Mark and I both came prepared with out rain coats we still grabbed one of the ponchos the guide offered us.  The ponchos over our rain jackets did well to keep my camera and top half dry, but from our knees down we were soaked.  I couldn't have been more wet if I had waded through knee deep water.  
After a very cold and wet hike we finally made it to our first view of the glacier.  Only problem was you couldn't see the glacier through the fog!!  We hiked on to the visitor's center and slowly the rain started to subside and the fog started to lift.  The beautiful blues of the glacier ice started to show themselves.  I was just starting to think about all the nice pictures I was going to take on the trail as we hiked back to the bus when the tour guide said we would meet at the parking lot around the corner in 5 minutes.  I just stared at him.  We hiked in the pouring, freezing rain for 30 minutes when we could have driven straight to the glacier!
Once the excursion was finally over Mark and I went back to the ship to change and warm up.  We did get out and about in downtown Juneau for roughly an hour, had a couple of drinks at the Red Dog Saloon and stopped in a couple of shops.  Juneau is beautiful.  Maybe next time we will fly straight there and spend a long weekend traveling at our own pace.