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A Bitter Sea Dog’s Guide to Surviving Alaska – A Celebrity Millennium PHOTO REVIEW

WinksCruises

By WinksCruises,
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WinksCruises

WinksCruises

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Thanks for the positive feedback and continued readership. I especially appreciate the posters who took time out to provide another take on dog-sledding as a sport.

 

I’m here because Mrs. Winks just chided me for not including a photo of our Icy Strait Point sail away in the last entry, and I personally wanted to weigh in on the looming Diamonds International controversy before the whole thing gets out of hand. So here’s a little random post.

 

 

Below is a shot from the helicopter pad sail away. I didn’t think any of the pictures were particular enthralling, but this one shows the Celebrity Infinity coming in to take our place. As a previous poster (Happy Cruiser 6143) pointed out, one of the nicest features of Icy Strait Point is that only one ship is permitted to dock there at a time. The sun staying up late actually allows for another set of shore excursions to commence at 3pm, when this new ship gets in.

 

01_09%20Heliport.jpg

 

 

 

If you ask me, the real shopping anomaly on this voyage was seeing a Del Sol in Juneau. That’s the shop that sells t-shirts that change color when exposed to sunlight. Not always a sure thing in Alaska! Maybe they change color under the auroa borealis, too?

 

As for Diamonds International: There are only three in the state, all in port cities (shocker) and I have snapshots of each. ('Cause that's just the kind of stuff I take pics of!)

 

Their locations are Juneau, Skagway and Ketchikan.

 

There’s a bit of absurdity being dished up here, as one of DI’s strongest marketing ploys (at least in the Caribbean), is there duty-free pricing and the competition from the disreputable dealers (any shop not DI) that keep the jewelry prices low. The same can’t be said for these Alaskan stores, but that doesn’t stop the crowds of first time passengers from shopping there, or the port shopping guides from issuing their little maps with the pathways to DI boldly highlighted.

 

02_09%20DI%20-%20Copy.jpg

 

 

 

 

 

Wildlife is definitely “a thing” in Alaska. Most places we visited taped-up warning signs of one sort or another. Here’s a sample of what we encountered (the signs anyway, not the actual wildlife!)

 

03_09%20Signsjpg.jpg

 

 

 

Now, that’s not to say we didn’t see ANY wildlife. We had more than a few close encounters.

 

04_09%20Animals%20-%20Copy.jpg

 

 

 

So here’s a quandary, Mrs. Winks and I are headed out on a land adventure this week. (If you come rob our house, please don’t wake the pet sitter!) Follow us on Instagram (link in the signature) for all the up-to-date nonsense from that fiasco, but I think that puts a hold (or end) to these stories.

 

 

Let us know if you want more (There’s still plenty to tell, sadly), but know, unless it rains a lot next week, there probably won’t be an update for a while.

 

 

Next on the Walking Dead:

 

 

05_09%20Snowmen.jpg

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shipshape sam Great Review Rare

shipshape sam

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Thanks for the positive feedback and continued readership. I especially appreciate the posters who took time out to provide another take on dog-sledding as a sport.

 

I’m here because Mrs. Winks just chided me for not including a photo of our Icy Strait Point sail away in the last entry, and I personally wanted to weigh in on the looming Diamonds International controversy before the whole thing gets out of hand. So here’s a little random post.

 

 

Below is a shot from the helicopter pad sail away. I didn’t think any of the pictures were particular enthralling, but this one shows the Celebrity Infinity coming in to take our place. As a previous poster (Happy Cruiser 6143) pointed out, one of the nicest features of Icy Strait Point is that only one ship is permitted to dock there at a time. The sun staying up late actually allows for another set of shore excursions to commence at 3pm, when this new ship gets in.

 

01_09%20Heliport.jpg

 

 

 

If you ask me, the real shopping anomaly on this voyage was seeing a Del Sol in Juneau. That’s the shop that sells t-shirts that change color when exposed to sunlight. Not always a sure thing in Alaska! Maybe they change color under the auroa borealis, too?

 

As for Diamonds International: There are only three in the state, all in port cities (shocker) and I have snapshots of each. ('Cause that's just the kind of stuff I take pics of!)

 

Their locations are Juneau, Skagway and Ketchikan.

 

There’s a bit of absurdity being dished up here, as one of DI’s strongest marketing ploys (at least in the Caribbean), is there duty-free pricing and the competition from the disreputable dealers (any shop not DI) that keep the jewelry prices low. The same can’t be said for these Alaskan stores, but that doesn’t stop the crowds of first time passengers from shopping there, or the port shopping guides from issuing their little maps with the pathways to DI boldly highlighted.

 

02_09%20DI%20-%20Copy.jpg

 

 

 

 

 

Wildlife is definitely “a thing” in Alaska. Most places we visited taped-up warning signs of one sort or another. Here’s a sample of what we encountered (the signs anyway, not the actual wildlife!)

 

03_09%20Signsjpg.jpg

 

 

 

Now, that’s not to say we didn’t see ANY wildlife. We had more than a few close encounters.

 

04_09%20Animals%20-%20Copy.jpg

 

 

 

So here’s a quandary, Mrs. Winks and I are headed out on a land adventure this week. (If you come rob our house, please don’t wake the pet sitter!) Follow us on Instagram (link in the signature) for all the up-to-date nonsense from that fiasco, but I think that puts a hold (or end) to these stories.

 

 

Let us know if you want more (There’s still plenty to tell, sadly), but know, unless it rains a lot next week, there probably won’t be an update for a while.

 

 

Next on the Walking Dead:

 

 

05_09%20Snowmen.jpg

 

 

Land trips are fun too! We are heading to see the Mouse with one of our daughters and 2 granddaughters and early next year snow skiing with the our daughter and 2 more granddaughters.

 

Still like cruising when the stars of price, itinerary and our time line up.

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WinksCruises

WinksCruises

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Picture%2001%20-%20Title%20Boring.jpg

 

Before embarking on this cruise, Mrs. Winks and I scoured the Cruise Critic forums for tips on what to wear in Alaska. Amateur meteorologists warned the weather could range from searing hot and humid to cold, miserable and wet. Mosquitos were as big as albatross, they claimed. They were numerous and immune to our CVS-caliber, OTC bug spray. One member even recommended bringing a canister of bear spray for the land portion of the tour, adding it would also come in handy fending off over-zealous trinket sellers who’d accost us at port stops during the cruise portion. (So Mrs. Winks, of course, bought a trial-size version she found at the Anchorage Walgreens).

 

In terms of what clothing to pack, advice ran the full spectrum from casual shorts and a nice sweater, to tundra-certified parkas, Timberland waterproof boots and pro-rated thermal long-johns guaranteed to maintain your vital signs no matter how harsh conditions got - except in the case of a grizzly bear encounter - which no one wanted to warranty against - but where, ironically, sporting dependable underwear would certainly be a plus!

Oh, and did I forget to mention the two (count ‘em, two) formal nights! Who hosts formal nights in the land known for hard-working oil rig workers and cussing lumberjacks?? This cruise line does!

 

All this, after spending a weekend, and huge sums, outlet shopping (‘cause Mrs. Winks is notoriously cheap) Eddie Bauer, North Face and Columbia stores, plus a handful of local prepper shops that have popped up in the Alex Jones territory we call upstate NY. To be sure, we flew to Alaska packed for bear. And yet all we got was tirades from the Momma one.

 

Icing on the cake? And to illustrate how nuts we were about being prepared for any occasion… The morning we headed out to the airport, unbeknownst to me, Mrs. Winks tucked her TigerLady self-defense handheld claw into my carryon – in case we ran into one of those crazy Alaskan Bush People we’d seen on the Discovery Channel, she later justified to me after I emerged from my full-body TSA screening probe! (or what I fondly call The Real Alaska reaming before The Real Alaska reaming!)

 

So let this be a word of caution to you future Alaskan cruisers. In the end, we over packed. So don’t do it.

 

As it turned out, we never laced-up the hiking boots we brought, it was never chilly enough to warrant pulling out our hooded sweatshirts, and we really didn’t need to bring our bulky, Gor-Tex lined, raincoats - which we had to wear during the 8-hour plane ride out here - since any light windbreaker could have easily handled the misty, drizzly stints of rain we did encounter. If we ever attempt The Real Alaska again, we’re going to err on the side of packing light.

 

But if you’re laughing at Mrs. Winks and me for overpacking, you should take a look at the Momma Bear, who not only had all the cubs’ wardrobes, including their scuba gear, spelunking equipment, and curling stones – on the off-chance they’d stumble upon a pick-up game - air freighted to Seward, she actually rented one of those PODS storage containers which she had crane-lifted onto the Millennium so that the family would never be at a loss for looking their best. “Because it’s so important to make a fanciful first impression, don’t you agree Winks?” she declared, eying me judgmentally in my scrappy *** (Where’s The Food?) buffet T-shirt and worn khakis that I happened to be wearing one afternoon we ran into each other at the Martini Bar and chatted casually about the evening’s formal night options.

 

Picture%2002%20PODS.jpg

 

But our real warning for those of you out there considering an Alaskan voyage isn’t so much about the packing job you do for the cruise, but rather, finding space and weight allowance for all the crap you end up having to bring back with you.

 

You see, everything in Alaska is heavy. Especially the souvenirs.

 

Inuit carvings, musk-ox sweaters, pre-packed salmon gift boxes, even the friggin’ postcards are made of wood! It’s all heavy. And while nothing’s been scientifically proven, the Neil deGrasse Tyson astrophysics special I watched on PBS pre-cruise suggested it had something to do with the state being so close to the North Pole. That said, just trust me, the only reason commercial flights to and from Alaska remain viable is because of excess baggage charges! So be careful when packing for your return trip.

 

Which finally brings me to the point of this overly long-winded portion of the tale (and no, we’re still not up to the boring shore excursion part, yet). It’s about Mrs. Winks and her obsession with cruise ship photo packages.

 

Here’s the backstory on this one.

 

Sometime in the 2010s, cruise ships started offering all-inclusive photo packages. For a few hundred bucks, you could walk off the ship with every picture the photo staff took of you. Formal night shots, boarding the ship shots, dining room shots, sail away shots, shots in front of the champagne waterfall with the captain, shots with the smelly costumed characters on the gangplank… you got it all – the good, bad and ugly, if you bought the full photo package.

 

Mrs. Winks, of course, developed a special algorithm that suggests once we managed to take over 1,267 pictures (that’s only about 180 pics a day on a 7-day cruise), it’s like the ship is paying us to take them! Or something. So our photo goal each voyage becomes not only to be at EVERY photo op available on the ship, but to take as many poses as possible so we can make the day’s quota. This, ironically, while our own cameras, lenses, flash units, selfie-sticks, Go-pros, drones and tripods sit in the stateroom, going largely unused!

 

The irony of all this is, once we get home, the huge brick of a thousand 8 x 10 prints (which weighs about 18-pounds!) gets tucked away in a family-room cabinet, never to be viewed again, despite Mrs. Winks’ claims that she’s going to scrapbook each of our 20-cruises one day.

 

Shhhh… Don’t tell her this, but for fun, I’ve started taking photos from recent cruises and slipping them into bricks from older itineraries. So somehow, in our Bermuda shots, there’s a picture of the Gatun Locks and the Panama Canal. And the stone arches at Cabo San Lucas suddenly end up in St. Martin for some reason! I can’t wait for some dogsledding shots to end up in our Costa Maya ruins photos. But she so far hasn’t noticed. But maybe someday she will.

 

Taking all these photos was a particular hardship during this Alaska cruise, where we failed to make the magic 1,267 picture quota, and thus shamefully ended-up paying a few full pennies for each. But the worst was trying to get these suckers home. At the airport, our luggage was overweight, so I ended up sitting on the terminal floor, strapping those glossies to my body using packing tape, and then walking through security like an Adam Ansel version of the Michelin man.

 

All so we’d forever have memories like these:

 

Picture%2003%20ALT.jpg

 

 

Okay, so onto the most boring shore excursion you can take in Alaska. Disclaimer, there may in fact be even more boring excursions out there. Indeed some of the Inuit village immersion stuff, sans the ayahuasca rituals, look pretty painful. But trust us, this one must rank right up there.

 

Another one of those Mrs. Winks 5% off pre-cruise booking specials, the excursion ended up taking 10% off our life expectancies. It was marketed to us through the Celebrity excursion’s brochure, like an expensive vial of rusty snake oil, as a wilderness exploration tour of some of Alaska’s most scenic waterways, culminating in a journey through the enchanting and otherworldly Misty Fjords National Monument, the so-called “Yosemite of the North”. (Which Graeme later explained to us at cocktail hour is the red-headed stepchild catchphrase to The Real Alaska).

 

But let’s just say the “exploration” part of the tour pretty much ended after we located the tour boat’s restrooms and bar, because, beyond that, there’s nothing else to discover. Except for the naturalist, who emerges from the bowels of the boat once we cast-off. She then literally speaks, non-stop, for the next 4-and-a-half hours over the boat’s shoddy PA system.

 

During that time, passengers literally sit inside or stand out on the deck as the vessel passes along an endless rolling-scroll of repeating scenery: evergreens, some other trees, a bald eagle’s nest. Repeat. Soon, the novelty of trying to find the best vantage point to view all this wears off, since every vantage point is the same, a view of unvarying trees and shoreline. If Alaska has an Interstate 70 going through the Kansas flatlands, this is hands-down it.

 

Mrs. Winks and I take refuge in the very bow of the ship which, mercifully, is the only spot where the naturalist’s amplified narration doesn’t reach. It’s true, you go deaf bucking the gale-force headwinds, because the boat’s traveling as fast as it can to make the 45+ mile trip up to the Monument, but it’s worth hearing loss to escape her unending blather about formations, fauna and wildlife no one on the tour is seeing hide or tail of.

 

Picture%2004%20Boat.jpg

 

Some two hours later, Mrs. Winks nudges me awake as we approach the one visual anomaly in this nightmarish Bob Ross gallery of endless big strong tree boughs and happy little accidents. It’s a tall rock protuberance, we can see from miles away, sticking out of the middle of the channel and, sadly, it will be the highlight of the entire excursion. We step down-boat from the bow a little so we can hear the naturalist over the deck’s loudspeaker explain we’re looking at a million-year-old, ancient volcanic, basalt pillar that’s known as New Eddystone Rock (you can see it pictured up at the beginning of this post). Yada, yada, yada, magma rising, basalt cooling, the glaciers scouring, some bald eagles thrown in for good measure, and voila.

 

We get to gaze upon its 237-feet of phallicness for a full five minutes and move on… because we have the fjords to get to!

 

From what I understand, thanks to reviews I’ve read and the pictures in the Celebrity brochure, the fjords are at their most impressive when the waterfalls are falling and an ethereal mist hauntingly hugs the surrounding cliffs and tree-tops. This apparently causes atheists to fall on bended knees as true believers and Wiccans to pull out their cauldrons for some quick potion fixin’.

 

But of course, none of this was happening on the cloudy day we happened to be passing through. The waterfalls were trickles and humidity had sucked up any misting going on. I looked down at my unused Gor-Tex raincoat that I’d stuffed into my backpack hours ago.

We essentially saw two mountainous rock formations, no wildlife, no rookeries, and no fairy-quality mistiness. The massive rocks were nowhere near as tall or inspiring as El Capitan or even Stone Mountain, Georgia. They hardly beat out the Wisconsin Dells and, quite honestly, we’ve seen grander geological formations along the Hudson River back in NY.

 

But there’s no time to bitch and moan about what a letdown the excursion’s been, because it’s time to head back folks! That’s right. Didn’t that half-hour in the fjords just fly by? Now it’s time to take the exact same route back to Ketchikan. Buckle in for another two-hour ride and don’t forget to enjoy the stunning views, now in reverse.

 

Picture%2005%20Bored.jpg

 

At this point, Mrs. Winks and I admit defeat and join the Brads who long ago sought refuge inside the ship’s windowed interior, where at least staff occasionally comes by with a Dixie Cup of clam chowder or vegan chili (which comes free with your $199-each excursion cost). You see, it’s not only the dullest shore excursion in Alaska, it’s the biggest rip-off as well!

 

The naturalist is still droning on, but I luckily it puts me to sleep. I feel no shame dozing in front of her. Mrs. Winks wakes me when they pass out chunks of salmon on a Ritz cracker – the canned salmon being one of the souvenirs they sell in the back (I checked, the small tin weighed close to 5-lbs). I tried it, but it tasted cured and smoky, nothing like the fresh filet we’d enjoyed at Taku Glacier Lodge back in Tale #1.

 

The voyage home felt even longer than the trip out. Eventually, we started seeing signs of life along the waterway. Other boats and sports fishermen. Finally, we emerged back at Ketchikan’s harbor, which is very attractive, and it was a relief seeing the Millennium in port, butt up against a Holland American ship.

 

Sadly, the trip to Misty Fjord had eaten up the better portion of the day. Mrs. Winks and Mrs. Brad made a desperate run to catch the Lumberjack Show (Alaska’s version of the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disney, but with ax throwing), but even it had shut down, as most passengers were lining up to re-board the ship.

 

By now you know I’m a bitter old curmudgeon, so you might take this tale with a bit of salt and think ole Winks is exaggerating since he seeks to get rises out of people and cheap attention. But as Mrs. Winks is my witness, think very carefully before you book this Misty Fjords excursion when you cruise Alaska. Ole Winks isn’t steering you wrong on this one.

 

Picture%2006%20Group.jpg

 

Next Up: I don’t know, we haven’t even touched on the land tour yet or the wild post-cruise weekend in Vancouver. But the 2018 Alaska cruise season is over, so is it really worth documenting at this point? Don’t you people have something better to do with your time than sludge through this drivel?

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WinksCruises

WinksCruises

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I can't see your photos!!! Is it just me?

No, not just you. The Graeme post photos were inadvertantly moved from their original folder on Photobucket, and Cruise Critic doesn't allow me to go back and edit a post to assign new photo links, so unfortunately, the pics won't be visible any longer. Sorry about that.

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Barwick Cruiser

Barwick Cruiser

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No, not just you. The Graeme post photos were inadvertantly moved from their original folder on Photobucket, and Cruise Critic doesn't allow me to go back and edit a post to assign new photo links, so unfortunately, the pics won't be visible any longer. Sorry about that.

 

Weird, I can still see them....glad you came back to finish and now that summer is over here I have plenty of time to enjoy your review so please don't stop!

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WinksCruises

WinksCruises

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Thanks for the feedback and continued readership. It's what motivates us to continue.

 

Weird, I can still see them

If you viewed them before, they may still in your device's local memory. Eventually the page will get refreshed and they'll be gone :(.

 

When is your next trip?!

This December on Royal C's Allure of the Seas. The best way to keep up with us is to follow us on Instagram and Twitter. @WinksCruises.

 

Thanks!

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