What says welcome to Alaska better than two giant totem carvings.





At the right: Alexis on the deck of the ship as we prepare to leave Vancouver. The ship terminal is the white peaks in the back.

Above is our ship -the Celebrity Millenium - all 2,138 passengers + 920 crew.

Left is the skyline of Vancouver.  It's a beautiful, clean city and we had one day there before our departure.

Our first port was Ketchikan.
Among the sites we visited was the red light district
from pioneer days. Dolly's House was quite famous.

Here's Alexis with the current "madam."
On the left, Alexis with the current "madam" of Dolly's House



On the right, we found a totem pole.  This one represents a Raven Stealing the Sun.

Our ship from our whale watching trip.
It wasn't a good day for whale watching though and the
most we saw was a few tall tails splashing.
(This is even a photo from Google)

Alexis did get close to this bear.
And we saw these sea lions.

In Juneau, we headed to the Mendenhall Glacier which is just 12 miles out of town.  The tourism center was excellent.
Alexis got closer to a bear at the restaurant atop Mt. Roberts which is 1,800 feet above the ship docks.

Left:  The Mount Roberts Tramway took us high above Juneau..

Above:  View from Mount Roberts.

It was sunset as we started down.
Skagway was our next stop.

Skagway is a totally tourist town..
We took the White Pass Scenic Railway which was well worth the price.  We even entered Canada but quickly turned around.

The Hubbard Glacier was incredible.  
The sound of ice breaking up inside the glacier was very loud.  Our ship rotated so that both sides had great views.

The view from our cabin when we disembarked for a brief visit to Anchorage.
We were bused to Denai National Park.

We had a warm room in the hotel but the fire in the lodge was appreciated.  We were amazed at the nice quality of the hotels which were included in the cruise cost.
We only saw a few meese at Denali and the peak was hiddent  which is pretty normal.  The hotel had a great painting of it with a lot of mounted aimals.

At Denali we visited the Husky Homestead where Aexis fell in love with one of the dogs bred for snowsled competition.
I tried to escape with one of the dogs but somehow they saw through my disguise.

I was thrilled that we took the Wilderness Express train from Denali Park to Fairbanks.  It was first class.
We had a steak dinner on the train.


Did I mention that we had a drink -- or two on the train?



Right:  It rained on our trip to Fairbanks but that didn't dampen our spirits.


We were amazed to see this in Fairbanks.  It's an electric plug to keep your car's motor warm when it's under 20 degrees.

Left:  A fountain to the settlers and the Fairbanks church.

We visited Mr. & Mrs. Santa Clause at North Pole (Alaska)

Next stop was the Dredge 8 Gold mine which is now closed commercially but open for tourists to pan for gold.
My Disneyphile daughter loved this t-shirt.

Those little dots at top of the pan are gold flakes.  The gold is still there but too expensive to get it out.
Together, Alexis and I panned enough gold ($35 worth) to save in a pendant to reminder her of our trip.

Above: Alexis at the Vistor Administraton Center which is in a large log cabin.


Left:  Alexis met Big Foot in Fairbanks, accompained by two pet polar bears.
The Celebrity Millennium

The entertainment on the Millennium was first class.

This ship had just been refurbished six months before our cruise and it was fantastic.  There were a lot of innovations and the service was great.  Alexis said she loved the ship and everything on our cruise.