Alaska’s capital, Juneau, is the only mainland US capital city with no road connections. The only way in or out is by air or sea. And despite having a population of only 32,000, it’s the second largest city in the US by area, after Sitka, also in Alaska. We arrived by boat, as do the…
Ketchikan
On our Norwegian Encore Caribbean cruise, we didn’t take any excursions, opting instead to visit each port on foot on our own. The Jewel offered some more interesting trips, so we booked one for each port. In Ketchikan, we took an off-road UTV safari through Tongass National Forest in a Yamaha Wolverine X2. Although we…
Inside Passage to Alaska
After our second night at the Vancouver Pan Pacific hotel, we woke up to find the Norwegian Jewel, the ship we’d be taking to Alaska, docked just outside our room. We boarded later that day and spent the afternoon exploring the ship, then had a wonderful time watching from our balcony at the bow as…
Sitka Soggy Sitka
Keeping with our 2023 “style” of cruising, we’ve been staying in the Sitka area the last two weeks. The first five days after we arrived on June 3, we were on the dock. We did lots of walks around town and on the nearby trails. Drake was able to get two play sessions a day at the dog park a short distance from the harbor.
We did leave on June 8 with the intent to poke around south of Sitka on the west coast of Baranof Island. Our first night was at Dorothy Cove in Necker Bay a bit over 40 miles of cruising from Sitka. Most of that distance is actually protected by islands from direct ocean swell. We had one exposed section of about 5 miles for which we put our stabilizing “fish” in the water to lessen the roll from the incoming waves hitting us on our starboard side. They did dampen the boat’s motion and improve Drake’s experience and, hopefully reduce his anxiety.
Unfortunately, about that time the weather became a bit colder and drearier. After two nights in Dorothy Cove and with a forecast for windier conditions, we decided to get back north of the exposed open coast section. We stayed one night each at Jamboree Bay and Sevenfathom Bay before heading to Leesoffskaia Bay, a few miles south of Sitka. The temperatures remained cool with highs in low 50’s and low’s in the mid 40’s.. Winds were generally 10 to 20 knots with occasional rain showers. Not exactly the weather for lounging on deck.
After two nights in Leesoffskaia, we traveled the short six miles to Sitka Harbor and tied up at the transient dock on June 14. Since arriving, a strong front has passed by dropping over 1.5 inches of rain and bringing high winds with accompanying heavy seas off shore. We’ll stay a few more days on the dock waiting for a forecasted period of fine weather then head north.
Sitka Soggy Sitka
Keeping with our 2023 “style” of cruising, we’ve been staying in the Sitka area the last two weeks. The first five days after we arrived on June 3, we were on the dock. We did lots of walks around town and on the nearby trails. Drake was able to get two play sessions a day at the dog park a short distance from the harbor.
We did leave on June 8 with the intent to poke around south of Sitka on the west coast of Baranof Island. Our first night was at Dorothy Cove in Necker Bay a bit over 40 miles of cruising from Sitka. Most of that distance is actually protected by islands from direct ocean swell. We had one exposed section of about 5 miles for which we put our stabilizing “fish” in the water to lessen the roll from the incoming waves hitting us on our starboard side. They did dampen the boat’s motion and improve Drake’s experience and, hopefully reduce his anxiety.
Unfortunately, about that time the weather became a bit colder and drearier. After two nights in Dorothy Cove and with a forecast for windier conditions, we decided to get back north of the exposed open coast section. We stayed one night each at Jamboree Bay and Sevenfathom Bay before heading to Leesoffskaia Bay, a few miles south of Sitka. The temperatures remained cool with highs in low 50’s and low’s in the mid 40’s.. Winds were generally 10 to 20 knots with occasional rain showers. Not exactly the weather for lounging on deck.
After two nights in Leesoffskaia, we traveled the short six miles to Sitka Harbor and tied up at the transient dock on June 14. Since arriving, a strong front has passed by dropping over 1.5 inches of rain and bringing high winds with accompanying heavy seas off shore. We’ll stay a few more days on the dock waiting for a forecasted period of fine weather then head north.
June 7-10 Graham’s Visit
“Nobody can do for little children what grandparents do. Grandparents sort of sprinkle stardust over the lives of little children.” — Alex Haley
It’s hard to believe this is Graham’s seventh summer to come to our boat in Ithaca. He has transformed from a little toddler to a lanky young man. We’ve been tracking the kid’s growth on the wall in our stateroom since 2019 and he has grown over 12″ in that time.
His interests have changed and grown too. He’s slowing out growing some of our regular places to visit. The weather didn’t cooperate while Graham was here to do some of the things we’d planned, but we all seemed to have a great time. The only sunny day we had the smoke out of Canada made it nearly impossible to be outside and the other days were wet and cold, but we made the best of it and found other things to do. We visited the Sciencenter, rode bikes, did some experiments, built a Lego robot, watched movies, played video games, played Uno, ate a lot of food and played soccer every chance we had. Overall it was a lot of fun.
This is how a sunny day on the lake looks when it’s covered with smoke from Canada.
But there’s always something interesting on the Ipad…and sometimes laying on the bunk relaxing is the best thing to do.
Every change we got we went out and played soccer. We live in a park so that was an easy thing to do.
Riding bikes around our park is fun too.
But when it was raining…we did experiments. We made moon dough and Oobleck. Both were fun and used things we already had onboard.
One morning we went to the Sciencenter. Graham has always loved this place, but I think he has almost outgrown it.
I think Graham’s favorite thing to do is eat and we had some good stuff while he was with us.
We had to make him play Uno with us the first night…after that he was hooked. We had a great time and laughed a lot.
June 7-10 Graham’s Visit
“Nobody can do for little children what grandparents do. Grandparents sort of sprinkle stardust over the lives of little children.” — Alex Haley
It’s hard to believe this is Graham’s seventh summer to come to our boat in Ithaca. He has transformed from a little toddler to a lanky young man. We’ve been tracking the kid’s growth on the wall in our stateroom since 2019 and he has grown over 12″ in that time.
April Travels
While Seattle did see plenty of rain that month, April travels was the dominant theme rather than April showers. We started the month with a weekend trip to Sagecliff resort in eastern Washington and ended it on a weekend trip to Vancouver BC. Of the three weekends in between, we spent one snowshoeing at Mt….
Catching Crabs
After being in Petersburg for almost a week, it’s time to head out to two of our favorite anchorages for some piece and quiet. It is a grey cloudy day out in the narrows. A quick look at the sea buoy in Frederick Sound is always a must. The sea lions are all lazily lounging around on this […]
Vancouver Cruise Port
The Canada Place cruise terminal in the Port of Vancouver handles over a million passengers a year, with 331 ships scheduled for 2023. Most are heading to Alaska, but other destinations include Hawaii, Asia, California and the South Pacific. The port is the only origin terminal supporting one-way Alaska cruises, due to Jones Act restrictions…
