Early morning start to make the most of day exploring the area - Soldotna to Seward. We bought ourselves a thermos and now we can stop at the garages along the way and fill up the thermos with brewed coffee for under $2. Drove to Coopers Landing admiring the Kenai river along the way. Found a picnic area close by the river to have breakfast. The water is so blue it is hard to believe it is even real. It was just like looking at a postcard picture but we were there! Watched people fishing in small boats - salmon jumping everywhere. One of joys of independent travel is taking detours and discovering sights you never knew existed. Today was one of those days. We took a side road off the highway into Chugach national forest ... read more

Woke up bright and early this morning. As we had spent the night in a pull over on the side of the Seward Highway. Pleased to say it was another bright sunny day. We drove for a couple of hours until we reached Sterling. Stopped off at a drive thru coffee store and then had a look at some amazing wood carvings which were right next store to the coffee store. Alaska has a lot of drive thru coffee houses around. These coffee houses are like small cabins placed in car parks, shopping centres or just plain anywhere. You can drive through or just walk up to the counter. Great small business idea. We passed through Coopers landing where will be returning in a few days to do a river raft. Hoping to see some wildlife ... read more

Only caught a couple of hours sleep last night after we checked into hotel, did the washing/ drying, caught up on emails etc. Up at 5am, got a taxi to the train station to check in for the 4 hour scenic journey. Train left Anchorage station at 6.45am. We bought adventure class tickets for the journey which meant we got to sit in the upper level glass dome carriages. It certainly was a treat - the scenery was amazing..words can't describe how spectacular and large this place is..we saw hundreds of glaciers on this train journey. If this is a sign of the scenery we are going to experience of the next few weeks - it is certainly going to great some fantastic memories for our photo albums. Learnt some interesting facts about Alaska today - ... read more

Well..the news we knew that was coming...our ship s not able to be repaired. She needs to be taken to Victoria BC to be repaired in the dry dock! Kinda thought this was going to happen! The news came through about 9am this morning. Captain has advised that all guests will be receiving 100 % refund of the fare paid and will receive a voucher for another cruise with Celebrity for the same mount. Looks like we will be back for the summer cruise season 2014. This is the only cruise Geoff and I wanted to do so we won't be giving up this offer! Must say that the staff are all fantastic people. They don't get paid a lot but they always have a smile and are very helpful. We really don't realise how lucky ... read more

Got to have a sleep in this morning..really needed that! Breakfast over at Tim Hortons then for a walk to the harbour to check out our cruise ship. Wow! So large. Walked around the harbour, took a few photos then back to hotel to wait for the shuttle bus to take luggage down to the terminal.... read more