Next Cruise, Booked

Tonight I booked our next cruise? Can you guess where we are going?

How about now?

We are going back to Alaska!

Our friends, Bruce and Dare, have been wanting to take a cruise to Alaska for a couple years now. We were thinking about going in 2015; however, with us using so much vacation when we go to Illinois for Christmas every other year that wouldn't work. We are going to Illinois for Christmas this year so that would mean in 2015 we would go to Illinois so it wouldn't work for us to take a cruise that year. Dare wants to go next year and has been trying to persuade us for months now to go with them. After thinking about the vacation issue we decided to give in and go next year. That means we need to save a lot of money between now and July 1st when the balance is due. 

The last trip to Alaska in 2006 was just a cruise so we have decided to add the land tour this time. We are doing a 3-night land tour before the cruise. We fly into Fairbanks on September 13th. We decided to fly in a day early since it takes so long to fly to Alaska. It's about a 16 hour trip and we figured we are going to be really tired when we get there since we will still be on Eastern time and have been traveling since 6:00 am. The 14th will be spent at our leisure. Not quite sure yet what we will be doing. The following morning we take a riverboat cruise down the Chena River then travel to Denali for the night. On the 16th we tour Denali National Park then head to Mt. McKinley for the night. On the 17th we will take a train from Talkeetna to Whittier where we will board the ship. I'm looking forward to the train ride and seeing the beautiful scenery and hopefully some critters.

The cruise begins at 8:30 pm on the 17th. It's a 7-day Voyage of the Glaciers cruise. Our first couple days will be spent cruising Hubbard Glacier and Glacier Bay. We will be stopping at the same three Alaska ports we had visited on our first cruise - Skagway, Juneau and Ketchikan. The ship arrives in Vancouver on the 24th where we will catch a flight home.

The weather this time will be chilly. On our first cruise we went in August and it was in the high 50's, low 60's. This time it will be in the high 40's, low 50's. Not looking forward to that but that just means we need to pack warmer clothes.

We are really excited and can't wait till September 13, 2014!