Alaska Cruise

Ryan and I celebrated our 10 year Anniversary in style....We took a cruise to Alaska. It has always been a dream of my moms to go to Alaska, so what better way to spend our 10 year anniversary than to take my mom and dad there with us. We had an amazing time. We did and saw so many great things. We flew up to Vancouver, B.C. to hop onto the ship. We took the Celebrity Millenium. It was one of the newer ships and it showed. Our first port was Ketchikan, Alaska. Supposedly this is the rainiest port of all and yes, it did rain while we were there, but off and on. We took a kayaking trip here for our excursion. While kayaking, we saw a few bald eagles, a seal and a black bear in a distance in a tree. It was so relaxing. Our next port was Icy Point Straight. This was the most desolate port and gets the most snow in the winter of all the ports. Here we got a 2 for 1 deal. We first went on a bear tour. I guess the guide we took garanteed for us to see bears and he didn't let us down. We saw a baby coastal brown bear and 3 adult coastal brown bears. We were really close too, couldn't believe it. Our guide carried a gun in hand while we got out to look, just in case. We also saw some huge salmon that had just starting to come in and were swimming up stream. While we were waiting for our guide in town to take us on this bear excursion, there was a humpback whale in town right off the docks. So we walked down and saw this whale. He was showing off big time for us. So it was pretty much a free whale watching trip. :0) Our next port was Juneau. This was one of the biggest towns and here we took 2 excursions. Our first excursion was zip lining, our all time favorite excursion, by far! We took a small boat over to the other side of the town and took an off-roading vehicle up the hill to get us closer to our first of 9 zip lines. The zip lines were over ?? long total. We also walked on 2 suspension bridges and propelled down the last tree. Our guides were so much fun. Our next excursion was the Mendenhall Glacier float trip. It rained so much during this ride. We wore rain gear and sat so close to each other on the raft that it was hard to enjoy it. It is still cool to say we floated and did class 1 and 2 rapids in glacier water and floated by a couple icebergs. We made the best of it. Our next port was Skagway. This day had the best weather. It never rained, shocker! This was the neatest and most historical town. We walked around the town a lot and got some fun souveniers. Our excursion here was a salmon bake. We took a bus into another town and was served an amazing salmon lunch, while being entertained. It was an old gold mining town so we got to pan for gold. Our last port, which is where we got off the ship for good was Seward. Here we took a bus to Anchorage, while making a few scenic stops, including a wildlife conservation. Here my mom finally got to see her favorite animal, the moose. We also saw bison, musket, grizzly bears, baby moose, elk, baby elk, etc. Once we arrived at the airport in Anchorage, we had some time till our flight, so we took a taxi into downtown to have lunch. It was another nice day and the flowers all around were immaculate! It was a great vacation and nice to have time to ourselves without our kids, but we were ready to go home and see our kiddos! A bonus was that Ryans parents, Joe and Rhodonna came home from their Mission in the Phillipines early. Rhodonna was sick and needed surgery so they were released from their mission. They arrived at our house a couple days before we got home so it was nice to be greeted by them as well. Happy 10 years Ryan. Thanks so much for an amazing trip. I love you!