First cruise ever...to Alaska with the Princess Sapphire!

Selecting a cruise company for the first time is probably not always an easy decision. There are so many options out there today but one thing we knew for sure was that we wanted to see Alaska. 

Being retired from teaching for a year, we began to plan our Alaskan cruise. I read up on the different cruise lines and decided that we should try Princess. We booked their "11 Night Denali Explorer" aboard the Sapphire Princess for August 11, 2012. This was our very first cruise and we were hoping to make it memorable.

We booked a balcony stateroom and were excited about the opportunity to see all the majestic beauty of the Inside Passage and Alaskan towns. What we didn't know was that Princess had generously upgraded us to the Penthouse Suite Juneau! I guess all those added notes to our reservation must have helped. I'd mentioned that it was our wedding anniversary and our very first cruise ever! Princess' marketing department definitely had a hand in our upgrade. We were absolutely thrilled with our new and spacious stateroom.

We set sail from Vancouver and headed first to Ketchikan where we walked through the Alaska Rainforest Sanctuary, a private reserve at Herring Cove. We saw many bald eagles, a salmon hatchery, Alaska reindeer, and toured the historic Herring Bay Lumber Company saw mill where a Native totem-pole carver was at work. I think the best part was the crab feast! We had an all you can eat Dungeness crab feast! I highly recommend their "Rainforest Wildlife Sanctuary Walk & Crab Feast."

Our next destination was the Mendenhall Glacier & Whale Quest. Breathtaking natural beauty surrounded us during this excursion. We saw lots of whales including humpback and killer. 

Skagway was our next stop and a ride on the White Pass Scenic Railway provided us with some beautiful scenery as well as the magnificent White Pass Summit.  There's a lot of Gold Rush history in this region.

During our land portion of the trip, we stopped at the Denali Princess Wilderness Lodge. During my teaching days as a reading teacher, I taught the novel "Woodsong" by Gary Paulsen. It's a wonderful novel of Gary's experience with the Iditarod. We were fortunate enough to be able to meet Jeff King, an Iditarod winner several times, during his Husky Homestead Tour. The dogs were wonderful to see and holding a new pup was the perfect ending to our visit. 

These are just a few highlights of our trip....the video hopefully captures our cruise and the fun we had on the trip. 

Alaska was the perfect beginning to our cruise explorations. We've been going strong ever since.

Happy travels to all...

~ Cindy