November 15, 2007
Photos of Chip's Alaska Cruises
We received the following letter from one of our Quyana Members, Chip Wright. Chip traveled on two of our Alaska cruises this summer and took over 3,400 photos. Wow! He's posted 400+ in his photo gallery on Web Shots. We hope that you enjoy them as much as we have. Thanks for sharing, Chip!
Given the number of photographs and the difficulty of posting on your site, I chose WebShots (where I normally post my vacation photo's). These are public. They have had over 5,000 plus hits.
The photographs encompass both of our two cruises --- we were on the Spirit of Columbia for 4 nights and 5 days cruising Prince William Sound, and then on the Spirit of Discovery for 7 nights and 8 days cruising the Inside Passage. Both cruises were GREAT and both were different.
For the first "half" of our trip to Alaska, we flew into Anchorage on June 23; drove down to Seward, AK stopping at the Alaskan Zoo (rescue center), Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center and the Seward SeaLife Aquarium on June 24; and on June 25 were bussed to Whittier, AK to start our 4 night, 5 day cruise on Prince William Sound, styled "Glacier Wonderland" by CruiseWest. CruiseWest operates small boats (compared to the big passenger liners) and Spirit of Columbia, our boat for this trip, carried only 78 passengers plus crew. 143 feet long with a really shallow draft, we were able to go places the larger ships could not.
Prince William Sound was wonderful and I'm afraid the photographs do not really do it justice. Incidentally, this "collection" is a selection from the 2,601 digital photographs Chip managed to take during these 6 days!
For the second "half", we came back into Anchorage for two nights and then flew to Juneau to start the Inside Passage cruise. Our ship was the Spirit of Discovery, carrying only 84 passengers plus crew. 166 feet long, a really shallow draft, and 3 DIBs (Durable Inflatable Boats --- like a Zodiac). It, like the Spirit of Columbia, could get into some really tight spots that larger vessels could not reach. These albums begin with our travel from Anchorage (rental car) to the Eagle River Wildlife Preserve and then on to Talkeetna (hoping to see Mt. McKinley, but we did not). On July 1 we flew to Juneau. Departure was on July 2 and the return was on July 9.
The Inside Passage was spectacular with abundant wildlife and scenic vistasalmost every moment.
The photographs are organized into multiple albums with the album name being the description of the photo subjects. The file name on the photograph represents the date and time (Alaskan Time) taken (year-month-day--hour-minutes-seconds). There are comments attached to some of the photographs, but not all. The Inside Passage photographs commence with Album numbered 20. Chip took a total of 3,435 photos on this leg of our trip, but was able to select 412 to include in the albums. Please don't feel compelled to look at them all. It was just progressively more and more difficult to choose one over the other given the ever-changing views.
There is also a combination video file at the end (Album 50) with selected video footage from the Inside Passage cruise.
View The Album Here
Thanks,
Chip
Posted by Leigh on November 15, 2007 1:00 AM
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