Huron-Perth Boomers Winter 2023-24

y Jill Ellis-Worthington
Breathtaking, unimaginably beautiful, aweinspiring,
heart-wrenching – those are the words
most frequently used to describe the beauty and
majesty of scenery experienced during an Alaskan
cruise.
We took an Alaskan cruise in the summer of
2022 and, it turns out, so did several others of my
acquaintance. If you haven’t taken the plunge into
cruising yet, put one to Alaska at the top of your list
– it is definitely bucket list worthy.
Our cruise, initially scheduled for June 2020, was
a casualty of the COVID travel cancellation wave,
and I heard many on the boat say that this was a
long-awaited bucket list item for them as well.
My husband and I have a prioritized list of travel
destinations and Alaska wasn’t at the top of it at the
time, but as climate change wreaks havoc on natural
wonders around the world, it moved up the list. We
weren’t alone in this feeling (more on this later).
Our cruise, on the Holland America ship Volendam,
departed from Vancouver. We were travelling with
another couple and we arrived two days early to
get acclimatized to the time change, see some of
Canada’s third largest city and, most importantly,
ensure we arrived well ahead of the ship’s departure.
Our friend, a travel agent, clued us in when we
took our first post-pandemic trip to Europe in the
TRAVEL
summer of ’22, that many people were missing their
tours, cruises and events because they booked flights
to arrive the day of, not anticipating continued
unreliability at airports. We’ll never fly day-of
again because it’s much too stressful and potentially
wasteful of our hard-earned travel funds.
The Inside Passage route our ship took stopped in
Juneau, Skagway, Ketchikan and Glacier Bay. While
we enjoyed the ship’s amenities and sitting on the
deck outside of the room, the real thrill of an Alaskan
cruise was the scenery.
Connie Delarge and Doug Jones (both 58) cruised
on Holland America’s Koningsdam ship in July with
another couple. The canny couples got balcony
rooms opposite each other so that they had constant
access to the views. “We just had to cross the hall to
whichever balcony had the best view when the ship
turned,” explained Delarge.
She added that their stop at Glacier Bay to view the Johns
Hopkins Glacier was, “Our favourite over everything.
It’s just breathtakingly beautiful.” She couldn’t help
being grateful and regretful at the same time.
“No words can describe it, but it breaks my heart
too. I feel so blessed to have seen it because I can’t
believe what is happening to our world,” she added,
referencing the diminishing size of the glacier due to
Left: Glacier Bay is a favourite stop
on many Alaskan cruises.
Right: The crew of the Volendam
opens the ship’s bow to passengers
during the Glacier Bay stop.