masterdrago

Well, that might do it for us as long time RCI cruisers. Our next trip to Alaska (late 2021) had a must see Glacier Bay attachment on it. Guess we'll be cruising another line. Now looking at HAL itineraries. Sad, since we were now Diamond.

We stayed at the Seward Windsong ($180-$225/night) through a TA and they did all our baggage storage and can handle shuttle service to the marina for Major Marine and Kenai Fjords. It was a quiet place to stay with a nice restaurant (Resurrection Roadhouse) for breakfast, lunch or dinner. Although we had a rent car, they offered service to the marina for dinner, etc. I highly recommend dinner at Ray's Waterfront and Chinooks. Or lunch.

We were there in May. Originally rented the jeep. After viewing a number of the trip reports on cc, we changed to a van trip up to Emerald Lake, then back to Fraser where we picked up the WPYR to Skagway. The decision was based on wanting to see rather than drive. The van with Dyea Dave was extraordinary with many great stops for scenery shots and explanations along the way.

We did our trip mid May to June 1 this year. On the ship, it was rather dark when we were closest to land but in the east there were many snow covered mountains along the coastline.

In route to Juneau, we visited Hubbard Glacier where all the surrounding mountains were snow covered. It was also very cold out on the deck during the 2 hour stay.

In Juneau, we got a good view of the mountains and Mendenhall Glacier.

While we were waiting for our departure day, We did a small boat tour into Prince William Sound. This view is of Cascade, Barry and Coxe glaciers on that excursion.

We also did an Orca watch into Resurrection Bay where the surrounding mountains were snow covered.

In Skagway, we took a couple of excursions into the Yukon and the mountains did not fail to impress. We are from SE Texas and see very little snow. For us, it was about the scenic beauty.

There were several frozen lakes.

In Ketchikan, we took a short float plane trip and landed on Manzoni Lake. Even some of the lower elevations had snow.

I would heed the advice given here about making the trip in late May if snow covered mountains and the real "feel" of Alaska are close to your heart.

The farther north you go - think Fairbanks - the better the chance of catching a display. But... the farther south will get you more dark hours. That can also increase your chances. There are sites to set up alerts to know when aurora may happen. It also is weather permitting. There are a number of dedicated aurora tour companies. We are looking at going back to Alaska in late August, early September 2021. To get estimates of dark hours, we've used https://www.timeanddate.com/sun/usa/fairbanks

When on the transit bus, you will not just be "sitting". You will be experiencing all the wildlife that folks on the bus can spot. We had a great driver that really knew his stuff and gave great narration. You'll be spending the majority of your time using your binoculars or camera to snag views of wildlife. You can hop on hop off anytime. That what we did but the buses were mot crowded in mid May. You run some risk of not fitting on the one you want to catch.

On 10/13/2019 at 8:40 PM, hawk1972 said:

 

You won't be sorry. Captain Shawn really knows that area. His son does too. We saw lots of whales.

Ditto on Glacier Winds. Shawn is working on his 3rd book. Check out "Night Vision" and "Icy Passage". I could not put Night Vision down!

And we definitely saw Whales!

The Alaska Cruise Transfer (ACT Bus) worked great for us. They pick up right at the arrival terminal exit.

From Skagway there is well over 300 miles of "Inside Passage" down towards Ketchikan. Depending on when in May your cruise is, but mid May has at least nautical twilight essentially all night and civil twilight until near 10pm. So yes, plenty of light to see scenery.

Alaska is/was for us all about the incredible scenery. Depending on how much time you have in Skagway would dictate what tour you will fit in. We had a full day when there in May. At first we wanted to rent a jeep and do our own tour into the Yukon. After much research on this Alaska board, decided that a morning small bus tour with Dyea Dave and a short train ride back from Fraser just made more sense. The scenery is simply to die for and the small bus/van tour gives you a huge number of stops and with Dyea Dave, excellent knowledge and narration by someone like Rose who did our van tour. We made reservations with them and the Fraser One Way Service with WPYR. Rose picked us up at the dock, gave us a short tour of Skagway and went by the WPYR office to pick up our train tickets. We had 11 in the van including Rose (driver/tour guide). We made countless stops along the trek to Emerald Lake/Carcross. We even stopped to view the small Carcross Desert.

Our final stop was at the rail depot in Fraser where Rose got us in the end car that was nearly empty for our 45 minute journey back to Skagway. She then made sure we were picked up at the station in Skagway for return to the dock. I thought that a full day on the train might be just too much and the plan we did worked perfectly. Stick with the video below to get a good feel for the train ride.

Definitely consider Island Wings Air Service in Ketchikan for bear watching

http://www.islandwings.com/anan-creek---traitors-cove-bear-viewing-tours.html

I cannot really comment on a round trip cruise. In saying that, I was very disappointed in our starboard side deck 10 suite. Except for one port, anytime we were sitting on our balcony, which was only early morning and late afternoon/evening, we were staring at the dock. It was a southbound from Seward to Vancouver. Also, anytime we were cruising the Inside Passage, it was too dark to really enjoy the scenery. Luck of the draw, I guess. From what I've read while researching our next Alaska cruise, we cannot really predict which side will be the best. I was hoping to be able to look for wildlife while having balcony time.

Seward Dock View

Juneau Dock View

Skagway Dock View

Icy Strait Dock View

And finally a view of the harbor in Ketchikan. Radiance of the Seas on the left.

In Vancouver we did not have a lot of time sitting on the balcony but faced the dock again.

I did an experiment using one of the cruise ship tracking sites to watch one of the ships we may cruise on next. You can tell which way the ship is pointed when at dock.  https://www.livecruiseshiptracker.com/?p=885

There is really not much rhyme or reason which way the ship docks. It's most likely both harbormaster and ship captain that make the decision on the fly. You can look at your ships schedule to find out when it will be cruising the Inside Passage.

2 hours ago, pierces said:

 

Break out the card...

 

 

From the horse's mouth.

 

 

And for Heaven's sake, dump the Win7.

 

Dave

I saw that on the Adobe page but did not catch the fine print. Thanks for the advice and I'm seriously considering upgrading....  But, the W7 i5 machine is my real workhorse (now w/16G RAM & 1T SSD) for just about everything. Problem is I need to convert HVEC to H-264 to edit it on the desktop. But it does a handy job as long as I don't mind running to the kitchen for an avocado sandwich and at least one episode of Designated Survivor ;=]  I've learned to like W10 on the laptop and I was one of those who was dreading the upgrade. Heck, I held out on moving from XP until my old machine finally gave up. As long as I have 3rd party updates, why screw up a good thing. All of the high end astro software I use is completely compatible with 64 bit W7. Just not the Adobe stuff and I think it needs an i7 chip to run anyway.

Has anyone actually used the 2020 version of Adobe Premiere Elements to edit HVEC video. The 2019 version had no HVEC support. I may consider the upgrade if it really works and it's not just that it can open those files. I use Premiere (not the Pro version) on my new laptop but still need to use CyberLink PowerDirector 365 on the W7Pro64 desktop.

I'm learning a lot more about the full capabilities of the 7 Black. I've also discovered that editing Full HD 240fps can be taxing on both the software and the processor. Most of the video in the link (over half) was shot using the 7 Black. Editing was done using CyberLink Power Director 365/18. The desktop is a Dell XPS 15 9570 32G i7-8750 1T SSD NVIDIA GTX 1050Ti  4GB GDDR5 video memory w4k touchscreen.

https://vimeo.com/364644771

I was never able to get Quik for Desktop by GoPro to work correctly. It kept wanting me to install Apple QuikTime which seemed to be incompatible since Apple stopped support for the Windows version 3 years ago. Apparently the GoPro guys have not taken the hint. One other piece of software that gets good reviews and others say that even the free version has a lot of powerful features is Blackmagic Devinci Resolve. RedShark News and No Film School think highly of it. Hunt down their reviews.

I'm wanting Dave to hang in there until he can give us the inside scoop on the NVIDIA "Super-Duper". I am thoroughly enjoying this learning experience. Thanks Dave. I'm still feeling that my recently purchased fully loaded Dell 9570 (i7-8750 with 32Gig and the GTX 1050Ti) isn't cutting it with HVEC video shot at 240fps. Thanks to this thread, I did pump up my desktop W7Pro64 Dell with a 1T 970 Samsung & 16Gig of RAM. Huge difference!

1 hour ago, greenie082756 said:

Well I am a real newbie with a camera. Just bought the GoPro 7 black. Planning on taking it out on walks so I can

learn how to use it easily. Been watching videos on YouTube so it doesn't look that hard (I hope).

 

I will not be posting on YouTube but the videos I hope to make will be for personal consumption.

What desk top program would you recommend for downloading and formatting? 

 

I have always loved your videos! You make them so enjoyable to watch.

Depends on what you want to spend. There is some free stuff out there. Filmora9 is supposed to be good but I've never tried it. I began using Adobe Premier Elements (bundled w/PhotoShop Elements ~$100) but soon found it not compatible with some of the higher resolution (HVEC) video taken with the GoPro. I switched to CyberLink PowerDirector and found it equally easy to use as the Adobe product. It can handle everything that my GoPro 7 will dish out (W10 for the HVEC) and has a great support team and forum.  And Chesnygirl does exquisite professional work on everything she does. She uses Final Cut Pro X which I think is Mac only.

Dave, I get such great entertainment reading this thread and every time you make a new post, I gobble it up. It makes me chuckle in a good way reading your humor - super wide zoom, computer parts, deposit on new cruise - decision, decisions🤔

23 hours ago, Glaciers said:

This is a very good reminder and from someone with multiple whale watch trips.

Everyone who has had a great experience jumps in with their breaching and bubble net feeding stories although most will only see backs, flukes and/or blow.  You’ll see many fewer posts regarding this as it’s just not that exciting but it’s what most will see.

It’s the same with which port has the best potential for sightings. There are a ton of posts from folks who have done 1 or 2 whale watch tours and beat the odds and post that such and such a port is the very best for whale watching.

I think it’s difficult for people to set their expectations properly when most of the posts rave about an experience that is really a much smaller percentage then what people actually see. Not a lot of posters want to brag that they spent $150 to see a whale tail from a distance and that’s it.

 

Glaciers is pretty much on point. We took 3 whale watch cruises in the 16 days we were in Alaska. May 23 we did the 60 person Orca Watch and saw only backs, a few blows and dorsal fins. It was a very rough day with grey skies and a smattering of rain. The May 26 small boat trip out of Juneau was great weather. Except for a one second apparent attack on a Sea Lion by an Orca, the only thing whale like that we observed was tail, blows and a lot of dorsal. Also followed an Orca dorsal for a while. The May 28th small boat trip out of Icy Point with Glacier Winds made up for all the lack of sightings earlier. Pectoral fins waving magically for what seemed like hours. Tails flagging like headstands. Big blows. Sometimes almost non-stop breaching. Playful rough housing. Nearly non-stop activity. Over 500 images. Never spotted any bubble net feeding.

Our next trip will drop the expensive float plane and glacier flyover flights. I will spend the green to "chance" seeing up close bears, calving glaciers, bubble net feeding, aurora and the 8.5 hr Northwestern Fjord Cruise out of Seward on the Viewfinder (a 36 passenger single level monohull). It will take some detailed planning to fit those possibilities into our trip. I figure I've got almost 2 years to work it all out. I would also like to see Denali in Fall colors which might play well with working some aurora viewing hours into the trip.

On 9/21/2019 at 1:30 PM, skrufy said:

When you depart Seattle you go out into the Pacific Ocean on the west side of Vancouver Island, then into the Inside Passage. There’s always the chance of rough seas. Out of Vancouver you sail on the east side of Vancouver Island, the seas are calm. This route you see the shoreline on both sides of the ship.

Our cruise did the east side but it was dark so no scenery. So figure out what time your cruise will sail that area if you want to view it.

We did whale watching in Juneau (6 person boat), Icy Strait (6 person boat) and Seward (60 person boat). Our highlight was Icy Strait with Glacier Winds Charters. So often what you get is determined by weather and the whales participation during your short trip out. I have to add that the skill and experience of the captain of the boat will greatly effect the success of the trip out. With Glacier Winds, the family running the outfit truly know what they are doing. I got close to 500 great pictures of whale playing, breaching and performing in many ways. I would absolutely do their tour again.

On 9/12/2019 at 6:02 PM, Donald said:

Between Whittier and Vancouver, the seas are roughest on alternate Tuesdays, and on Thursdays of the weeks that begin on an even number.

Not what I experienced. Roughest was cloudy Saturday nights. All other days were silky smooth. Was on deck 10 near stern, medium sized cruise ship.

44 minutes ago, Chesneygirl said:

Thanks for the high praise! 

If you click on the "bell" icon on my channel that should activate getting a notice whenever I upload a new video.

 

Done. Thanks. Thought I had...

Fast answer. Thanks for mentioning the Mavic Air.