The night we embarked was the final night of an international fireworks competition in Vancouver BC. Much to our delight, after pulling away from the pier the captain announced he would anchor the ship in the harbor, to enable the passengers to view the winning display. It was a fantastic show, and our first hint that this way the way this captain commanded his ship- anything to please the passengers.
At each port is Alaska the sights to see varied widely: in Ketchikan some of my family took the "Duck Tour", on a vehicle that toured the town and its places of interest by road, and then went down a ramp into the water to view the fisheries, fishing vessels and bald eagles from another perspective. We also checked out the Discovery Museum manned by Rangers, who gave us insight into the vastness of the state ecologically; others went out on a fishing boat and were successful in catching delicious salmon. In Juneau some went through the State House where we learned how small Alaska's population is, plus had a chance to sit in the chairs of its Senators and Representatives.
After we went whale watching on a catamaran and had the thrill of seeing humpbacked whales, orcas, sea lions, otters and bald eagles, while others in our group helicoptered onto the Mendenhall glacier and had the thrilling experience of cramponing across ice fields and huge crevasses formed by the movement of the glacier; we were all delighted by Skagway and its false fronted stores, and we took the Whitehorse Railway that traversed unbelievably steep gorges and from which we saw magnificent forests, glaciers and mountains...Glacier Bay and College Fjord were beautiful beyond description. At one point in College Fjord we were able to look 180 degrees and see 7 glaciers abutting one another. The captain turned the ship around 360 degreed twice so everyone could see the icy magnificence without difficulty. The ship is only a year old so all its electronics is state of the art, and while there were icebergs in the waters around us, we were in no danger of becoming another Titanic!