Sambrano Family Adventures

Our Alaska cruise finally happened! Anthony, I, mama (Laurie), and my aunt Pamela got to go on an exciting adventure together. This was everyone’s first cruise and first time visiting Alaska. I’ve been wanting to go on a cruise and visit Alaska (I’m trying to visit all 50 states; this was #45), and an Alaska cruise was on mama’s bucket list. Aunt Pamela takes care of Grandma Carter full time now, so it was a much needed vacation for her. She did so much for me and my siblings growing up, and took us on many adventures; I’m glad I was able to take her on adventure! It was a great little family group to experience Alaska with.

Aunt Pamela drove to Utah on Friday so we could head to Anchorage on Saturday and board our Alaskan Cruise on Sunday. We got up at 5AM on Saturday to head to the airport. This is some of our bags…the Sambranos definitely overpacked. Aunt Pamela just had the one carry on and a backpack! Mama and I both had large suitcases. Mama also had a smaller carry on and I had a small duffel bag. Anthony had just a large duffel bag. We all had backpacks.

We got to our gate about an hour early, and then heard the gate attendant announce our flight would be severely delayed due to mechanical issues. They initially said it would be several hours to get another plane. I was about to rebook us to an afternoon flight because a few hours delay would mean us missing our connecting flight. But, we waited a bit and the airline were able to find a plane much quicker than that.

Our flight to Seattle was supposed to leave at 9AM and I think we ended up leaving around 10:30AM. I was a little worried about us making our connecting flight, but decided to hope for the best and figure it out when we got to Seattle. I wasn’t as stressed since we were travelling a day before the cruise left and had a decent buffer to work out any transportation issues.

Here is Aunt Pamela and I at the Salt Lake City Airport and on our first flight. Aunt Pamela and I played a geography game on the built in devices on the flight. The game gave you a picture and a clue and you had to choose on the map where it was. It was actually quite fun!

We rushed off of our first flight from Salt Lake to Seattle and made it to the gate for our connecting flight just in time…but then our connecting flight also got delayed for mechanical issues. It was oddly similar to the first delay! I think it ended up being closer to a 2 hour delay, but it was still not as long as the gate attendant initially said. We were supposed to leave at 11:50AM and we left around 2PM. Anthony took a nap while we waited.

Our first views of Alaska! We flew right over the water before we landed at Ted Stevens International Airport in Anchorage only a couple hours later than planned.

We found these interesting benches right outside of our gate made of old fashioned luggage and snowshoes. Then we grabbed all of our bags and called the hotel shuttle to come pick us up. Mama uses wheelchair assistance in the airports, which is really helpful in navigating and getting to where we need to be.

We took this picture the next morning, but this was our hotel for the night, the Puffin Inn. We ended up in the annex building and it smelled pretty musty, but it was clean and had a bed (basically my only requirements for a hotel). The main building seemed a lot nicer, but overall, it was not a bad place to stay and they had the free airport shuttle.

After that, we took an Uber to grab some dinner at Bear Paw Bar and Grill. Mama got some salmon alfredo pasta that was to die for! Everything else was pretty decent. The decor in the restaurant was really fun.

After dinner, we wanted to see some more of Anchorage, so mama and Aunt Pamela suggested going to Ship Creek. We saw a harlequin duck, some pigeons, and a variety of gulls, but not much else. The salmon run through this creek a little bit later in the year, so we will have to come back at some point to witness that!

The long daylight hours really tricked my brain! I took this last picture at 10:50PM and it was still light outside. When I woke up at 6ish the next morning, it was already light again. It was a long travel day, but with the excitement of the cruise, I honestly was not as tired as I thought I would be!