Our cruise trip began with our flight out to Vancover, where we boarded the Royal Caribbean cruise ship Legend of the Seas around 3pm in the afternoon. The weather was excellent, so we could easily see the snow-capped mountains that made up the Vancover skyline...a sign of the sights to come.

The first full day of the cruise was spent simply sailing from Vancouver to our first port of call. It was a damp, foggy day, so there wasn't too much to see, but I did watch this pack of logs being pulled by a lonely tugboat, headed to some sawmill somewhere.

The dreary weather outside (which was not at all unusual for the area at this time of the year) simply gave us the excuse to wander about the ship. The center of the ship was comprised of a column of open area extending from the 4th floor up to the 11th floor. This is a picture of the lounge area at the bottom of this space and the central stairwell between the 4th and 5th floors. Water from a fountain ran underneath the stairwell.

We arrived at our first port of call the morning of the second full day. Ketchikan is referred to as Alaska's first city because it is usually the first city reached by people travelling to Alaska from the south. Salmon processing and tourism are Ketchikan's two main industries.

After getting off of the ship, we hopped on a tour bus that took us to Totem Bight State Park. The park hosts a number of totem poles, both recreations and relocated originals. This particular totem depicts a thunderbird carrying an orca whale in its talons. The natives believed that thunder was created by the flapping of the wings of this great bird, and that it plucked whales from the sea and ate them back at their nests in the mountains (it was their explanation for the whale bones they found in those areas).

Totem Bight is also part of the Tongass National Forest, the largest national forest in the United States at 17 million acres. Tongass is classified as a rain forest (a temperate one), second only in size to the Amazon rain forest.

After visiting Totem Bight, we wandered through the city. Our first stop was Creek Street (shown here), a shopping area that was originally built during the Yukon gold rush days. Many of the streets and houses in Ketchikan are built on lumber pilings such as the ones that support Creek Street. This is because the island is made up almost entirely of rock and there are very few flat spots.

Because of the procedures we needed to go through to get aboard our ship in Vancover, we never really got a good look at our ship until we stopped at Ketchikan. This is picture of the ship as it sat at the dock.

We were only in Ketchikan until 2pm, because we had a long trip to our next port of call. After re-boarding the ship, we amused ourselves by taking pictures of the floatplanes as they landed in port, often very close to our boat. Ketchikan is only reachable by sea or by air.

A picture of the city as we pulled out of port. Ketchikan has a population of about 14,000 people, making it the 4th most populus city in Alaska. Our Totem Bight tour guide told us that during the summer, about 700,000 tourists visit Ketchikan--the population of Alaska is only about 650,000.

We were standing on the top deck of the ship (deck 10) at the back, watching Ketchikan recede into the distance, when we caught sight of our first bald eagle. It wouldn't be the last bald eagle we would see: there are more wild bald eagles in Alaska than in the rest of the United States combined. We saw a lot of ravens during our stay as well, which came as no surprise after we were told that Tlingit Indian tribe which lived in southeast Alaska had two main clans or moieties, Eagle and Raven.

When we woke up the next morning, we were docked in Skagway. This is a picture of the channel our ship travelled through to make port.

The main attraction in Skagway is the Yukon Pass railroad. Construction of the railroad was first started during the time of the Yukon gold rush (which ended before the railroad was ever completed). This picture was taken near the dock area, as people from another cruise ship were getting aboard. We would be getting on the train later in the day.

At the docks, we got on another tour bus, which drove us out of the city and into the mountains. Just after crossing the border into Canada, we got off the bus and got into two-person kayaks and paddled across and around this mountain lake. Unfortunately, we did not see any bears along the shoreline.

Once of the first things we were told was that we were allowed to leave the inside of the train car and stand on the platforms at either end of the car, so that's what I did for most of the train ride. I was able to get a number of nice train and scenery pictures...but I missed out on the tour commentary. :)

A picture of the train crossing over a mountain river. We saw a lot of streams and rivers throughout our trip, and most of the time we could see them in their entirety, from their starting point near the top of snow-covered mountains to their end into the sea.

A picture of the ship taken as we left Skagway. Here you can see the main pool and pool lounge area. The glass saucer shape was the Viking Crown lounge area (deck 11), the tallest indoor viewing area on the ship.

From Skagway, we travelled south to Juneau (pop 30,000), the only state capital that cannot be reached by road. We had signed up for a wildlife cruise, so we boarded a 30-ft tour boat and headed out. They took us to known wildlife spots, such as this small rocky island frequently populated by seals. We looked at the seals--and they stared right back at us, for about 10 minutes.

Our next "stop" on our wildlife cruise was this navigation buoy / sea lion suntan salon. Any latecomers, such as the male seen in the water, will have to fight their way onto the buoy.

Not long after seeing the sea lions, we heard a report that whales had been spotted by other tour ships. We caught up to a group of two or three humpback whales and followed them for a while, keeping a safe, legal distance. Unfortunately, none of the whales breached (jumped out of the water) After viewing the whales, we stopped at the Orca Point Lodge (located on one of the small islands) for lunch, then headed back to port.

A picture of deck 10 taken looking forward.

The next day we arrived in Sitka. The docks were not capable of handling large cruise ships, so our ship and 2 other large ships had to anchor out in the harbor, and we were ferried to shore. It was a cool, overcast day, but it was not raining, so our luck with the weather on this trip continued.

This picture of downtown Sitka was taken from the top of Castle Hill. The Russians first arrived in the Sitka area in 1799. Their initial outpost was destroyed by the native Tlingit tribe, but the Russians returned in force in 1805, driving the Tlingits out of the area. Sitka became in essence the "Russian capital" of Alaska, and it was in Sitka that the sale of Alaska to America was finalized and signed.

After wandering around town for a while, we met up with our tour guide, hopped on a small bus, and headed to the Sitka Raptor Center. This center attempts to rehabilitate injured eagles and other raptors and then release them back into the wild. The eagle shown here sustained an injury that prevented it from ever flying again, so it is kept outside in an open sky enclosure.

After visiting the inside of the center, our tour guide took us on a nature walk through the forest, which was a part of the Tongass National Forest just as Totem Bight had been. Sitka receives an average of 96 inches of rain a year.

After leaving Sitka, our ship headed north and west, towards the port of Seward, but not before taking a side trip to Hubbard glacier. In the morning, we got up to watch as we slowly entered the field of ice created from fragments of the Valerie and Hubbard glaciers.

The Holland America cruise ship Ryndam had arrived before us and was on its way out of Disenchantment Bay (the bay was named by an explorer who had hoped to find a Northwest passage through North America).

A picture of Valerie glacier. As the ice in a glacier moves, it scrapes dirt and stone off of the ground and the hillsides it travels past, hence the dirty ice seen on this glacier.

A picture of Hubbard glacier taken during a moment when the fog cleared for a moment. You can see the blue tinge of the glacier ice when compared to the snow on the surrounding mountains. The blue ice is a result of the ice becoming very dense over time as it is compressed under great pressure.

On a whim, I stuck my camera lens into one of the viewing tubes of my binoculars, and was able to get this closer shot of Hubbard glacier.

We arrived in Seward early the next morning and disembarked from the ship. Two days before, we had signed up for a trip to Portage Glacier on our way to Anchorage, so we hopped on yet another bus and headed north. Because we were way ahead of schedule, our bus driver stopped a few times to let us take pictures of the landscape or of eagles.

We even had time to spend about 20 minutes at a wildlife preserve near Portage, where we got see moose, caribou, bears, deer, and other animals that we had not had the luck to see during our cruise.

On our approach to Portage Lake, we saw this beautiful example of a hanging glacier (a glacier that does not end at the sea or in a lake) from the roadway.

We boarded a 50-ft sightseeing boat and headed across the lake. As we waited for the glacier to come into view, we looked at several waterfalls which fed the lake (which was 600ft deep in places). The temperature of the lake was just above freezing, and the silt from the glacial runoff gave the water an off-color. There was no life in the lake as a result of the cold and the silt.

Our first good look at Portage Glacier. Like a river of ice, it curves to follow the lowest parts of the mountain slope. It was remarkable to see that frigid blue ice surrounded by green hills.

As you can see, we were able to get much closer to this glacier than we could at Hubbard. It also helped that the weather was perfect--we were glad we had signed up to take this tour!

Originally, the visitor center for Portage Glacier used to be right at the base of the glacier, but Portage has been shriking for a number of years (it loses more ice during the summer than it gains in the winter). This picture was taken just after a few chunks of ice tumbled down the waterfall and splashed into the lake.

A picture of Portage framed by the snowy peaks of the mountains.