2016 Alaska Day 4: Anchorage

This day started with a 7:10A wakeup, shower, and finishing up packing so we could have breakfast around 8:00A.  With all that taken care of we made another quick trip to Miner's Market for more food - this time snacks for the train ride down to Anchorage.  We also gassed up the car before returning to DDH where Ann loaded us back up and drove us first to the train depot.  She first drove us to a baggage area at the end of the station where she dropped all our luggage into a container that would eventually be placed into the baggage car.  We then picked up our tickets where, to our delight, we found that we'd been placed right back into the magical Car D, in the same section we'd enjoyed on the Fairbanks to Denali ride.  Of course, this time we didn't have the luxury of 16 seats to ourselves.  We had to share "our" car with eight others!  <g>

We still had time to kill so Ann offered to make our final drop off at the Murie Science Center where we bid her goodbye.  We spent about 45 minutes looking around before heading out on some local trails for another hour or so before ending our walk at the depot once again.

The Denali Star arriving from Fairbanks, ready to take us onboard at Denali for our trip down to Anchorage.

This section is definitely more scenic than the Fairbanks to Denali section...but still not scenic enough that I'd recommend GoldStar service.  There were more green forests and rivers, plus more mountain ranges.  At one point we met the Anchorage to Denali train and there was a swap of parts of each crew so various employees would end the day in their "home" station.  We also took on two high school students were were recent graduates of the railroad's 10 week training course that turns out the on-board guides.  Our seasoned employee guide made way for these two for the rest of the trip to keep us informed about all things historical, cultural, and scenic.  

Sometime around 3PM C mentioned that she really wished we had something sweet to snack on.  At that point M surprised us with one final offering from DDH.  Apparently, when Ann dropped us off that morning she had quietly given M two bars of gourmet chocolate and told him to pull these out "when it seemed like people needed some extra energy".   This was a TOTALLY unexpected surprise and a really nice touch by Ann and Terry.  It brought quite a smile to all our faces.

About an hour outside of Talkeetna we were rewarded with views of Denali off in the distance.  So we could finally count ourselves members of the "30% Club", representative of those who actually manage to see the mountain.

Denali peeks out at us just outside of Talkeetna.

Another view of Denali.  We joined the "30% Club!"

Throughout the trip, as we moved in and out of cellular and/or satellite coverage, we were getting snippets of texts from N and H, both of whom were dealing with challenges with their Delta flights.  N, H, and J were all slated to meet in Seattle before flying together to Anchorage to join up with us that evening.  There was real concern that H, at least, was going to be delayed so much coming out of Portland (Oregon) that she'd arrive in Seattle too late for her connection.  On the train we were discussing lots of contingency plans - thank you, Spreadsheet of Fun, for having so many options listed!

After pulling out of Talkeetna around 5:20PM we did have dinner onboard the train.  The food, not surprisingly, was not very good.  However, the novelty of having a meal on a train is fun.  For just a moment you can imagine what it must have been like in the days of luxury Pullman cars.  When we got back to our seats in Car D we received a great photo showing N, H, and J all on their flight to Anchorage, so we could relax knowing we'd be meeting up with them as per plan.  (H ended up on the Delta flight she was originally scheduled to be on...but not before her luggage ended up on the Alaska Airlines flight that Delta had provisionally put her on in case they didn't get out as planned.  Her bag followed her to Anchorage about an hour after she had landed.)

The dinner menu on board. Those who were traveling GoldStar had dinner included in their fare.  Us "common folks" had to pay the prices shown here.  Don't get your hopes up for gourmet fare!

The lobby guard at Comfort Inn Ship Creek.

We stayed at Comfort Inn Ship Creek, which was about 0.7 miles from the train depot, so we just walked over to it. We got ourselves into our rooms and then took a walk across the street to watch the folks fly fishing along the creek. We saw a couple of fish landed, which one of the guys near us estimated to be in the 17-20 pound range.

 

The fishermen work Ship Creek.  They can only fish until 10PM, and are limited to 7 fish all season.

The one that DIDN'T get away.

Upon return to the hotel we took advantage of the ice cream vending machine to get a late snack and then headed for bed.

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2016 Alaska Day 2 and 3: Denali

 

Alaska 2016/Planning

Planning for Denali boiled down to a few key questions:

1. Did we want to stay at one of the "back country" lodges (with the Denali Backcountry Lodge being our leading candidate)?
2. If not the back country, did we want to stay in Glitter Gulch or elsewhere?
3. For the park itself, shuttle buses or tour buses?

Question #1 resolved to a "no" due to scheduling.  Our schedule allowed for a two night stay at Denali, and the economics of the all-inclusive fees at the DBL across only two nights weren't worth it to me.  If we'd had a couple of full days to relax at the DBL I would have done it, but two nights just felt too rushed to me.

Question #2 was tougher to answer.  Ideally, I wanted to stay at Denali Dome Home because it simply looked much more comfortable than any of the Glitter Gulch hotels.  The problem with DDH (and other similar places) is that you really have to have a car in order to be away from Glitter Gulch and the attendant shuttles.  Of course, if you have a car you are also freed up to try different places for dinner than the normal group of local restaurants.

Well, guess what?  The owners of DDH also run "Keys to Denali", which claims to be the ONLY car rental business in Denali/Healy.  Lots of web searching seemed to confirm this to be true.  So staying at DDH seemed like a good possibility, given that the owners would meet you at the train station upon arrival with your car.  (In fact, once on the ground we saw at least two other places advertising car rental...but I never found reference to either of those places in web-based research.  I don't recall the names of either places - one of them was next to Miner's Market, and the other was at another B&B.)

So, when the trip was just our family of 4 DDH was the leading candidate.  When we expanded to a group of 11 the logistics of car rental became a bit more complicated, as we'd need two cars - or so I thought.  I briefly considered renting car(s) in Fairbanks for our trip to Denali, but I didn't want to continue driving all the way to Anchorage if we could avoid it, so a one-way Fairbanks-to-Anchorage rental wasn't an option.  One-way rentals are also pretty expensive, with surcharges from $150-500, depending on the agency.  However, it turned out that DDH could rent us a 12-passenger van for the 2 days were were there.  (As our plans firmed up we realized that while we were a group of 11 for the cruise, only 8 of us would be doing the land tour ahead of meeting up in Anchorage.  So an 11 pax van for 8 of us left room for our luggage.)  TIMING ADVICE:  We booked DDH just a few days before Christmas 2015 - and by then there were only 3 rooms left available.  So we ended up filling up their rooms.  If we'd waited any longer we likely would have missed out.

If we couldn't do DDH I would have tried to fall back to Denali Bluffs Hotel.  I preferred this to Denali Grande Lodge (same ownership group) as it was cheaper while still looking quite comfortable.  In addition, it appeared to be an easier walk from DBH to a lot of the restaurants, and in this configuration we would have been without a car so that was a consideration.  TIMING ADVICE: In early January 2016 I saw at least one thread on CruiseCritic from someone reporting shock that she was unable to find any availability at the major hotels for June 2016.  Respondents suggested several alternate choices.  The spots recommended didn't ring a bell with me after my searches - I think many of them were small hotels listed on the local Chamber of Commerce site and not places widely discussed.  So, bottom line, for Glitter Gulch it sounds like you might need to be planning at LEAST six months out to have good selection.

Question #3 was finally answered in favor of shuttle buses.  The reasons were as follows:

• Costs for the hop-on/hop-off shuttle buses were significantly less than the tour buses.
• As far as I could tell the seats on all the buses were the same, so the level of "comfort" was the same.  Comfort is a relative term, as the seats are not plush captain's chair type bus seats, but rather sparsely padded leather seats.
• The shuttle bus drivers also drive the tour buses, so all drivers have the same info at their fingertips.  Several folks who have taken the shuttles say that most (but certainly not all) shuttle drivers still provide commentary during the trip - and all drivers on all routes are equally adept at spotting and stopping for wildlife.
• The snacks provided on the tour buses didn't appear to rise above bottle of water/sandwich wrap/granola bar.  I figured we could deal with supplying our own food.  DDH was able to recommend a few places we could go to build sandwich boxes, and many of the restaurant and cafe web sites indicated that they'd provide the same.  And lots of CruiseCritic members mention that they bought stuff at the Subway sandwich shop somewhere near the Princess Lodge.

The trade-off with shuttles is that you don't have a guarantee that you'll get a return trip seat exactly when you want - you're in competition with others also heading back.  You CAN return on the bus you arrived on without any challenges - you get first priority there.  This risk only comes into play if you decide to stay at the turn-around point longer than your bus stays.  For a large group like ours it seemed possible that - if we were to decide to stay at the Eileson Visitor Center longer than our bus would wait - we might have to split up on the return trip in order to find enough seats to accommodate us.

TIMING ADVICE: I pre-booked 8 shuttle slots about 2 weeks after the early December 2015 opening of reservations.  I had no difficulty picking the mid-morning departure time I wanted.  Our hosts at DDH strongly suggested that we did NOT use a pre-9A boarding time.  This was partially so we could enjoy a leisurely breakfast with them, but they also mentioned that, from a practical standpoint, animal viewing was simply not affected by boarding time.  This same advice was to be found from many of the more Alaska-savvy on the CC boards.

Monday, June 20, 2016 (afternoon)

Once we arrived at the Denali Depot and got off the train we had to wait for our luggage to be offloaded.  Had we been staying at one of the Glitter Gulch lodgings the railroad would be pre-tagged our bags with the hotel name and the hotel would have retrieved our luggage and transported it to our rooms for us.  DDH isn't one of the places that has their own tags, however, so we had to wait for our bags to be put out in the "general" pile and collect them ourselves.  While waiting Ann came out to the baggage claim area and shouted out C's last name to locate us.  Ann (she and husband Terry own and operate Denali Dome Home) had driven our van over to the depot to greet us, so once we all had luggage we followed her to the van and stuffed everyone in.  Within about 20 minutes were we at DDH.

DDH was really lovely.  Ann and Terry were both very warm and inviting, and the rooms were all comfortable.  Terry makes great use of his two cast-iron skillets in the mornings to build custom-order breakfasts.  We variously sampled french toast, pancakes, eggs, moose sausages (Terry's little joke name for pork sausages), fruits, and cereals in the morning...and enjoyed fresh-baked chocolate chip cookies in the evenings.  The other guests were equally enjoyable.

One of two lounging areas in Denali Dome Home.

Having arrived at DDH around 1PM or so we quickly got settled into our room and then piled back into the van - this time with M driving - to find some lunch.  We ended up at 49th State Brewing Company, which was nearby.  Their sister restaurant is the Denali Salmon Bake at Glitter Gulch, but Ann and Terry had warned us that the Salmon Bake wasn't getting good reviews.  The Brewing Company had a fun vibe to it - I grabbed a couple of photos of some of the decor.  A few folks tried one of the house-brewed beers...and our son R had the house root beer.  Most of us had fish-based meals, with one mac and cheese thrown in, too.  We were hungry and the food didn't disappoint!

Part of the decor at 49th State Brewing Company.  This was in the upper corner nearest our table.

From lunch we drove over to Park Headquarters because we wanted to catch the 4PM presentation at the Dog Kennel.  Terry had advised us to park at the back end of the parking lot and pick up the trailhead for the (short) walk to the kennels.  Here, the rangers discussed why they make such extensive use of dogs in the park, and they had the dogs pull a sled around a short demo course.  They had a relatively inexperienced lead dog at the front and she showed it by veering off-course at one point as she got distracted by the crowd.  That was a great demonstration of how they have to train dogs for different roles.  The whole thing took about 25 minutes including Q&A and was quite interesting. After the presentation we were encouraged to walk around the kennel area an interact with the dogs.

The ranger host at the Denali Dog Kennel presentation.  The dogs have just completed their sled pull and are starting to play with chew toys that are being handed out.

 

A few of the sled dogs at the Denali NPS dog kennel.

From there we drove over to the Visitor Center and spent about 30-40 minutes walking around the two-level display area.  There's a lot of good displays here with "just enough" text to keep you informed without boredom.

On the way to the visitor center each day we kept coming across two orphaned moose calves.  The mother had been (illegally) shot and killed by someone unknown about two weeks previously and the rangers were trying to figure out how to capture the calves in order to ship them to a wildlife care facility.  If they couldn't capture the calves it was expected they wouldn't survive through the upcoming winter. (Note: D had a business trip to India about two weeks after we got back from the Alaskan trip. The hotel delivered USA Today each morning, and I happened to notice one day that the news blurb for Alaska reported that rangers at Denali had managed to capture the calves.)

The orphaned moose calves hanging around the entrance to Denali National Park.  We saw rangers out here every time we passed by, directing traffic and making sure no one got too close.

Finally, we did a nice little loop trail walk that took us about 45 minutes or so.  We started at the Taiga trailhead located just across the road bordering the parking lot next to the Visitor Center (the RED trail on the map in the links at the right), then turned left on the Rock Creek Trail (blue trail), before turning left again on the Meadow View Trail (black dashed line), and finally left again on the Roadside Trail (yellow trail) to get back to the parking lot.

This is the view from along the Meadow View Trail.  Gorgeous scenery!

Back at the car we headed over to Prospector Pizza for dinner.  This is a VERY busy place.  It took us about 45 minutes to get seated, and then dinner itself was leisurely - it took about 2 more hours.  D chatted with our waitress and, commenting on her Slavic-like accent, learned that she was from Bulgaria. As D managed some staff in Sofia and had traveled there recently he was surprised to find out that he had heard of her hometown - she was from Plovdiv, the second-largest city in Bulgaria. We got back to DDH about 10PM tired but satisfied.

W, M, and D wait for wives to finish shopping at the gift stop next to Prospector's Pizza.

Tuesday, June 21, 2016 (at Denali)

D, E, R, and A started this day off with a move to another room at DDH.  When we booked (and grabbed that last three rooms available) Ann had let us know that this would happen.  The room we were first booked into was already booked for the second night of our stay so we were moved to another room.  Our first room had a sauna in it, so I'm guessing that this was the attraction that caused someone else to book it.  We actually liked our 2nd room more, so it all worked out OK.

After another tasty breakfast we headed over to Miner's Market and Deli, which was less than a mile from DDH.  Here we grabbed some pre-made sandwiches from the fridge and added some bags of chips, granola bars, etc. to make our own bag lunches for our shuttle bus trip into the park.  The shuttles were running late and when we got there for our 10A shuttle the 930A group was still waiting.  Our bus came in about 10:10A and we loaded up for our day with our driver Ken, from Kentucky.  As per the recommendations from Ann and Terry (and backed up by Cruise Critic posters) we sat on the left hand side of the bus.

Ken was AWESOME!  Unlike the "official" brown narrated tour buses, the green shuttle buses do not promise any narration.  However, Ken kept up a steady stream of commentary and basically gave us a full tour for the price of a shuttle.  I've read of others who had shuttle drivers who did little more than drive, so we got really lucky.

The day was a bit overcast which did nothing to detract from the beauty of the scenery...but does mean that our photos fail to really do justice to what we saw.  The bus makes bathroom stops about every 75-90 minutes. The windows on the bus did have a tendency to fog up pretty regularly. The bus had paper towels available, but had we anticipated this problem we would have actually brought a cloth towel with us to wipe down the window more regularly.

Our shuttle bus (foreground) at the first bathroom stop.  That's our driver, Ken, standing at the doorway to the bus. There were usually buckets of water and squeegees available at the rest stops so folks could wash down the outside of their windows if they wished to do so.

At this time of day (it was about 1130A or so at our first bus stop) it was a bit damp out.  To the left you can see the bathrooms located here.  In the background you can see that a tan narrated tour bus has also arrived.

Here was a cow with two calves caught on the road between two buses.  She was clearly trying to find a safe way off the road, but this section featured a cliff wall on our right hand side and a sheer drop off to our left.  The buses both remained stopped to give the animals a chance to make choices.

The cow finally decided to attempt to move along the steep drop immediately to the left of our bus.  The river is probably about 100' below the road.  Although not obvious in the photo, the land drops sharply just 1 to 2 feet beyond where the animals are currently walking.  The cow was carefully selecting where to go, no doubt evaluating whether her calves would be able to safely follow her.

This panoramic photo attempts to capture the amazing vista of Polychrome Pass. 

One of the most elusive photos of our trip: Sixteen year old R, who normally would shy away from the camera.  Mom E is to his right.  I ambushed him here.

Our only bear sighting of the whole trip.  I rushed this photo just before he moved to his left, behind the bush in the foreground.

At the Eileson Visitor Center (our turn-around point) Ken announced that he'd be starting his return trip in about 45 minutes.  Because the day was a bit cold and dreary we decided not to take any of the hiking trails around the VC so were able to return with Ken without having to worry about securing spaces on other buses departing later.  However, had the weather been nicer we would have stuck around.  Frankly, we were surprised that "our" bus would only stop for 45 minutes.  It would seem to make so much more sense for each bus to wait at least 75-90 minutes in order to allow "its" passengers more time to explore while still providing them with guaranteed return seats.  I'm sure it all works out in the end...but a surprise.  We did lose two passengers at Eileson: a couple of bikers came up on our bus and were met by a friend (who biked in from Wonder Lake).  Together, they were planning to bike out of the park during the rest of the day - a journey of 66 miles.  Ah, to be younger!

We explored the (small) Visitor Center, which did include a nice picture window for photographing The Mountain.  Of course, we couldn't see Denali through the overcast.  That viewing would have to wait for another day.  The VC does have a nice scale model of the area, showing various paths to scale the mountain.

 

An unusual item is on display outside the VC - a set of moose skulls with interlocked horns.  Apparently two males fighting things out in a mating ritual got tangled with one another and eventually died in tandem.

Following a long day on the bus we were ready for a quiet dinner, and (on recommendation from Terry and Ann) we went to the Black Diamond Grill.  As this was out near DDH and not Glitter Gulch it wasn't as busy as all those places in walking distance of the major hotels.  The portions were HUGE, and quite good.  The menu sample linked at the right is representative - it doesn't include the BBQ pork ribs I had which were among the best I've EVER had.  Only later did I determine we'd been a few hundred feet from another geocache that I could have grabbed without any problems!

After a long day it was back to DDH for our final night before a long train ride to Anchorage and meeting up with the rest of our traveling circus.

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2016 Alaska: Day 1 and 2: SJC to Fairbanks and Train to Denali

Having decided that we were going to go to Denali we next decided that our best approach was to fly into Fairbanks (rather than Anchorage) and work our way south via Alaska Railroad. Cruiseline-sponsored landtours often visit Fairbanks and all of them appear to follow the same basic itinerary. They go to Gold Dredge 8 and take a steamboat tour. Those held absolutely no interest for us. Looking at TripAdvisor for other ideas ultimately led to the conclusion that, at least on this trip, Fairbanks was going to be nothing more than an airport and overnight stay for us.

So, where to stay?  Ideally we'd find some place reasonably priced with decent airport and/or Alaska RR shuttle service, as well as a restaurant or two within walking distance where we could get dinner.  Our 8 hours of Delta flights from San Jose via Seattle would put us into Fairbanks around 2PM.  That would give us some time to get to wherever we planned to stay and decompress a bit before dinner - but we didn't plan to fit in any organized activity on our travel day.  Again, TripAdvisor to the rescue and we settled on Best Western Plus Chena River Lodge.  At the time, this was the #2 property rated on TA (out of 24).  They offered an airport shuttle (we called them on arrival and they sent a couple of taxis to get us within just a few minutes), included breakfast, and were within walking distance of both a run-of-the-mill restaurant (Brewster's) and a nicer restaurant (Chena's Alaskan Grill).

For our flights we all suffered with Delta.  Overall we were really frustrated with them.  We suffered MULTIPLE rebookings (prompted by them, not us) in the weeks prior to the flight.  Overall, our group of eleven had four different outbound flights from 3 different states, and three of them experienced delays of 2+ hours on day of flight, and two of those placed connecting flights at serious risk of being missed.  Those of us coming up from San Jose ended up having to hustle through SeaTac airport to make our Fairbanks flight rather than enjoy a leisurely lunch as planned due to the lateness of our departure from San Jose.  Major hassles all around.  Next time: Alaska Air.  They were more expensive, but the hassle of Delta just wasn't worth it!

The Fairbanks airport is small and simple: I'm not sure there was more than one baggage carousel.  I did notice bus drivers from Royal Caribbean, HAL, and Princess all waiting with appropriate signs upon landing.  We. of course, were doing our own thing so retrieved our bags and were at the hotel within about 20-25 minutes of landing.

As it was the night of Game 7 of the NBA Finals and our Golden State Warriors were trying (unsuccessfully, it would turn out) to repeat as champs we decided we'd walk to Brewster's for dinner as we knew they'd have the game on TV.  Brewster's was a bit warm, but otherwise pleasant.  For those interested, we passed a large Fred Mayer store (this is like a Walmart) on the way - this is a place you could pick up pretty much any missing item.  On the way back my family indulged my interest in geocaching.  There was a simple cache hidden just behind the hotel that we grabbed post-dinner.

The most striking aspect of Fairbanks was that this was our first exposure to the long hours of summer daylight this far north.  On that particular day Fairbanks had 20:54 between sunrise and "sunset".  I put the latter in quotation marks because it was never really dark at all that day.

The following morning we had a quick breakfast at the hotel.  We've stayed at Best Western Plus hotels before and the breakfast selection here was pretty typical: hot/cold cereal, scrambled eggs and sausage, make-your-own-waffle and toast, and some fruit.  Overnight, a busload of tourists had appeared so the 5-6 tables were in use and the room was REALLY crowded.

We hopped into two more cabs to get to the train station.  We had the front desk make arrangements the prior night and had been told that the hotel did not cover the costs to the train station (only to/from the airport).  On the morning of transport, however, the cab drivers came to the front desk and got vouchers from the hotel staff, so we got free rides in the end.  Time to the train station was 10-12 minutes.  On the recommendation of the hotel, we arrived about 20 minutes before departure time which turned out to be just about perfect.  Gave us time to check our baggage, and run through the model train layout at the station before boarding.

I had booked regular train cars for this one (Adventure Class) and we were initially assigned to Car C.  The train layout was A and B=Goldstar, C, D, E=Adventure (with D including the shared dome), and F=the private Wilderness Explorer car.  Car F was off-limits to those in A-E.  The Fairbanks-Denali leg apparently isn't as popular as legs south of Denali, so D and E were empty...which turned out to be a blessing.  Here's something I never saw anyone on Cruise Critic mention: Cars D&E are older than A-C, having been built in the 50's...when rail travel was more luxurious.  The seats in D&E are WAAAAAAY more comfortable, have more leg room, have foot rests...and also have better window views.  Having been encouraged by the conductors to explore and freely change seats, we made this surprising discovery and moved our group of 8 into the front of car D...where we enjoyed a private section of 16 seats to ourselves for the entire journey!  One of the conductors congratulated us - he mentioned that he loved it when folks made use of these seats when otherwise unoccupied.

A, E, M, C in our original seats in Adventure Class Car C.  Note how close together the rows are, and see how the bottom of the window pane is level with A's eyes.

A, R, D, C, M in Adventure Class Car D.  The seats are much nicer leather cushion bases, and there's a ton of legroom.  You can't see the multi-position footrests, but they're there.  You can recline about 75 degrees and still not get in the way of the seat behind you. Also note how A's eyes are well above the bottom of the window pane, even when he has reclined back a bit.

For anyone considering GoldStar seating for Fairbank to Denali, my recommendation is to not bother.  This section of the railway was mostly permafrost forest, which isn't very scenic.  (BTW: if you, like us, plan to take 2+ Alaska RR trips, here's a game you can play: count how many times one of the on-board guides explain what permafrost is.  Do NOT turn this into a drinking game - your liver won't appreciate it.  <g>)   The side of the train you sit on doesn't appear to matter.  This seems to be true of the entire Denali Star route (Fairbanks to Anchorage) as well as the Coastal Classic route (Anchorage to Seward).

A family of Trumpeter Swans seen from the train on the way to Denali.

A party of rafters on the Nenana River, as seen from the train.  The conductor mentioned that this was a popular activity of visitors to Denali.

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2016 Alaska Part 3: Planning

Alaska 2016/Planning: The "Other" Vacation

For me, planning for vacation is almost as much fun as vacation itself - and it lasts considerably longer, too! I began planning for this trip back in 2014. Starting that early allowed for considerable opportunity to go really deep into advance research. The various tabs of this blog devoted to each location we were to visit contain details specific to each location. Here I'll instead describe my basic approach.

The Spreadsheet 'o Fun

There are two constants in my life: Google and Microsoft Excel. When I need information, I use my black belt skills in Google-fu. And when I need to keep a record of data, I pull out Excel. In addition to my regular use of Excel for actual business purposes, it still remains the best ad-hoc database around, in my opinion. So when vacation rolls around, I call upon my favorites and get to work.

Several years ago we took a trip to the UK that saw my first serious use of a spreadsheet for tracking data. I spent months looking up places we might want to go, places we might want to stay, restaurants we might want to eat at, and so forth. EVERYTHING I learned went into "The Spreadsheet". When, many months into the research cycle, I spent one day looking up various destinations on Google Maps and recording the longitude and latitude of the locations (in addition to the addresses I already had collected) my family rolled their eyes. But guess what? Once we got to the UK it turned out that our GPS, which we brought to help us navigate, was unable to find any of the UK postal codes we had supposedly programmed it with - and entry of postal codes is the normal way to find something on a GPS in the UK. No matter - I had the longitude and latitude values so we simply used those instead. "Never disrespect the Spreadsheet 'o Fun!" is now the family slogan. (Rolling eyes at how much time dad spends working on the spreadsheet is still fair game, however.)

A few years ago someone on CruiseCritic posted a spreadsheet template that was keyed to Royal Carribean's Oasis of the Seas. I regret that I can't find the original post, because I'm deeply indebted to that poster for sharing her work. I have continued to modify her template to more closely suit my needs and have posted it here for those who want to use it. I've removed identifying information and pricing details, but this is otherwise the final product. Note that a lot of these tabs were stubs, as I played around with different ideas. For example, there's a skeleton for the Radiance Northbound route which I quickly decided didn't offer enough time at the various ports, so I abandoned further development and hid (but did NOT delete!) the tab.

The most important advice I can offer is:
1) Write down EVERYTHING.
2) Delete NOTHING.

I cannot begin to count the number of times I've gone back to items that weren't part of my then-current plans and incorporated them into back into things. I've written down many items, sometimes thinking "why am I bothering to write this down? I'm not going to do this?!" only to revisit it weeks or months later and decide that maybe it really is something that we'll do. I'm still selective about what I write down - the item has to appeal to me enough to make me want to take a note of it in the first place.

Northbound or Southbound?

The first major decision for us was: which direction? From the start, we were leaning Southbound. This is because we expected we'd want to tour some of Alaska on land - and we know from prior experience that land touring is more tiring than cruising. By starting in Alaska pre-cruise we could tire ourselves out and look forward to relaxing on the ship at the end. Had we gone Northbound and THEN tried to do some land touring we expected that this would be more tiring.

Denali or Not?

This was the second major decision. In order to see Denali National Park we'd have to add at least 4 days to our trip: A night in Fairbanks, two days for Denali (including 1/2 day of train travel), and then one more day of travel to Anchorage. Basically, getting 1.5 days to play around in Denali required 4 days of commitment. We went back and forth on the value of this...but, in the end, we finally decided that we might never get another chance to return to Alaska and it was "now or never". So Denali was "in".

So our trip divided into two sections: a pre-cruise land tour of our own devising involving eight of us (D, E, R, A, S, W, M, C) and then a meet up with N, H, and J in Anchorage on our way to Seward and, eventually, the cruise itself.

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2016 Alaska Part 2: Meet the Cast

Alaska 2016/Who's Who

This turned out to be a wonderful family adventure.

It started with the Core Four
Me (D), my wife (E), and our two sons (R and A). We're from San Jose, California and this is our 3rd cruise. I'm an IT Director with a large global software company, E is Chief Clinical Dietician with the VA, and the boys had just finished 10th and 5th grades at the time of the trip.

We did the Western Caribbean on Oasis of the Seas during Summer 2014, then a quick Bahamas trip on Enchantment of the Seas during a school break in Fall 2015. I had an ulterior motive when we tried Oasis. If it turned out that we enjoyed ourselves enough to try another cruise I knew that Alaska, a long-time bucket list trip for me, was going to be the destination. We decided that cruising wasn't the BEST vacation we'd ever taken, but it turned out to be the most RELAXING, so that was good enough.

The Next Three
I had been talking up the idea of going to Alaska with the rest of the family for a while, and early converts to the idea were my sister (S) and her husband (W). They are from Palo Alto, California. S is a former clinical psychologist who now teaches math in middle school, while W is a Professor of Chemistry at Stanford (and a 2014 Nobel Prize winner for Chemistry...I get very few opportunities to write that, but it never gets old)!

Also early to sign up - with some persistence on our part - was Eileen's mother J. This was a very long-delayed trip for her - she and my father-in-law had been planning an Alaskan trip 16 years ago just before his unexpected death. A chance to go with one of her five kids and two of her grandchildren was attractive enough to get her to sign up for this trip, however.

The Reluctant Two
Next to sign up were Eileen's brother (M) and his wife (C). I say "reluctant", but in fact they were simply waiting until the trip became a reality before committing themselves. They ended up booking a cabin about 4 days after I booked for the seven of us. They live in Cupertino, California. M is just-retired physicist from the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, while C is semi-retired from a high tech company where she was a financial executive. M&C had previously been to Alaska, about 25 years before, back in the early days of their marriage when they spent the trip doing camping and biking.

The Surprise Two
About four weeks after we'd done the initial bookings, C mentioned in passing "oh, did I tell you that N and H are coming?" Well, no, C, you hadn't - but that's fantastic news! They are M&C's daughters. N lives in Denver, Colorado, where she is a program manager for Habitat for Humanity, while H lives in Portland, Oregon where she is in social services. The girls (along with M&C) have traveled widely throughout the globe.

So, from modest beginnings the Core Four turned into a group of 11 family members, spanning three generations. We now had grandma, two of her 5 kids, and 4 of her eight grandkids.

The Final Line-up 

                           J

                           |

                  |================|

W-----S=====D-----E                M-----C

               |                      |

            R=====A                N=====H

==: Siblings
--: Spouses

So, in the end my (D's) mother-in-law (J) traveled with 2 of her 5 children (E&M), their spouse's (D&C). and 4 of her 8 grandchildren (R,A,N,H). D's sister S and her husband W rounded out the group.


The whole gang. From left to right: H, N, S, W, M, C, R, A, D (kneeling), E, J

Thanks for reading!
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2016 Alaska Part 1: Finally, My Bucket List Trip!

Alaska 2016 on Land and Sea, including Southbound on Radiance of the Seas Sunday June 19 through Saturday July 1, 2016

Oh, no!  Do we REALLY need yet ANOTHER really long Alaska trip report?  Probably not.  The Alaska reviews on CruiseCritic are among the best on CC – I think that Alaskan cruisers are really passionate about what they saw and do a great job in relating the excitement to the rest of us.  In fact, I’m indebted to several prior reviewers for keeping me energized and excited about Alaska, including WalleyeLJ and arymary.  Not that I needed much reason to be excited – Alaska has been a bucket list destination for me since I was a kid. 

So chances are I’m adding little that is ground-breaking (although I’ll still try).  However, a few reasons why I’m adding to the noise:

1. Some percentage of information is always dated.  So this review will be the “freshest” information for some period of time.  Oooh, shiny and new…
2. Some folks hate to search for prior answers.  No, I’m not talking about you – I’m talking about that other guy who posts asking “can I bring a bottle of wine onboard with me?” even though there are 4,376 answers to that exact same question already online.  Rather than rail against that kind of behavior I’ll flatter myself that I can provide a better answer than the others. 
3. I haven’t seen anyone organize their reviews in quite the way I’m planning to.  Have I read all the other reviews to confirm this?  Of course not – see #2.  (OK, sometimes I’m THAT GUY.)   But I do hope that I can provide a review that is a model of clarity and organization – and I like the challenge of trying to do this.  Why?  I’ll simply quote the ONLY bumper sticker I ever saw that I loved so much I’ve remembered it: “I have CDO.  It’s like OCD except the letters are in alphabetical order…LIKE THEY SHOULD BE!”
4. And, of course, I’m just so damn entertaining.   
5. Finally - the real reason is that this write up is mostly for me. By writing about the trip it helps me cement the memories in my brain.

There will be photos throughout. 

If you've already read this far you'll notice that I generally do not subscribe to the theory that "brevity is the soul of wit".  I hope to be able to convey the reasons behind the decisions we made during the planning period, along with various alternatives we considered.  When traveling, I LOVE the planning phase.  The more pre-planning I do the more fun I have on vacation - not because I feel compelled to do everything planned, but for the exact opposite reason.  The more things I know about that we /could/ do, the more free I feel to improvise once we're on the ground.  I can relax, knowing I'll be able to make QUICK but not RUSHED decisions, and certainly not uninformed decisions.

Want to comment?  You can either comment here or go to the comment thread on cruisecritic.com.

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2015 Bahamas Day 7: We Die Horribly!

Friday, October 2: We Die Horribly

Wait, what? We die? Read on...

We had opted for self-carry exit, which allowed us to debark any time between 720AM-830AM. Had we chosen to remain for standard departure, as Suite guests we would have gathered at R Bar on Centrum Deck 4 for an 830AM departure. (Suite guests and disabled guests were the only ones assigned to the Centrum.)

Since we were renting a car to get back to Orlando and had a lot of time to kill before our 345PM flight, our original plan had been to skip breakfast onboard, exit the ship around 815AM, and grab something after we had the car. With no particular need to rush, we could have slept in until about 715AM. Despite that, we still set our alarms for 530AM because we had learned during our trip to KSC at the start of the week that a rocket launch was scheduled for 600AM! On embarkation day our starboard side cabin was facing Cape Canaveral so we knew if we returned in the same orientation we’d have a front row seat.

We were still pulling into Port Canaveral at 550AM when we passed an electronic signboard in the channel that warned that a rocket launch was scheduled. We were tied up at the pier around 600AM, once again facing the Cape. Suddenly around 610AM there was a very bright light in the distance that rapidly rose into the air, leaving a smoke trail that was visible even in the blackness of the morning – and then came the rolling thunder. One of the tidbits we’d learned at KSC was that, on the launch pad, most of the billowing “smoke” you see is actually steam, caused by them emptying the contents of the pad’s water tower into the blast tunnels moments before the rockets fire. The reason for this is to dampen the sound. If they didn’t do this, apparently the sonic waves from something like an Apollo or shuttle launch would have broken windows in four counties! Seeing a rocket launch was a personal bucket list item for me – but one I frankly NEVER expected to actually experience. An incredible experience, and icing on top of our cruise cake!

Now wide awake and with over 90 minutes before our intended departure we decided we’d go ahead and have one last breakfast in WJ instead of waiting. It wasn’t the crazy zoo we expected – maybe the fact that we were there by 630AM helped us miss later risers? Back to the cabin to relax, and perform double/triple/quadruple checks of all drawers and closets to make sure we had everything, and then down to Deck 4 to self-exit at about 815AM. They had told us to expect to be out of the terminal within 5 minutes of exiting the ship and they weren’t lying. An RCCL employee was outside and pointed out where we’d find the Budget shuttle – which was just pulling in at that exact moment. On the shuttle and at Budget in another 6 minutes, and in our car about 3 minutes after that. Easy!

So, our cruise was officially over, but there was still one more act to our vacation. As mentioned, our flight out wasn’t until 345PM, so even allowing time to drive to Orlando, fit in lunch, and get to the airport in time to return the car and get through security…well, we were still going to have 2-3 hours to kill. So how best to fill time?

I was really excited to discover that Orlando has several different “Room Escape Games” available. I love these on the computer (google “Room Escape Game”) but trying a live-action version sounded like a lot of fun. Basically, your group is locked into a room and has 60 minutes to solve a series of puzzles in order to get out. The goal in most cases is to find keys or codes to various locks. We did “Pandemic” as found at http://americasescapegame.com/. They were located about 20 minutes away from the airport – so adding up the arrival window, the 60 minute game itself, and then travel to the airport, this detour helped us kill about 2 hours of time. More importantly, we had a blast! We didn’t manage to escape in the 60 minute time limit, but that was more than OK with us. (The staff told us that we’d gotten closer than most, but upon hearing what we still had left to do I think it would have taken us another 30 minutes to get to the end.) So, in the end, not only did we die a horrible death trapped in the labs of a Mad Doctor, but our failure likely resulted in the wiping out of civilization as the disease would escape into the wild. Sorry. Our Bad. <g>

A quick note about rental car return in Orlando. We expected that we’d run across a gas station after taking the airport exit, but it turns out that you are routed into the airport almost immediately after exiting the freeway. So if you intend to fill up your rental car tank before drop-off, you apparently need to take the airport exit, BUT THEN GO IN THE OPPOSITE DIRECTION, away from the airport, in order to find a gas station. We didn’t obsess over this – we just dropped the car knowing that Budget would charge us their per-gallon price to complete the fill-up of our tank. Given that we live the San Francisco Bay Area with some of the most expensive gas prices in the US, we felt like the $2.15/gallon fee was a bargain. (In San Jose on the same date, our gas was $3.07/gallon!)

From there it was all anti-climax. An uneventful flight with a 45 minute delay on our connection in Denver, gathering of luggage back in San Jose (and sharing the parking shuttle with one of the families we’d driven in with at the start of the trip!), and finally walking back into our house about 930PM calm, happy, and ready for our Alaskan adventure next summer!

Thanks for sticking through to the end of the trip report. Hope you found something of value that you can use to enjoy your next cruise!

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