All right, I know it's hot and steamy outside now, but think about Alaska.
By the way, it's minus 45 degrees in Antarctica right now.
So there's a cool place to go to.
Kurt Volman is here in studio with me.
That's nice for
a change.
Hey,
Don Rosen.
Hey, this is old times.
It is old times.
Here we are, a little older, little...
A
lot less hair.
Yeah.
Well, I still have
some.
You
still have some.
Yeah, I got some.
I
think you got enough here.
Anyway, so Kurt is going to Alaska with Victoria, his lovely wife, lovely lady, and they would like you to accompany them to Alaska.
Would you give us the whole rundown?
Yeah.
So let me tell you how this all started.
About three years ago, Victoria says to me, you know, one, someday I'd like to go on an Alaskan cruise.
I said, perfect, let's do it.
So
My travel agent friend Susan is an old high school friend of mine.
And so I called her and I said, Victoria wants to go on an Alaskan cruise.
Can you help us out?
And she said, sure, of course.
So she starts setting it up for us.
And then pretty soon, I can't remember if I came up with the idea or Victoria did, but we said, oh, let's take our grown kids and their significant others too.
So Susan set this all up for us, my travel agent.
And we went on this Alaskan cruise.
Start in Seattle, it's an inside passage crew, so you kind of go up the west coast there and Seattle, Ketchikan, Dawes Glacier, Juno, Skagway, and then on your way back you hit Victoria, British Columbia, and then you end in Seattle again.
So we did this cruise, this was two years ago, 2024, and we get off the cruise and Victoria and I say to each other, you know what?
We love that so much we would do that exact same itinerary all over again and just do different things when you go to the different ports of call.
But you can't take a bad picture when you're in Alaska I mean it's so beautiful there.
So anyway we said we would do that exact same itinerary again so guess what we are the exact same itinerary as we did two years ago different cruise line this time.
But the exact same itinerary and this time we've got discounted cabins.
discounted fares, and we're inviting everybody to come with us.
So anybody listening this morning, you're in your car, you're on your way to work, you're at home now making breakfast, whatever it is, you're saying to yourself, oh, I've always wanted to go to Alaska.
Well, here's your chance.
We've got discounted fares.
We're going in June of next year aboard the Celebrity Edge and the same itinerary, start in Seattle, end in Seattle, and then you have all the inside passage ports of call along the way.
I can't tell.
I mean, you've done Alaska twice.
And like I said, you cannot take a bad picture.
You're going to see bald eagles.
You're going to see brown bears.
You're going to see sea lions.
We
took
a
picture in front of the sign.
They said, welcome to Alaska.
And I remember I brought it back.
And one of the people here at the station said, well, you don't see that sign too often, do you?
No, you don't.
So this is for a lot of people.
This is a once in a lifetime trip.
And like I said, we've got discounted fares on
a variety of different cabins.
You can either get an ocean view cabin where there's a window or you can get a veranda where you can sit out on the balcony and have your cup of coffee in the morning and watch the, you know, watch the glaciers go by.
Watch the melt.
Well, there is that.
Yeah, I heard you.
I heard you talking earlier this morning about this and you said, well, it won't be steamy there in Alaska.
But when we were there two years ago, the day we were in Juneau, it was 80 degrees.
And earlier that day, we were at Dawes Glacier, and we've got pictures of us with winter coats and hats on.
And then just a few hours later, we're in Juneau, it's 80 degrees.
Well, I thought one
of the most sobering parts for when we, the ship said, we're pulling into Glacier Bay.
And this ship couldn't have been here 20 years ago, but we're here now because the glaciers melting.
And they shut the ship's engines off.
And we just listened to quiet.
And there was a narrator over the speaker system.
Yeah,
they
have like naturalists somewhere.
Right.
The naturalists, right.
And he was telling us all about what we're looking at, but they shut the ship off and it was dead quiet.
Everybody was on deck and you're listening to this naturalist.
They bring aboard
the ship
on a boat to bring to talk to us.
And it was sobering to sit there and watch nature just melting in front of your face.
So, I mean, the way they run these cruises are it's not just get you there and feed you.
It's they.
They show
you a bit of history.
Oh my gosh.
Yes.
Absolutely.
And you talk about Glacier Bay, I know a lot of the ships go in there and they do a 360.
Right.
So that everybody, no matter which side of the ship you're sitting on or standing on, you can see everything because they do a 360 with those ships.
It's amazing.
And the ship, you know, life aboard a cruise ship, it's like the Bellagio on the water.
Yeah.
And I was, I haven't been on this particular ship before, or even this particular cruise line before Celebrity.
Celebrity celebrity edge and I was looking at pictures of this celebrity edge.
I mean talk about sophisticated I mean the first the first cruise I've been on I think six cruises the first cruise we went on was our honeymoon cruise We're 22 and it was on carnival and we enjoyed it, but it was a younger Crowd a lot of neon on the ship and that sort of thing a lot of dancing and loud music stuff.
This is not that this is this is a little more sophisticated There's entertainment you mentioned the food these fairs.
I mean you could
get on the ship and not have to pay another dime once you're on the ship.
You can get five meals a day if you want.
It's cashless.
Yeah, it's cashless.
And your fare can include all of your meals and everything.
These discounted fares that Susan has gotten for us also include the drink package, because you have to pay extra for not even just alcohol, but for sodas and cappuccinos and that sort of thing.
The fare she has includes the drink package.
It includes the Wi-Fi.
Excursions are extra, of course, if you want to go off the ship at each port of call, you're on your own there.
But pretty much everything else, the fare includes.
When you go to like
Skagway, and you have to think about the gold miners that were up there, how did they do it?
They didn't have a cruise
ship.
By law, there was a list of items that you had to secure, whatever kind of food.
you know, tools, drink, whatever.
If you're gonna do the gold rush over these mountains, you had to prove that you had all of the necessary supplies before they would let you do this.
And now you just get on the train.
By the way, if you're gonna go to this, you gotta do that train.
I was on the train trip.
You gotta do that train.
It is amazing.
Yeah.
And you get to go to the glacier, the Mendenhall Glacier.
Yeah, Mendenhall Glacier in Juneau.
This particular itinerary includes the Dawes Glacier, which you take a smaller boat.
Right up to the glacier, you see it calving, you know, with the ice going into the ocean.
And it's really interesting because the ice is blue.
Yes.
It's gorgeous.
It's gorgeous.
It's blue ice.
It's not like you would, it's not like drink ice.
And when we went on, when we went to the Dawes Glacier, they, they took glacier ice out of the water and they served it.
They chopped it up and they served the ice in your drinks then aboard this little boat.
So you got to drink the glacier ice.
It's so clean.
A little boat.
Yeah, the little boat.
Well, you get off the big ship and you get on a smaller boat and you go right up to the DOS Glacier.
And the ships, I've been on 13 cruises and the ships have changed dramatically since I was on the Netherlands.
They're just bigger and they have more people on them.
And there's always something that even when the ship is traveling, there's cruise directors
on there.
Yeah, there's a couple of shows and
a
couple of sailing days where you don't have a port of call.
And yeah, there's plenty to do.
So how do people get involved with this?
All right.
So we're working with Step Into Adventure Travel and Susan Brown is our travel agent.
And if you have a pen or pencil handy, I'll repeat this a couple of times.
Her phone number is 815-814-6864.
You can also email her at susan at stepintoadventure.com.
So let me repeat those phone number 815-814-6864 Email Susan at stepintoadventure.com and she'll be on the show with me this afternoon We're planning on having around this afternoon on the afternoon show probably about 5 30 after the 5 30 news and she'll talk all about it and and the fairs and discounts and all that kind of thing
Sounds good.
Yeah, it's gonna be fun.
So we hope today.
When is it by the way?
Say again.
When is the cruise?
June 18th through 25th of next year.
So yeah, perfect time to go.
We went in June two years ago, perfect time to go.
What do they fly you into like Seattle?
Seattle.
Seattle.
And I highly recommend it's not necessary, but I highly recommend getting to Seattle a day early, at least a day early.
We went two days early and just checked out Seattle, but
You don't want to get up that morning and say, oh, my cruise is at four o'clock and then your plane is delayed.
You don't want to miss the ship.
So I would go a day early if I were you.
Sounds good, Kurt.
Well, it's going to be fun.
We're going to talk more about this.
All right, sounds good.
You got a whole year.
Thanks, Don.
How much a year?
Next, next June, yeah.
But today's the first day of the cabin's gone sale and she only can have them secured for 60 days.
When they're gone, they're gone.
When they're gone, they're gone.
All right, my friend.
Thanks.
Thanks, Don.
