2022 Alaska Cruise Part 3

intro
Welcome to RView with your hosts George and Lisa Hernandez each week listen as George and Lisa talk about their RV and travel adventures all around the world. George and Lisa travel in their 40 foot Class A tip and motorcoach and tow their Jeep Wrangler, always looking for fun and adventure

Lisa RichartHernandez
I think this is my absolute favorite day of our trip. When we arrived in Juneau, Alaska, day five Journal last day five, I consider this my birthday day, I’m just gonna tell you that we had to get up really early in the morning, because this was our helicopter and airboat tour to the glaciers. And I highly recommend this, this excursion, and I highly recommend booking this excursion way before your cruise sales because it didn’t sell out before. And it’s very expensive. It was success 600 and change per person, per

George
person. But worth every penny, don’t be distracted by the number,

Lisa RichartHernandez
you know, we kind of felt like this is, you know, it’s a bucket list thing where, you know, I don’t know if I would pay to do it again. But it was worth every penny doing it the first time and having that experience. And so we got picked up by a bus ride that took us to where the helicopter was. And the guy was pretty cool. He like sort of gave us a little tour and talk to the while he was taking us on our our little van,

George
every bus driver every even if they’re just taking you somewhere, gave you a tour of the town. He was telling us about Juno and first of all, Mart and it was just very cool. And he brought us over to the helicopter, which was run by Northstar helicopter and I’m going to post links to all these places and give them credit and because I was just so happy with this day, like Lisa said in this excursion, in particular, it was just incredible day. Yeah.

Lisa RichartHernandez
So it was I think there was five of us in our in our helicopter

George
5 of us

Lisa RichartHernandez
there’s five of us. So there’s only five people plus the plus the helicopter pilot in our in our helicopters the sixth. Yep. So

George
I gotta give a shout out to our pilot Jared, who also was very knowledgeable and gave us an awesome description of everything that we were seeing.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah. So here’s one thing, we met this girl, her name, her name was also Lisa. And while we were waiting, and she said that she had bought tickets with her group, but got separated from her group like she was on like the eighth 15th. And they were on the 30. So that’s something to be aware of. I’m not sure how that happened to her that she got separated from her or the rest of her crew, but I couldn’t even figure it out. Yeah, they couldn’t figure it out. But that’s just something to be aware of. And we kind of took her under our wing and adopted her. And then she did ended up running into her group that were coming in on the helicopter as we were going out. So they did get together. Yeah, that was great. So it was so we get to the helicopter plays and they give you like boots that have like spikes in the bottom of them to go over there called over boots and they go over your boots. They gave us pants that were like winter sort of windbreaker waterproof pants that were waterproof pants. And then did we get the jacket there? Or do we get that when we went on the Oh,

George
we got the jacket when we got to the airport because that was a flotation device. Oh, so

Lisa RichartHernandez
it was a, you have to put this belt on. That’s like a life jacket belt. They do have they do have lockers there if you wanted to put your bag in the locker. They didn’t let you take the bags, you had to give your weight and the weight of you and all of your equipment the day ahead of time. So ladies, if you don’t want your men to know what the weight is, you just get that piece of paper you fill it out and you take it down yourself. So the excursion pro tip number whatever we’re on,

George
man same thing. Yeah, right and don’t lie about your way yeah, this is crucial to the helicopter being able to get off the ground. Yeah,

Lisa RichartHernandez
they probably actually put like your weights and then they go oh and then the 20% variance for half people Yeah, their weight. But if you do weigh over 250 pounds they made you pay an extra I think $150 Because technically you take up space for two people because based on the weight limit that’s how they put you into the helicopter and where you sit

George
and it’s pretty tight. I’m not gonna lie It’s pretty tight. There was four of us in the backseat and we became very close and personal real close.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah. So in in there, they you put your headphones on and you can talk and hear everything that the helicopter pilot is saying.

George
And if you’ve never been on a helicopter, it is the coolest experience for me. I love anything aviation. And but I think anybody would love it it’s just a such a completely different way to fly that

Lisa RichartHernandez
you have such a good view because it’s almost like the whole like sort of noses glass like your chronic and see all around you. Yeah, I

George
mean pretty much the whole thing was glass.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah. So they they take took us like kind of down the like sort of river in Juneau and then like, up in over these mountains and I mean look like we’re I mean you could touch them there were very close

George
and and Jared was telling us as we were approaching and it was pretty cool because we actually flew over the the cruise ships that was pretty cool. We got some great shots of the cruise ships. But as we were coming over the mountain, Jared said, Hey, I know you’ve heard about the ice shelves, probably in every excursion because that’s how the glaciers that’s where the glaciers come from. It’s all these ice shells melting and moving down the glaciers. And we finally when we crusted over the mountain, and you could see how absolutely massive that you couldn’t see the hands of him. It was just ice and snow everywhere. For as far as the eye could see. It was

Lisa RichartHernandez
really cool. Very, very, very pretty. And so then I’m like, you’re kind of like where are we going? You know, like it’s just so beautiful. And then here’s this like little almost like a cabin and a dog middle of nowhere and like literally the middle of nowhere. The only way to get there is by helicopter. I think maybe by boat you could get there. Yeah, I think so. Because the the airboat was out there. And there’s a tiny, you know, like, landing pad like you said, like you see in the movies with like a circle on it was like where the helicopter landed that was on the dock. And we got off of that. And when we got there, we were going on the airboat ride. And that’s where they gave us other jackets like that were like a life jacket jacket, but a winter jacket, too. Yeah. And you put that on, I put he said you could take your big jacket off if you wanted to. And I did that for like, two seconds. I was like, Oh no, I’m putting my keeping my big jacket on. And I’ve put that on over it. And I’m glad I did. Because we then got on to the airboat, which again, are just the five of us on the air boat. And I mean, you’re right on the water and the air boat.

George
Yes. And before we got on our air boat captain was Brian. He was awesome, very knowledgeable the area great air boat captain. And when we were walking down there, he, you know, there’s one seat next to the captain, which is elevated. And he asked if anybody wanted to sit there and I was biting my tongue because I wanted to if anybody wanted to do it, I’d go for it. But I had my fingers crossed and nobody volunteered. So I was like, oh, yeah, and I jumped up there. And it was awesome. Except when he was making turns. It was so effing cold up there. Oh my God, because that whole airboat is kind of enclosed, except for the sides. So the rest of the people kind of sat down, down below, down below and closed and glass, and I was up top with just a windshield and the captain. So I was like, Yeah, this is cool. Go for it. And then every time he turned that boat, oh my god, I got so cold.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Well, what I liked about the airboat ride was we got really close to the glaciers.

George
So, Taku glaciers where we went,

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah, I mean, uh, once again, I probably took 1000 pictures that day, and you just can’t capture how beautiful it was

George
not at all. You can’t

Lisa RichartHernandez
waterfalls, and eagles, everything we

George
saw and just the glacier itself. And it’s so hard to put perspective to the glacier because there’s nothing, no reference of size. So if you had a picture of a person standing in front of the glacier, then you could see how massive it is. But when you take a picture of the glacier with no reference, it just looks like

Lisa RichartHernandez
it is like a snow mound. Yeah, you know,

George
and that’s the hardest part for me to try to describe that there’s just no way to describe it because there is no reference.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah, I think that ride on the on the airboat was at least 30 minutes.

George
Oh, good. 30 minutes and then he stopped and he was telling us about the area and the wildlife and real estate and

Lisa RichartHernandez
oh, yeah, like there’s that was a couple other like fishing camps, like, you know, that you could only get to by airboat or helicopter.

George
Yeah. He was telling us about the because we on the airboat ride we passed. There was a boat dock to the shore. So we kind of asked him what was that about? And he said, some guy owns I think it was like 100 100 acres out there. And he’s building a cabin. And we were like, wow, that would be so cool. And he’s like, yeah, so cool. If you don’t mind not having water, electricity. Yeah. You know, you gotta bring everything with you to build your cabin. One

Lisa RichartHernandez
of the coolest things that I realized that I learned about Alaska is you know, with it being that rain For us, a lot of the places they have these like big they collect the rainwater to use as water for their homes and everything for everything. Yeah, they drink the rainwater. Yes, yeah.

George
They filter it, but they drink it. They say you can drink it straight, but most of them filter it. What are those things called? cisterns? Like cisterns? That was it? Yeah. So every house has at least two massive cisterns catching rainwater. Police already talked about the little place that we landed on, that is just such a beautiful place. It was right at the foot of while there’s mountains everywhere, obviously in Alaska, but it was at the foot of this mountain with the river running in front of it and Taku Glacier as your

Lisa RichartHernandez
view and then a big waterfall to the one side. I mean, it was I was like I would pay just to stay out here like you should Airbnb these like, you know like it. I mean,

George
we were we were trying to tell them. They should Airbnb it and it’s just the problem is there’s no electricity, there’s no water. They kind of it would be hard, I guess. No. I surely didn’t have that power. The solar. Solar. Okay. Yeah. So that, to me, that was one of the highlights of our whole trip. I was looking forward to his helicopter ride, I was looking forward to actually walking on the glacier. So when we got back from our 30 minute, airboat ride, we jumped back on the helicopter. And we flew over to Taku Glacier and actually landed on the glacier. And Jared did a great job. He found this pool of water, and he landed right next to it. And we took some incredible pictures and

Lisa RichartHernandez
was like really a little bit nervous that that part like I can’t begin to slide off as a glacier. And he was like, Hold on, let me make sure we’re secure.

George
Yeah. When it’s a little discomforting when the pilot says, okay, nobody moves, I’m not turning the engine off, and to check to make sure that we’re on stable ground, which he, again did a great job. We got out we took some incredible pictures,

Lisa RichartHernandez
but you can’t really describe how Curt like blue that water is like an aqua blue color. And I took photos and it’s on our Tiktok and Instagram and Facebook and stuff. But it’s just it’s really incredibly beautiful.

George
And how clear it was. Yeah, how clear it was. It’s just It was unbelievable. And there’s just no way to describe it. And it’s so hard because we have a podcast about travel, and we describe our trips. And this one we just can’t describe because it was so beautiful. The only thing that I will say is it was very quick on the glacier, you can stay on it very long. They don’t they don’t want you wandering around, because that was like 15 minutes. Yeah, cuz if you fall down one of those crevices, they’re, they’re in trouble. But we were there with another couple who had been married for 20 years. And they climbed kind of up a little bit higher on the glacier and the guy got down on his knee and gave his wife a new new array. They were all excited. That was really cool. Yeah, that’s the second time I just realized that

Lisa RichartHernandez
second time on a helicopter. I guess that’s like a bucket list thing to propose on or something

George
they proposed and the one in Vegas Grand Canyon. Yeah, remember that.

Lisa RichartHernandez
So then they flew us back. And again, it’s just such a beautiful flight, you know. And then we got into the here, you get all your all undressed, they take all your boots and everything off there. And then we got back in the van. And that guy was he was so knowledgeable. He told us so much stuff. One of the interesting things that I learned about Alaska was the sheer size of it is three times the size of Texas or something like that. And it’s it’s it’s I mean, if you overlaid it onto the map of the United States, they were talking about coast to coast, almost, if you include all islands. Yeah, that’s really incredible. So that was interesting. And with

George
with only the population of what was it Rhode Island? Yeah, something like

Lisa RichartHernandez
that. Yeah. So he said, if it was if it was the equivalent of Manhattan, there would only be 18 people that lived in Manhattan or something like that. If you did it by like a square mile. Yeah, it was some population calculation. I was like, oh, that’s crazy. You put it in perspective that way, but just just very interesting. And it’s funny because my friend Tracy had said, when you go to Alaska, you have to go to this place called Tracy’s crab. And to get the crab legs, they have these big giant king crab legs, and they’re like, 25 bucks a leg and I was like, okay, cool. So we’re driving back and he’s like, do you want me to drop you anywhere? You still have time before your cruise ship leaves? And yeah, so Well, you know, is there a restaurants or anything that you recommend? And he said, Well, there’s just one place called Tracy’s crabs kind of a tourist trap, but you know, it’s really good. And I was like, Oh my God, that’s where my friend Tracy said to go. So let’s take us there. So Tracy’s crab. Casey’s Tracy’s King Crab Shack shack is right off of the cruise. ships like right on the docks there in Juneau. I suppose it would, there was three cruise ships in port that day. So just to be an you know, sort of depend on where you are, we’re dark, but it was right on the docks. And there was a place where like the tour buses could drop people off there. And that’s exactly why he dropped us off. We pull up in the line is like, all the way down the road. And we’re like, man, like are, are we gonna stand in this line, we could tell we’re all sort of like looking at each other. And so George got in line, and Lisa and I, the other Lisa, with a little it’s just kind of go scope things out. So we walked up and I realized that people order right out the front door. So there wasn’t like a hidden line inside. Most of people that were waiting, we’re standing outside, so seemed like it was going pretty fast. Well, there’s a guy standing outside that was actually cooking the crab legs. And when you see those crab legs, you’re like, oh, yeah, this looks like it’s worth it. The prices were not $25 A leg anymore. They were $74 a pound for red crab and $78 a pound for the brown crabs. And I got I made a tick tock of that when it went viral. I was like 170,000 views or something. But the guy was talking about the difference between the brown crabs and the red crabs. They’re both big. The brown ones are just like a more of us. bikie type of shout out there. They were brutal, but they were gigantic. And he said that the you know, the brown crabs were much more richer and they don’t ever leave the state of Alaska and they’re very much less common. So I thought I’m gonna tap try both of them back to back. So we ended up we ended up ordering four rounds of crab and the crab chowder, which was the crab chowder was so delicious. It was it was all okay, it was also religious. And we ate almost all four pounds of those I we were like at the point where like, Okay, do you guys want some of this because we they have like almost like a big sort of picnic table things where it sort of like join with other people. So we were all just kind of sitting there with like in the crab legs, they come sort of wrapped in paper and just unwrap the paper and then eat the crabs and then they got these big things of the clarified butter. They only serve beer and wine there. So we had I think maybe you had one of those Alaska beers and they have a they actually have like sellers that right? Yeah, I was gonna say you drank. I’m not a beer drinker. So that was fun. And I mean, we were we we stuffed our faces with prep.

George
Yeah, but I mean, one of those legs. That really meaty part if you break it just right, and you can get the whole piece of meat out. That hasn’t been a pound by itself.

Lisa RichartHernandez
It was like a quarter pound. It was it was about I’m trying to even think of, I mean, what you know what King Crab is, I mean, it’s almost twice the size of a snow crab. And just big fat pieces. They also the people that were sitting across from us had the Dungeness crab that also was very good. Yeah. And so everyone, everyone, even though we paid a lot of money for those crab legs, nobody was complaining. They were all it was. It was delicious.

George
It well and super fresh. I mean, it was probably the best crab legs I’ve ever had. Yeah, I mean, there’s really nothing to them. You know what I mean? But it just maybe it was the air maybe it was because we were in Alaska, but they just tasted fresh or they tasted

Lisa RichartHernandez
everything was yeah, it was so it was really really good. So we really enjoyed that. kind of blew our water. This whole day was one big

George
splurge. Yeah, but just just keep in mind and you’ll hear why but just keep in mind that we ate four pounds of crab legs, okay, and it’ll come in. Be very important in about a minute.

Lisa RichartHernandez
So Juno, the town itself. When you get off the cruise ship is got all those little tourist places like they do. I don’t know if you’ve ever been on a cruise to the Bahamas, in Nassau. It’s got a bunch of jewelry stores they’ve got first or they’ve got you know t shirt shops and Christmas ornaments and a fudge store so the guy was like you gotta get the fudge we got the budge my YouTube when people this diet was blown on this old day it was gone

George
at 2am was left Seattle

Lisa RichartHernandez
eat two men who were the food was what I did that day. So anyways, we got some we got some fudge which was delicious. And then I did enjoy looking at the first tours and stuff like that they had some just really cool stuff like and they had an alpaca clothing store. I think I got a hat and a Christmas ornament while we were there a little just it was very nice. So like if you weren’t going to do an excursion there are things to do in June Oh, Juna would be the place that I’d say okay, like if you’re not going to do an excursion let it be at least we’ve got something to do. Because icy strait point if you didn’t do an excursion, there wasn’t a lot of things to do. So there

George
was plenty of bars, plenty of restaurants, plenty of

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah, a bunch of stuff to do. Yeah, all kinds of things. So

George
we did a little shopping and then we ended up walking. We were walking back to the cruise ship and realize we still had a little bit of time so we stopped that little tiny outdoor bar was called the Grizz bar short for grizzly. Like the fireplaces like they had cool little fire pit outside and this little shack that just sold whatever drink she wanted. So we sat there and enjoyed a cocktail and took pictures of the ship and ourselves and kind of let that four pounds of crab legs settle,

Lisa RichartHernandez
man. And honestly, if my day had ended there, it still would have been a perfect day.

George
Yes, but No, they’re not in there. We had to get back on the ship, because that evening, we had the Chef’s Table. Yes, a seven course meal. to you at a cruise ship near you.

Lisa RichartHernandez
It was so again, we plan this ahead of time. I think that was the one that was $80 a person. And normally it’s held in the galley. So they take you down into the kitchen and they set up a beautiful table inside the kitchen and they give you a tour of the kitchen and how the kitchen works. But because of COVID they no longer could do it in the galley because they have rules and regulations that they have to follow. So it wasn’t a tiny sort of not tiny, but like a room to the side was a big long table. I’d say there’s about 25 of us seated at the table. Yeah. And I would say there was like six chefs there.

George
The main chef, which was the Executive Chef, his name was an i hope i pronounced this correctly. Ajit Kumar, Ajay it. And he was obviously Executive Chef, super knowledgeable and super friendly.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah, I mean, he told us everything about the ship. That’s where we learned how much the hospitality I mean, he has a huge job, they do 10,000 meals per day, per day, per day on that ship. And that’s what he’s in charge of. And so this Chef’s Table is kind of an opportunity for the chef to kind of show their culinary skills. And so every single thing that we had was very intricate, very detailed. The first course was like five one bite size, like appetizers that was like serve like on a spoon. You know, and with not real caviar, but caviar like frown little balls that they made out of some sort of a gel that was dense from some. I mean, it was

George
crazy. The process was amazing. And the thing was, they’re making 10,000 meals a day. But they’re prepping for the next day on the it’s like they’re never, they never

Lisa RichartHernandez
stop. And I think there was like seven shops that were just in charge of doing just the Chef’s Table. And they had one I think like every day or something, yes. So that you don’t find out when your chef’s table is going to be until you get on board, which is a little bit. It’s it makes it kind of hard because it had to move around some like spa things and stuff like that. But one thing about booking things through the cruise, whatever they like, I was late one day getting back from excursion at the spa. And they’re like no problem. We’re just moving to this time. And so it was very accommodating. very accommodating. Yeah, yep. And that’s another thing that you’re supposed to get a little bit dressed up for. Once again, George was lacking in that department, but I think he put a golf shirt honors jeans,

George
I pulled it off.

Lisa RichartHernandez
It was fine. And they take a photo of you and I love that he described every course before it came out. Explain the preparation and how they did it. You know, it was it was all small bites, basically. Some of them I liked better than the others. Like a lot of them looked a lot better than they tasted to be honest if I’m you know, being completely

George
Yeah, but I’m not a big fan of Doc. So that was like, I mean to me, it just always I know millions of people love duck, but it’s just such a gaming.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah, there’s a few different ones. I was like, yeah, it’s okay. But it was the presentation and the experience was definitely worth

George
right. And just to hear that, you know, they have to be creative to do these things on a cruise ship.

Lisa RichartHernandez
And what they went through to make the stuff like was right like

George
the beef had to they marinate it then it sits for 12 hours and then they put it in a something else for another four hours and all these processes and everything is ours. Yeah, so that was pretty special. But it was presented it as as a seven course meal. It actually ended up being a 12 course meal. Because we had three samples before dinner even started Yes.

Lisa RichartHernandez
And then they’re like two of the courses were two different kinds of dessert like right it was just so they

George
had one Yeah, one dessert course but they ended up adding two additional dessert courses. So that’s why I said we ate four pounds. And then we sat at this but luckily we had done it before and we knew that it’s very small portions. It’s just so you can sample their their culinary skills, and it was well worth it. Great wine with dinner. Everybody that was there was really cool. We had we they actually played Lisa’s dessert With that said Happy Birthday on.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Oh, yeah, that was really happy birthday, happy anniversary,

George
happy birthday to Lisa, the whole table and all the shops and then they sang Happy anniversary to two couples that were there that was really fun and special and they took pictures. So they really do a really nice job. And if that’s something that you like, I would highly recommend it but definitely booked that one also, before even before your cruise.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah, yeah, for sure. For sure. So I’m pretty sure I tucked in early that night because we had a very, very long, amazing day at that point.

George
Yeah, we, we decided to go to the casino because I was down at that point. And we said, Okay, let’s go to the casino for a little bit. Let this food settle and see if we can recoup some of our money, which we did. I recoup some of the money. And then we said okay, let’s get out of here while we’re ahead. And we went to bed because again the next morning, day six, we had another early excursion. So here we go. Day six.

Lisa RichartHernandez
So day six,

George
Ketchikan, Alaska. Yeah, yeah,

Lisa RichartHernandez
that we’re almost done with our trip. And it seems like I tell you what, after Juno, the ship could have ended there and I would have been completely satisfied. And I almost say that like about every place because they were so cool and so beautiful. But we we did another excursion and catch can we did a boat, nature wildlife boat ride to a fishing camp.

George
Finished off by a seafood boil. seafood feast. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. And that was another one that was early. We had to leave at 830 in the morning. And we got on a little van took us over to catch a boat. Took us over to the what was in a silver King Lodge, which is a fishing lodge. Normally, but during the offseason, they bring cruise ships over there and they do the seafood boil.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah, so definitely in Ketchikan, you need to do an excursion. There’s nothing to do when you get off the boat. There’s nothing. Yeah. I mean, maybe there was a bar. I don’t even know why he would want to go to it. There wasn’t like even shopping. They said that Ketchikan is a very, very small city. And they they they shut down a lot of businesses over COVID Because that was all they relied on was the tourism in the in the cruise ships coming in there and because they were shut down. There was a lot of closed up businesses.

George
Yeah. So Ketchikan if you don’t have an excursion there work out now that I think about it, there were a couple little bars, and there was a gondola ride to the top of the mountain that’s about it.

Lisa RichartHernandez
That that would have been considered an excursion, you would have to get a ride there. It wasn’t like you walked off and there’s even I don’t even think there was

George
a t shirt shop. Yeah, it was just a small place. So there was a there was

Lisa RichartHernandez
like a bunch of buses that took you from the cruise terminal and the bus that we were on. We had a different driver on the way there on the way back. And again, it was so interesting to hear the different drivers and where they came from. And the one woman that drove us out to the to the boat ferry. She was a seasonal worker, and she said that she lives basically in a dormitory and just comes up there to drive. She’s retired and had her CDL license and and just spends the summers there from I believe she was from Arizona.

George
No, that was the guy on the boat, which surprised me. Okay, it was from Arizona, and he said he, he loves playing golf in the summer when it’s 100 degrees. And then he comes up to Alaska to I’m sorry, he gets away from the 100 summer in Arizona and comes up to Alaska. So it was just really, really interesting hearing not everybody’s stories. But our bus driver. Yeah, right. She was living in dorm. And she had been doing it for several years. And she just loves it.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah. And so we got onto the boat. Again, these fishing, tour boats, there’s indoor seating, windows, you know, a bathroom. And then when they slow down and stop, then you could go outside to the outside decks to see things. Very first place we stopped was a bald eagles nest on a little island. And she even had these little fish she would throw throw out the fish and the into the water and the Eagles would come down and eat the fish. And so we had some good photo opportunities with that.

George
Yeah, and I mean really close. That was really cool. Yeah.

Lisa RichartHernandez
And then we saw some seals. And we got some photos of them

George
and a few otters but we kind of kept missing them

Lisa RichartHernandez
again and I think from sea lions. And then when we when we arrived at the fishing camp, there were deer feeding in the front yard, like just right there. Yeah. Very cool. I think it would be really neat place to stay at that fishing camp and for a week. Yeah, absolutely.

George
I mean, I, the whole time I was there. I was thinking, You know what? I would love to come back and actually try fishing. Yeah. And

Lisa RichartHernandez
there’s there’s some there’s a lot better. Some women are a lot better fisherman than the men they get they catch a ton of fish during the seasons. Yeah, I believe it. Yeah. So that’s pretty cool. But

George
it was a beautiful place, ton of rooms. And they provide everything, all your meals, all your fishing gear, obviously you can bring your own stuff. They had a so are the manager and Chef Gary actually started talking to him and told him we had a podcast and I wanted to talk about the lodge. So he gave us a tour of the lodge and it was a little disheveled because it’s not fishing season right now. They’re just preparing for it. But he gave us a tour anyway and showed us one of the rooms and it was quite cozy. nice

Lisa RichartHernandez
rustic. Yeah. Fishing Camp. Yeah, like the you know, it’s

George
not the you’re not staying at the Ritz. Yeah, it’s

Lisa RichartHernandez
not the Reds but it you know, it was it was clean.

George
No, it was very clean. And I had a really cool,

Lisa RichartHernandez
beautiful view, I mean, million dollar view lodge area

George
with a fireplace and game room. And it was very well prepared. It’s been around for for a long time. And it’s very popular, so popular that he told me they’re booked out till 2023. So if you’re planning on going fishing at Silver King Lodge, you need to start planning now so that you’re not going into 2024 Yeah, and

Lisa RichartHernandez
they do have an Instagram with some photos on there that you can visit. And

George
I’ll post links to all there. So part of

Lisa RichartHernandez
what we did when we were at Silver King Lodge was a little bit of a rainforest walk. So apparently the owner built this. It was almost like a boardwalk again. Yes. So it wasn’t like you had to go on treacherous terrain wasn’t like anybody could do this excursion, I think and enjoy it. And you walked. That’s where I think she told us more about the rain forest. They’re actually what we were doing in Ketchikan was the first day that we had rain. Yeah, like on our whole trip. And the lady that somebody was complaining about the rain in the latest liquid and we’re like, listen, we get rain to other 50 days a year like you’re you’re gonna get rains. Don’t you’re grateful for the rain. Yeah, no better rain. Yeah. She said like, this is nothing. And that’s when she was telling us about them getting 12 feet of rain and how they get all their water that way and stuff.

George
Yep. And, and the reason the little path boardwalk was built was because the owner when he bought the land, was exploring his land. And he found this massive, which they say is the largest cedar tree and all of Alaska. And so he wanted to show his friends but he couldn’t find his way back. So it took him supposedly three years to find the tree again. And when he found it, he tied a rope to the tree and then found the easiest way back to the to the lodge. And wherever the rope was laying is where he built this this boardwalk boardwalk, which pretty cool story. And the tree was massive.

Lisa RichartHernandez
It wasn’t as big as the trees in the Redwood Forest. I’m gonna I’m just gonna admit this. Yeah, not like walking in the rain forest was beautiful. It was like so green and so lush. But after you’ve been like to the redwood forest, like in California, it’s really hard to compare, like, it’s hard to have your breath taken away like I did when I was at the redwood forest, I guess.

George
Yeah. But it took my breath away. It was so lush and so different. That that it was it stood on its own. Yeah, I’ll give it that much. Yes. And it was beautiful in its own in its own way.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah, our tour guide choose a younger girl. What was her name? Abby. She was very sweet. Hi, Abby, as you told us all about how the root systems grow on these trees and how, you know, the the the trees are just living on on the roots and how they continue to grow and all the different kinds. There’s a certain kind of moss that grows up there that only grows where the air is so clean and fresh. And it’s everywhere out there. Yeah, it’s almost hard to explain how much fresh air there is. I guess it’s almost like by the end of the day, when you finally get back to the ship. I was like, kind of I’m just tired out from all the fresh air and you know,

George
and she did a great job of pointing that out. Remember at one point she just said to everybody, I want you to take a deep breath. Just take a deep breath in because this is the purest, cleanest air you’re gonna breathe. Maybe ever. Yeah. And it was It’s just it’s very cool and then she was telling us about you know most forests the three most dangerous things for forest is one is humans to is disease and then fire and she’s like here we never there’s she said I dare you to light a fire because it’s just it’s a rainforest everything was soap as she said it’s always

Lisa RichartHernandez
so everything was like covered in this like green moss. It was pretty cool. There’s definitely pictures on our on our on our website Instagram and to talk about we’ll

George
put pictures of everything that we’ve been talking about as many as we can and I promise you it does no justice.

Lisa RichartHernandez
So then after we did the rain forest walk they brought us to it was sort of like picnic tables outside with the newspaper on the tables. I was cracking up because the newspaper was from 2019. Like, I haven’t seen the newspaper in so long. It’s probably the last time they got anything. Right. And so it was it was basically a low country boil, which is kind of funny because being in the South was like our thing down here, but instead it had Dungeness crab. Sausage, potatoes, corn, clams, clams, mussels, shrimp.

George
Yes. And ironically, all the shrimp had

Lisa RichartHernandez
row in them row in them. Yeah, because it was just like a local shrimp. They’re fairly kind of small. The shrimp weren’t as good to me the Dungeness crab was delicious. I boiled, it was perfectly prepared. They use a different seasoning and I wish I would have written it down. It’s not Old Bay. It was a little bit spicier than that and had a lot of flavor. In so he had asked, he’s like, so how’s our little country? You know, how’s our how’s our steamboat basically, compared to your low country boil? I said you did a great job. So

George
yeah, it was delicious. I really enjoyed everything that they knew

Lisa RichartHernandez
they had like butter and cocktail sauce and mustard and different things that you wanted. Yeah.

George
Which all of our friends were like mustard. Like who puts mustard out there?

Lisa RichartHernandez
That’s where the sausage Yeah. Oh, my loved mustard. I love it. But they also had you saw coffee, hot chocolate and water to drink. I knew I had a hot hot chocolate and some hot coffee because it was I think I was just cool. Both there. Yeah, they had outdoor heaters, like, you know, so like, it wasn’t really like it was cold, cold.

George
Everything was very, very comfortable. As a matter of fact, I was I was starting to get a little toasty when we’re sitting there because the heaters were on full blast. They were working. But it was a beautiful place. And if you got a chance to look them up silver King logs. Yeah,

Lisa RichartHernandez
I would recommend that excursion. I don’t think it was overly expensive. I can’t remember what I felt like it was a good value for what you got. Oh, absolutely. Yeah, you got sort of a little bit of everything. And if you would have been lucky, you would have probably been able to see some wheels and stuff to it wasn’t the point of the excursion. So it didn’t really we’re searching for them. But she you know, just kept saying kind of keep your eyes peeled for that. Because you never know when you’re going to see a whale does. But

George
remember, we stopped at that one place. And she was telling us there was a Navy SEAL training facility that

Lisa RichartHernandez
oh, yeah, right. Ironically, where the seals were. Ironically, yeah, there was.

George
They were telling us that’s where they do their radar and sonar testing for the submarines. They’ll bring the submarines in. And then they have these two ships that can lift the submarines out of the water for any repairs, and then put them back in the water. And they run the submarines and they have trained professional Navy SEAL guys that listen. And they can identify any submarine just based on the sound they make.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah, that was interesting. Like the sound that they make is like a fingerprint for each different ship. And she was telling us a story about how the the sonar listener people I guess that heard someone else’s shipping in he said there’s something wrong with your paler colors. And he ended up

George
setting off to fact propeller round the world sailing cruise or whatever on a ship expedition. And they were listening and like Lisa said, they told him Hey, you’re propellers are off?

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah. So um, I guess that’s I’m a highly trained listening job for those people. But that’s pretty cool. Just interesting fact. Yeah. And then we went back and that that was the day that I didn’t get back in time for my massage and they needed Yeah, they

George
rescheduled you and man we were we were running out of batteries at this point. And we still had one more day so I think that night we just kind of we might have gone to the casino for a little bit if we went to the casino pretty much every night for a little bit. And then we just chilled out because we were gonna have a long day the next day. And it was weird because

Lisa RichartHernandez
we is it what day did we eat there was there’s another new thing on the Carnival cruise ships which is like the seafood. Little seafood shop that have and you can again pay extra for and I got lobster roll. Oh,

George
that was not sad say but it was it was it was earlier on in the cruise. But yes, that was that was fantastic. Stick? Yeah, it was it was an add on, I

Lisa RichartHernandez
think I had to pay like 10 or $15, maybe for like six bucks or so yeah, it’s sort of like a non nominal charge enough for people that don’t want to spend extra money to get it. And then not for people that do want it to just be like, I want something good. Let me just pay a little extra for it. It was good. Our other favorite place that we have not even talked about is the Indian restaurant. But we’re gonna be mad that Indian plays like every single day. I think we might have almost close to done that. No,

George
no, we will. Unfortunately, we went to eat while you were at the spa, and it was closed. And it’s not open all the time. So you got to kind of check your checklist. Yeah,

Lisa RichartHernandez
but in the back by the, it’s almost hard to find. It’s backed by the serenity of our swimming pool.

George
You got to walk through the everything to get to this, but it’s well worth it well worth Yes. But that was our day six, great excursion. Lots of fun. Now, let us tell you about day seven.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Day seven was our very last day, we mostly spent most of the day actually cruising to get to Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, unfortunately, we were only there for a couple of hours. So we really didn’t get to see a lot of Victoria. When we arrived at Port. It was like 730 ish PM, and the sun was setting. By the time we cleared customs and got off the ship. It was like 830, almost nine o’clock.

George
Yeah. And we had to be back by 1130. Yeah. And so

Lisa RichartHernandez
we only had a couple of hours. And there wasn’t a lot to do. But we’re like, Well, you know, we’re here, let’s just at least get off, you could see that there wasn’t a lot of things to do right at the terminal. So once again, you were gonna have to take a car caps cab or an excursion or something and there wasn’t a lot of excursions available that day. So we just said, well, let’s just see what there is out there. And we walked off the ship. And there were all these rickshaws. People’s you know, wanting here, I’ll give you a cab ride. I’ll give you a tour or a car tour.

George
How do you cab?

Lisa RichartHernandez
So like, interestingly, we found out that the cabs like the actual like yellow cabs, taxi cabs, there’s no Ubers those are like not allowed in Victoria. And the cab drivers were on strike for the for the cruiseport. So we wouldn’t have been able to get a cab. So this guy was like, hey, you know, are you interested in a tour? And he says, Well, I’ve got these blankets and everything. And I see this rickshaw, and it’s it’s like, if you’re familiar with a rickshaw, it’s like, you know, the little cart with the wheels. And it has the thing that it attaches to, and I thought it attached to like a horse missing though. I don’t know, it was like missing an motorcycle or the driver part of it. And I was like, that’s cool. Why don’t we just do this baby and he was like, Alright, it was $75 a person. Once again, we were kind of like, we’re here, let’s just, you know, take advantage of it. So we said, Okay, we’ll do it. So we get on the seats. And I’m like, Okay, what are they gonna hook up and the guy like, goes and stands in front like em, like, starts walking and I’m like, okay, like, what’s he gonna hook us up to? Wait, are you running like you’re pulling us like, Wow, is this even gonna work out?

George
Yeah. So our guy Christoph Lennart? We were both shocked. We were like, This guy is not going to pull us through town. He no way and he just took off. And it I’m assuming that it was about three miles that a he did the whole

Lisa RichartHernandez
lease. Usually say like a 5k? Because it’s kilometers there. Yeah.

George
So he was telling us that. Usually it’s a GET ON get off tour. It’s a much longer you can do pretty much whatever. It’s a much longer tour, but because we were limited on time. He was hustling. And when I mean hustling, he pretty much ran the whole thing. He didn’t he did stop at certain places for to give us tourists the information and to catch his breath. Poor guy. And but he was just full of knowledge and super cool, dude. And

Lisa RichartHernandez
yeah, so he showed us it was kind of nice, because we got to go through some neighborhoods and see the architecture there. And get a feel and of course, me being a real estate agent that’s like, you know, just interesting to me anyways, kind of the property values and that kind of thing.

George
We found that it’s pretty comparable to Charleston. Yeah, which is

Lisa RichartHernandez
expensive. molars were a million dollars, close to the water close to downtown. And then they have what’s called the Inner Harbor there. They also took us by some what was there isn’t a famous author. That’s up there. We went by her house. Was it Emily Chubb or something? Like I forget the name of it. I’ll put it in the notes. And yeah, we’ll put that in the show notes. And then when we like got into the actual like Tao ona downtown Victoria. That’s where the Inner Harbor was. Because where we parked the cruise ship, I was like, this isn’t that beautiful like in the pictures. And then when we got to the Inner Harbor, I was like, Oh, this is it. It’s Oh, it’s so charming. And I’m so bummed that it was dark out. But you could tell that it was just a beautiful city, beautiful city, and so many flowers. Like, again, I was so bummed that we couldn’t get all the picture. I was like, trying to take pictures in the dark of the flowers. And it’s so much harvest very, very cold when we were there, too. So that was, thankfully he had all these blankets that he put on us. And he was really you guys warming off and he was like, pretty gutted, like, tuck us in our blankets. And he took us to the this famous Hotel Paris Hilton Empress Hotel. We couldn’t go inside because it was already closed. And it was beautiful. From the outside, though, and I would love to go back and see that. And then what was the other was like a government building. It was like almost like Christmas. Yeah,

George
it was the I don’t know if it was the I think it was their capitol building. It was

Lisa RichartHernandez
all lit up with, you know, like every detail outlined in these white lights. And it just was gorgeous. And,

George
and the Empress Hotel outside had the biggest tulips I’ve ever seen. Were just so beautiful.

Lisa RichartHernandez
I was like, oh, I want to be able to get a picture of this. But I can’t I have a couple pictures on our website. But they’re just doesn’t do. It just says i My friend is a photographer. And she had posted something on Facebook like oh my god, Isn’t that the cutest down? This is the flowers are amazing. You know, she says, Oh, yeah, you know, as a photographer, I was just so much beautiful.

George
Yeah, I mean, it was so beautiful that I would definitely say that. I would go back. Do like a long weekend there. Yeah, like a long weekend to explore a little bit more. And that really

Lisa RichartHernandez
nice, like shopping and downtown yourself took

George
us to Chinatown, which was beautiful. Yeah. Oh, cool.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Again, that would have been so much prettier in the daytime, and had all the lanterns and all of that. But the barrow is street and Victoria, which is basically like an alley bear barely.

George
That was it was really a shame. And I just I still I still can’t figure out why

Lisa RichartHernandez
there’s some kind of reason that we have to stop in a foreign port before we go back to the United States some for some reason to do with the cruise lines, and then totally understand all that. It’s called Money. Somebody tried to explain it to us, but it’s something to do with the illegal reason why we had to stop in Canada. So we did like 100% would go back there and and check it out. I think I would want to go to like Vancouver and Victoria there is they have fairies I believe from Seattle is what he made it sound like yeah, so that will willing to be you know, look at take further investigation there or if we were a backup that way.

George
So they had a very large seaplane port terminal there too.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah. Yeah. Find a seaplane would be really cool in that area. There’s just so many cool places that you could

George
park. That’s something we’ve never done. And I would definitely like to try that. Maybe that’s the place we do it.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Maybe, maybe. So we had to be back on the ship at 11 o’clock. And that was kind of the end of it for us. Because you know, we had we packed everything up the night before. And I always feel like I don’t know, the last day of the cruise is always like so bums me out because he’s like, I’m packing everything. I got to wake up super early and get off the ship. And then there’s a travel day. Now a lot of people stayed in Seattle that day when they got back and I would recommend if if it were me and I had wanted to see Seattle also, I think I would fly directly to the cruise ship and then stay in Seattle after

George
yes and kind of unwind from the cruise

Lisa RichartHernandez
before you have to like get on the plane and fly back to our timezone. And because it ended up we woke up at six o’clock in the morning to because we have we did we chose the option to carry our bags off which was what they recommended if you needed to catch a shuttle to the airport and our flight flew out at noon. So you know, we did not want to miss our flight. And so I think by the time we finally got off the cruise ship, it was like 839

George
o’clock. Yeah, yeah. Pretty quick.

Lisa RichartHernandez
But 30 minute bus ride from the terminal to the airport cruise terminal to the airport was eight o’clock traffic is

George
the funniest bus driver in history. This kid was.

Lisa RichartHernandez
He was hysterical. He wasn’t meaning to be funny. He wasn’t

George
meaning to be funny, but he was funny. He is like to the left the big.

Lisa RichartHernandez
There’s a large cement factory that’s called you know, it’s like red dirt cement factory or whatever. It was like a big it was like So clearly it’s a meme factory and had the name of it right there. It was kind of funny. We’re like, Okay,

George
on the furniture. There’s a furniture factory. It’s Burt’s furniture for oh look, open to the public. That must mean that we didn’t see them making furniture.

Lisa RichartHernandez
It was like he was reading the sides on every single thing that we passed by, which was really cute and nice. But he talked the whole time. And he was trying to be very informative. And he was very kind. So

George
everybody’s really cool. But it was. So a couple of things for people that maybe haven’t done a cruise or haven’t done a cruise in a long time. Your last day is kind of weird, because they start shutting everything down, because they got to start closing out accounts. So when we got back on the ship from Victoria, really the only food options were pizza.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah, like protip there eat before you go on any excursion that night. Like I don’t know why we didn’t eat really earlier. Because so we kind of like miss dinner. And then it was like, nothing was open in Victoria. And then nothing was open when we got back except pizza. So we did order room service that night. Yeah,

George
the same pizza. You can you can skip the line was massive, because that was the only choice. So we decided, well, let’s just go in the room. And maybe we can order it, which we did. You got to have your bags packed the night before. There’s a lot of stuff that kind of takes away from your last day. But you can still manage to if you prepare, you can still have fun, right until the last minute. There was a little bit of confusion on debarkation day. And I say that because the night before they told people that if you had an early flight, go downstairs to level three made in front of the theater and we’ll get you off first and then we’ll get like 730 like 730. So at 730 Everybody’s there with their bags ready to go. And and the the cruise director is like, nobody’s been called Why is everybody here and everybody like they told us last night. So there was some confusion. Then the third floor got full. So they sent some of us back up to the fourth floor. And then we were on the fourth floor going, what if they forget?

Lisa RichartHernandez
Like I started getting nervous. So we got off? No problem. Yeah,

George
they managed to control the chaos, they made an announcement to tell everybody else that if you didn’t have flights, just stay in your cabin, or stay off the third floor until you’re so what they do is they call you by sections to get off the ship, typically, but since we had to catch a flight, we were trying to get in this group to get off. Yeah. And it was a little hectic, but we got off the ship and got on our flight and got home. So like an exhausted

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah. So by the time we got we we flew out of Seattle at 1230. And we arrived in Charleston, South Carolina at almost 11 o’clock at night. So it was a very long, very long travel home day. Travel there and travel back days are very long. If you are a person that has to go back to work or an at an office the next day. I would take that day off too because we were so exhausted and lagged from the time change. The next day. I don’t think I woke up to like noon.

George
Well, we didn’t we didn’t go to sleep till like four o’clock in the morning. Yeah. And we were used to West Coast time.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah, cuz that would have been like eight o’clock in the morning to what my body felt like was when I woke up at noon. Right. And so it was it was re entry was pretty rough from the time change. So it was

George
rough, but it was worth every minute. And I would personally highly recommend an Alaska cruise to anybody. Yeah,

Lisa RichartHernandez
definitely. We’ve always done tropical cruises. And I always wanted to try that being so different. And we really loved it. It was very, very beautiful. I had always told George is I want to go on an Antarctica cruise. And I think maybe he’s opened up opened up his maybe he’s willing to try that one. I want to go down on the icebergs with the penguin. We got a

George
signal from somebody so I got a I got a follow up on it. When we pulled into Seattle, there was another cruise ship that pulled up right next to us. And it was a true ice breaker. And that cruise ship went to Antarctica and actually broke through the ice. So it gets you right to all the wildlife and the penguins and it was a high end luxury cruise. So I’ve been looking at it. Maybe we’ll do it on something like that. I wouldn’t mind. So we’ll see. Maybe we’ll be telling you about Antarctica next.

Lisa RichartHernandez
I don’t think it’d be next we’re gonna have to save our pennies.

George
I need some warm nation to do a

Lisa RichartHernandez
lot more winning at the casino. Have you’re gonna think for that one? Yeah, you got that? Right. Well, friends, if you have any questions about the Alaska cruise or anything that we did while we were there, we would be happy to answer them. We also have some other friends that have done them. So we did a lot of research before we left. So any way we can help you please reach out to us on our website at our view. podcast.com That’s RViewpodcast.com And we have Instagram and and TikTok now are TikTok is is our new fun thing to do. It’s at RView. And that’s it. So we hope you will share this with your friends and family as we grow our business and this podcast, and maybe someday I can eventually just travel for my career and we’ll do podcasting.

George
Thanks for joining us.

intro
Thanks for listening to another episode of RView. Don’t forget to drop us a line at RViewpodcast.com That’s the letter R view podcast.com And like, subscribe and follow us so you don’t miss out on our next adventure.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai