Enjoying Our Dash

We are off on our summer trip! Here we are all packed up and ready to go! Our first stop was in Georgia at another one of their beautiful state parks, Fort McAllister, just south of Savannah. There we were treated to a quiet area at the end of a point, surrounded by water. There was a lot of wildlife for us to enjoy. One afternoon while we were sitting at the picnic table eating, these guys decided to take a stroll right through our campsite. Even the racoons came to visit. Ugh! Cole chased them up the trees a couple of times, but that didn’t deter them. Although we enjoyed our time in Georgia it was time to continue our journey. North we go!

So, you know how sometimes when you book a tour, cruise or any other kind of adventure, you are not always sure what you are booking. This was exactly the case when we chose this itinerary and saw that it went to the Hubbard Glacier. We really had no clue what we were booking. The Hubbard Glacier is the largest tidewater glacier on the North American continent. It is located in Alaska and also in Canada’s Yukon Territory. Standing at 1,000 feet above sea level, the glacier stretches 76 miles from its source in the Yukon to the sea at Yakutat Bay and Disenchantment Bay. It is the longest tidewater glacier in Alaska, with an open calving face over 6 miles wide. It has been thickening and advancing toward the Gulf of Alaska since it was first mapped by the International Boundary Commission in 1895. This is in stark contrast with most glaciers, which have thinned and retreated during the last century. If Hubbard Glacier continues to advance, it will close the seaward entrance o...

After Juneau, it was off to the compact city of Skagway in southeast Alaska, which is set on the Inside Passage a popular cruise route. It’s home to gold-rush-era buildings, now preserved as part of the Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park. https://www.nps.gov/klgo/planyourvisit/visitorcenters.htm . The White Pass & Yukon Route Railroad runs vintage locomotives past the famously steep Chilkoot trail and offers sweeping mountain views during its climb toward Canada. In town, you get to step back in time and relive the Gold Rush. Streets lined with wooden “buckboard” sidewalks and restored buildings, whisk visitors 100 years into the past to a time when gold-crazed stampeders clamored to the Klondike to strike it rich. Back then, 20,000 miners filled this compact town, a stark comparison to the less than 1000 who call it home today. Skagway is a pure gem ensconced in between soaring mountains and located at the northernmost part of the Inside Passage. It i...

After Ketchikan, we headed to Juneau, which is Alaska’s capital, and is also the state’s second largest city. It is a unique destination for a myriad of reasons.  Juneau sits nestled up next to the Gastineau Channel in the Alaskan panhandle with no connecting roads to other cities – making it only accessible by water and air, including via Juneau cruise port. In Juneau, we had a chance to go on a whale watching tour, which was an absolutely amazing experience. When we boarded our ship, the Chilcoat, our Captain asked each of us to tell him our expectations for the adventure. One of the passengers said that he wanted to see Orca whales. The Captain visibly groaned and said ‘well you may be disappointed because only about 15% of the tours get to see them’. Despite that bit of information, we set out to see what nature had to offer us. The entire boat ride was so exciting. At our first stop we saw several humpback whales, unfortunately, none of them wanted to ‘show us some tail...