Alaska Cruise part 1...

Hey thanks for following me! ;)
It's well past my "September 1st" date that I thought I would have this post ready by haha.
  But we are here now!
 
Gosh I'm grateful for awesome parents...

who have been married for 50 YEARS!

Amazing parents who invite all 7 of their children + their spouses on a 7 day Alaskan Cruise.

Sounds like a better deal for us than for them!!

Thank you, Thank you, Thank you!

What a fun week it was.

We left the girls home with... themselves.

And I must add here that Tayler and Saige were pretty amazing babysitters!

Thanks to Joe, Lisa, Josh and Kayla for helping out when the oldest 2 were busy.

A flight to Seattle...

(The guy sitting next to Shane is NOT with us, but nice photo bomb dude. :))

A shuttle to the cruise terminal...

And we were greeted by these guys who arrived on an earlier flight.

And this is all of us...

"Embarking" on a super amazing week!!

After EATING and visiting our muster station.

we were off.

Thanks to these guys. :)

Oh, and they spoiled all of us with balcony rooms.

Shane and I were first time "balcony room cruisers".
That was a treat!

Of course every meal... the entire week was AMAZING!
(My scale told me so when we arrived home.)

Sea days were super fun.

TONS of time playing games.

Mainly catch phrase when lots of us were playing.

Jeff and Kimi  introduced us to "Cover your Assets", a new family favorite.

(Lydia LOVES this game now, but I cringe when she asks if we can play it.  She doesn't always finish the last word... I tried to explain that it is a not nice word unless she says "assets" as one word.  She doesn't get it.  And I don't really want to explain it.  So if she asks you if you want to play a very strange game... please forgive!!) 

Also lots of time watching for wildlife.
Shane and I always seemed to miss the "big sightings", like whales breaching, that all my siblings have video of.
We did see... Orcas, dolphins and humpbacks.
Mainly their tails and "blowholes" as Kayce described them. ;)

But it was amazing how many there were!

We sure had a fun time together.

 

 So glad Shelly and Paige joined us in a tour of the ship in our robes.
That's a princess cruise tradition for us. :)

O and yes Paige is a cousin, not a sibling.  But her dad, (my brother Steve) is single.
So my parents invited Paige to come, since they would be paying the same price for Steve to have his own room.
Paige did NOT appreciate the, "married to your dad jokes" all week...
But she got a cruise out of it, so I think she was fine! ;)

Our first port was Ketchikan.

Shane and I had chartered a flight on a float plane to see the "Misty Fjords".
I was a little nervous.
There was a crash a month before, with 7 cruisers who died... doing the exact same thing.
Luckily, all was well.
The landing and take off was amazingly smooth and such gorgeous views!

A surreal experience.
It was pricey but I'd definitely recommend it as a once in a lifetime experience.
 

Our ship... the Ruby Princess.

A video from our go pro.

We surprised my parents with "matching t-shirts" that day.

I love my family!

And these 5 crazy brothers.

The weather...
The weather was actually warmer than I was expecting.
Like it wasn't warm by any means.
I mean, I wore a warm jacket anytime I was outside.
But I wasn't FREEZING all the time!

The next day we woke up bright and early to view the "scenic cruising" portion of the week.
We were supposed to have gone through the "Tracy Arm Fjord", but the passage was blocked.  I'm not sure which "fjord" we actually saw, but it was beautiful!
Having a balcony was super nice for this morning!

Later that day we stopped in Juneau.

This was our most memorable day of the cruise. haha

All of the guys, minus Shane, had gone on a fishing excursion this day.
It wasn't that Shane didn't want to go, but we had already spent a lot on the excursions we were doing together so he opted out.

That left Shane with 8 woman.
He's used to dealing with females... and being told what to do so he was just fine with that. haha

We were heading to Mendenhall Glacier.
I had read online that we could catch a "bus" to the Glacier for $4/way, but it was NOT the city bus.
When we got off the ship everything we found was $10 each way  Looking back... no question here, we should have just gone with $10 bus hahahaha.
But we didn't.
We checked around to see if anyone knew anything about this other bus.
We were told to walk about a mile toward town and we would find it.

I knew that it was NOT the city bus that we were looking for.
We walked and walked and walked.
In the cold and drizzling rain.
  Poor Shane was the one who "got the information" so he had 8 woman saying, "Are you sure Shane?"  "I think we should head back Shane."  "This can't be right Shane!"
He was getting defensive and grumpy and he was SUPER nervous when we arrived at...
the city bus station.


We're all nervous because my mom is getting tired, Shane's now extremely nervous because we know that the bus is NOT going to take us right to the Glacier,  we were going to have to walk more.
 But... we'd come this far.
So... we asked a couple locals waiting for the bus (missing their front teeth) how to get to the Glacier.
They assured us riding the bus was our best bet.
We board the bus.
(Along the way we met some super interesting individuals.
The kind you might expect to meet on a city bus... haha)

O and my poor mom is at the front of the bus.
Not really excited to be on this bus. haha

The glacier was like... 20 minutes away.
An HOUR or so later (after making about 30 bus stops) we get dropped off, in a semi-residential, highly forested area.
With NO glacier in site.

So we start walking.
It's not close, probably another 2 miles away.

Everyone was being good sports and we were talking about how we would definitely never forget this and how glad we were we had saved $6 hahahahahahahahaha

There were potty breaks along the way for some haha.
Kimi was sure that some sort of etiquette was being broken when my mom squatted down far too close to her. ;)

Shane eventually flagged down a taxi van to drive us the last 1/2 mile.

All so we could see this Glacier. :)

I mentioned before that it wasn't that cold,

but by now after being in the rain for forever.

It was COLD!

 
We were waiting for the van to come back to get us, because there was no WAY that we were going the city bus route again.  So we left my mom sitting on a covered bench, and we went for a short walk.. :)
Where we saw...
BEARS!!
Missy saw them, cursed and ran back to my mom. hahahaha
But the rest of us were pumped!
 This had been a crazy experience but it was now totally worth it!  

And just like one of the crazy ladies had told me on the bus, "don't be afraid of the bears they are very friendly."  Those 3 bears just walked right across the road not even noticing the 50 people gathered back behind the ranger.

 It was a day to remember.
I hope my mom has forgiven us for that day. hahaha
We all joke that my parents took us on a super expensive cruise.
And we treated our mom to a city bus ride...
:):):):):):):):):):)

To be continued...