My Alaska Cruise and Land Tour to Denali National Park

Here are some highlights of my recent trip to Alaska.
There are many beautiful cruise pictures on the Internet and I am not about to outdo them. ;-)

From August 15 to August 22, 2009 I was on an Alaska cruise to attend my college reunion. We sailed on a Diamond Princess cruise ship. This picture was taken by Michael on a day with average cloudy conditions. We sailed from Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada to Whittier, Alaska, USA with 2900 passengers. Ten percent were children 18 or under.








Here you can find my classmates from the National Taiwan University EE department. All were in good spirits and I certainly found maturity and thoughtfulness in this crowd. It was worthwhile for me. The attendance rate was not the best, mostly due to difficult economical times. The cruise itself was not that expensive, but the flights getting to
Vancouver and out of Anchorage could take a big bite of family finances.










There are many glaciers in Alaska. These were not in my last cruise trip 11 years ago. On that cruise, we turned back to Vancouver at the Hubbard Bay Glacier. College Fjord, which branches off of Prince William Sound, plunges into the heart of the Chugach Mountains. You should be able to see at least five glaciers to the left of the channel in this photo.








After the reunion cruise, we added a land tour to Denali National Park. We boarded the two-level luxury coach. The dome-like upper level was great for viewing the wilderness of Alaska.












Dining was on the bottom level, which was not any worse than the upper level. The food prices were typical for a nice restaurant. This is one nice thing I like about America. Price-gouging does take place, but not at most places.










Denali is the only National Park I have visited that does not allow personal
automobiles, only chartered buses and some RVs. There were many animals in the park. We saw a brown bear family with two cubs in the distance. Here you'll find pictures of a herd of Dall sheep and a nearby red fox in the rest area.


















[Other interesting facts in this trip]
Alaska is the 49th state of the USA and celebrates its 50-year statehood this year.

There are about 600,000 pilots in the US (300 millions) as of 2008, but one in every 56 people is a pilot in Alaska. There are almost 10 times as many pilots per capita in Alaska as compared to the rest of the US.

China Mobil's Gotone international roaming service is not available in Anchorage which was a surprise to me. But, I was stunned getting welcome message in Denali National Park. These two regions could be covered by different carriers and all that. Go figure.