Proposed Itinerary - pre cruise

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"The best laid plans of mice and men........."  Keeping in mind that plans change or Murphy gets involved, here is our proposed itinerary pre cruise.

We have a fair distance to cover to get to the west coast.  Mapquest tells me it will take about 40 hours to reach Seattle from home.  That's 4 days of hard driving or 6 days of reasonable distances.  We have 7 days to cover the distance in order to meet our cruise ship on time.

Because we have crossed the USA a few times now, there is no "new" way for us to go.  We will pick up Interstate 80 in Illinois and follow it to Interstate 29 in Iowa and head north to catch Interstate 90 to Spokane, Washington.  We have one stop planned at Devil's Tower, Wyoming, a National Monument. Once we hit Spokane, we will get off of the Interstate and use Highway 2 to Leavenworth, Washington.  This is a town with a German flavour, lots of half timbered houses, good beer, good food.  Other than overnight stops to sleep, these are our only two stops before we reach Seattle.

The current plan is to have one full day to explore Seattle.  If our driving time is extended, we will simply tour Seattle after the cruise.

Our 14 day cruise to Alaska on the Amsterdam will make the following stops and has 3 or so sea days:

Ketchikan
Tracy Arm (cruising only to see the glacier)
Juneau
Icy Strait Point (Hoonah)
Anchorage
Homer
Kodiak
Hubbard Glacier (cruising only to see the Glacier)
Sitka
Victoria
Back to Seattle

Otto's sister and brother-in-law will be flying to Seattle to join us on this cruise and the four of us plan to walk all the port stops and explore on our own.   As I was doing my research for our walking tours, I discovered that the only place without a McDonald's was Icy Strait Point!!  Some of those McDonald's will be useful for free wifi along the way.

Cruise Map



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