Alaska is beautiful

I'm not going to give details of each day of the cruise 'cause that would take way too long. I just want to say that this cruise met every expectation I had. The scenery was literally looking at God's creation without any interference by humans.

The first day we visited College Fjord, the second Glacier Bay.






We didn't stop and leave the ship until day 4 when we spent the day in Skagway, AK, an old gold mining town. We did a little hiking or walking around at all the ports, but didn't take any excursions. Day 5 was a stop at Juneau, and day 6 at Ketchikan.

We ended up in Vancouver and spent the day getting up to Grouse Mountain overlooking the Vancouver harbor and the city. Too bad it wasn't a clear day. The view would have been spectacular. As it was with the drizzle and haze it was only fabulous.

This picture was taken by Bob as the ship came into port very early on July 4.

We've been cruising!

I have to admit that I am very intimidated by the thought of actually "writing" anything that someone would want to read. I trust that even though my words don't go together as beautifully as either of my daughters', I will be able to at least describe what we have been doing.

I've wanted to go on a cruise for decades, and it hasn't even been on Bob's list of possibilities. I've been wearing him down, though! With the encouragement of friends, we went online together to look at what was available for Alaskan cruises. It was a fun evening sitting together at my desk playing with the various combinations of cruises and flights to points of embarkation and debarkation. We finally settled on what we thought was all the various pieces and booked the cruise and the flight in early June, just 3 weeks before we left for Alaska. This is called cruisin' on a shoestring!

The only piece of the puzzle that we didn't know was missing was the transportation between airport and dock. When we arrived in Anchorage and were on our way to the hotel via their shuttle, we asked the driver if he also drove their guests to the cruise ship dock. He informed us that it was an hour's drive away and we would have to arrange our own transportation. Thankfully we had arrived the day before our ship left, and we found a shuttle in the Anchorage phone book. No problem! We then took full advantage of being in such a lovely city with beautiful weather by taking a long walk. We discovered the busiest float plane "airport" in the world at a lake nearby. Of course Bob was fascinated watching the planes land and take off.