Travels with the Arctic Blondes 2019 - Alaskan Cruise Adventure

Our arrival to Victoria was the start of another beautiful day.  As we have been to Victoria many times , and Bill is suffering from a head cold , we decided just to stay on the ship today. Morning curtain opening shots  Washington state on the left, Vancouver Island on the right    Victoria harbour  rowers on the water  first set of whale watchers coming back Mount Baker in Washington State  Star Princess was just docking as we were leaving

Cruising day 2 on our way home finds us travelling down the west coast of Haida Gwaii and  Vancouver Island, then entering into the Salish Sea for our last port day in Victoria tomorrow. Our weather has changed today, it is more overcast, but we still could see Haida Gwaii about 13 miles off our port side. We were treated to another humpback whale display as we travelled.  Someone counted 20 plus whales, that appeared to be mothers and babies.  This is the time that the whales are leaving the calving grounds along the Pacific coast of Mexico and Costa Rica and making their way up north to Alaska and Arctic waters for the summer.  We were travelling with them for about an hour. Then the fog descended, it rained for awhile, and the seas got rougher as we moved into the evening.  it was a full moon tonight and unfortunately we were not able to observe it.  I had kind of hoped we would see some Aurora on this trip but we did not - either there were none or we did not stay u

T oday starts two days of cruising.  First we cruise into Endicott Arm, a fjord near Juneau.  It is approximately 30 miles long with one fifth of it's area covered by ice.  Dawes Glacier is a 15 mile long glacier that ends/empties into the head of Endicott Arm. Day started out well, weather was decent again and this is what I saw when I opened the curtains this morning a lovely waterfall   there are barely discernible little terns on this grouping That says "there be ice ahead!"  We were still about 2 hours away from the head of the fjord and Dawes glacier - this should be good.  But alas, it was not to be, the further we progressed up the fjord the more and more ice we were seeing.  Once we got to the narrowest part of the fjord, we found our way blocked by lots more ice.  As we are not an icebreaker it was deemed wise not to progress any further for fear of damage to the boat or getting stuck.  We had a marine pilot on board and it was his an