Wednesday. Today is pack up day. We fly out about 10.30 tonight from Anchorage, Alaska, on the red eye to LA, arriving about 6am. After spending the day sightseeing, we leave about 11.30pm for a quick stop in Sydney, then on to Melbourne. We arrive early Saturday morning, as we lose a day crossing back over the date line. Eventually taking the midday train back to Wodonga. It's going to be a long day! We ended up staying last night in Wassila, about an hours dri...

Thought we would do something different today. Visit North Pole! This cute little town was 2.5 hours drive from Healy, where we are staying. As you might expect, the whole town has a Christmas theme, after all, it is Santa Claus's home town. We saw street lights like candy canes, Santa Claus's house and even his reindeer! We stopped in at the North Pole fire station and had a great chat to some of the firies there, who were very keen to show us their toys. I was ...

Friday. Our last full day on board. We dock about midnight and disembark around 7.30am tomorrow. After a good nights sleep of being rocked gently by the open seas, we staggered up for breakfast. If was like trying to walk when quite drunk, but in denial. "The floor is moving". After another oversized breakfast up on the top deck, we saw a presentation by the Executive Chef and the Maître D'Hotel. It was like a comedy 'master chef' class, after which we had a t...

The highlight of today is Glacier Bay. This national park is a world heritage site and was up until about 250years ago was a huge glacier. As the glacier has melted, a large elongated bay has formed with many tributary glaciers still remaining. The huge rivers of ice, with cliff edges facing the bay were really impressive. Margery glacier, the largest of the three we went close to, is over a km wide, with 250m of ice above the water level and another 100m below. ...

Skagway is a small fishing town that relies heavily on the tourist trade from ships. About 4 ships dock there every day in the warmer months. The White Rail train ride is along an historical railway that was made in 1890 to open up the country and connect the town to Canada during the gold rush years. Soon after settling in one of the carriages, we were asked where we were from, by a guy with an Aussie accent. When I said we were from Wodonga, he replied that he...