Our Alaskan Vacation

I don't have much experience blogging...but I'll try and hopefully I'll improve as I go along.  I know how to write the text part, the pictures are iffy and the video will be totally new for me.....here goes...

My sister and I have planned this vacation for awhile.  Working with a travel agent, we decided on a Princess 12 day Cruise/Land southbound tour.  We settled on May, we knew it would be a little colder, but there should be a lot more animal activity, since they will be coming out of winter.  We might be able to see some babies too. Hopefully there won't be too much rain, as the rainy season is later in the summer.  But you can never tell, and will have to take what we get.  We will be flying to Fairbanks Alaska and then travel south to Denali National Park for 2 days, board the train to Mt McKinley (Talkeetna) for 2 days and then meet our ship in Whittier for a 7 days cruise of the inside passage to Vancouver.  We will make port stops in Skagway, Juneau and Ketchikan.

Welcome on our journey as I take you along for the ride.

May 20th, it all started out pretty smoothly...my son-in-law picked us up at 5am to take us to the Miami airport for our 8:40am flight to Seattle and then on to Fairbanks.  Not much traffic, we got there in plenty of time.   Our plane was waiting for us at the gate.

At the time we expected to start boarding, they announced, (in English with a heavy Spanish accent) that the flight would be delayed 5 hrs!  Did we hear right??  The plane needed a part that they did not have in Miami or Ft. Lauderdale, so they would be getting it from Orlando and they were going to drive it down!!

  Pandemonium broke out!  Everyone was up in arms. What could we do but wait it out.  We couldn't really go back home at this point.  I felt bad for the people traveling with small children and babies and especially for some that were going to Seattle to meet their cruise ship that evening. They had to make other arrangements with other airlines.   We were suppose to arrive in Seattle at 12:30 and they thought they would have had plenty of time.  Note to self, if you have to meet a cruise ship, always arrive a day earlier.  We had planned to spend the day sight seeing in Fairbanks as our trip didn't actually start until May 21st. Guess that wasn't going to happen.  Anyway, have you heard bad things happen in 3's??  Yep, sure do.  Without going into detail, my sister thought she left her brand new camera at home....she was practically in tears...but upon further looking it was found.  We were given a $10 voucher for breakfast...had to walk far, far away to find something to eat (evidently Alaska Air isn't a big draw in Miami) only to find out Tom's voucher (and he was the last in line) wasn't filled out properly and wasn't valid.  Luckily after much hesitation, the cafe manager contacted the airline to get it straightened out.  What else could possible go wrong.  The airline representative said that since it started out this bad, it meant we were going to have a great vacation.  Yea right!

Waiting....

and Waiting!

12:45pm...parts here.....12:50pm...crew is here...Yea! They finally let us board and we are in our seats but wait...now we have to wait for fuel  We need 100 gallons. We wait 40 minutes for the fuel trucks to come and top us off. (couldn't they have done this before?)

Yes Tom...our vacation officially starts now!

We take off at 2:00,  what a day.

We arrive in Seattle 5 hrs late and have to worry about getting a connecting flight to Fairbanks.

Seattle Airport

Shuttle to different concourse

Yea! They have us on the 7:55pm flight to Fairbanks.  We grab a bite to eat and make our phone calls.  Oops, flight to Fairbanks is delayed..but leave at 8:30pm.   We just pray that our luggage makes it to Fairbanks.

From Seattle to Fairbanks, I sat with the nicest college girl.  She attended Carnegie Mellon but was returning home from a mission in southeast Asia.  She had really missed her family.  Her Dad was the chief civil engineer for Princess Cruises and had worked for them for over 25 years.  In fact he was the one that planned where they would build the Mt. McKinley Princess Lodge.  I didn't realize it at the time, what an amazing site it was.  I knew it was out in the middle of nowhere, but he choose that site because of the views of Mt. McKinley.  I would really appreciate this view later on.  She loved Fairbanks. She told me that at this time of year there were only about 4 hrs of dusk, leaving 20 hrs of light.  Her dad had let her know that the area now was quite dry and they were actually fighting some pretty bad fires. She said to expect a lot of smoke.

Hello Fairbanks...Princess and our luggage awaited us!!

Fires burning...

It's just before midnight Fairbanks time time...

By the time we get to our room and get settled in it's 3:30am our old time.   Can't think about that now...got a busy day tomorrow.
Guess I'm overly tired...I can't sleep!!