Alaska!!!

Ok, I haven’t blogged but the trip was amazing – and busy! – and internet was scarce.  So, here it is, allll of my Alaska blog.   Believe me, it was tough picking out the 43 representative pictures.  Few words, I promise – mostly pictures!

Aboard at noon-ish.  Our stateroom!  (why, yes, this IS my first cruise….)

 

The deck in the center of the ship, passengers ready to depart.

 

Seaplanes are common In Vancouver.  They take off and land almost continuously.

 

Good bye, Vancouver!

 

Approaching the Lions Gate Bridge, indicating our departure from Vancouver and into open water.

See that nice windbreak that every one is standing behind?  Boy, that was invaluable later in the trip!

 

Oops!!! Airlines aren’t the only one that do this – luggage!  Forgotten luggage!  But the ship was slowed, a fast transport boat sent out, and luggage was put aboard. When we met the captain later, he explained that any further delays and he would have had to leave the luggage behind, as the timing for navigable currents levels  in some of the Inside Passage narrows is critical.

 

Our first day ended quickly, great meals and adjusting to the ship.  Glad we were on a small 640 passenger ship – it still took a while to learn our way around.  I can’t imagine being on a ship that carries almost   4000 passengers!  The second day was a day at sea, steaming towards our first stop, Juneau.  It was chilly, but we were on a cruise ship and wanted to recline in a deck chair and watch the world drift by. So we did!

 

Evening and darkening clouds begin to set in.  At about 10:30 pm.  Love those long days! 

 

The next day was rough and terribly windy and cold.  Look carefully.  The water in the pool is sloshing and rocking.

Snow capped mountains are more common.

Here is a fishing boat, off for wonderful seafood.  This is the type seen on the TV reality show.

 

Finally at Juneau!  The nice Italian captain (the one in the white slacks with all of the gold bars on his shoulder) oversees the docking of our ship.

 And she is docked!  Glad Latitudes isn’t this much of a job!

 

Juneau  is the state capital, has about 30,000 residents, about half work for the state government.  They say the winter is long and quiet!  Not much town, but believe me, there are plenty of jewelry shops and junk shops. 

 

Next day, Skagway.  Skagway is located in the northern tip of Alaska’s inside Passage. Yulp, the weather is definitely cold, windy, and gray from here through the rest of the trip.  Oh, and the Cruise Companion book says that with only 26 inches of rain per year, Skagway is warm and sunny.  Nope, not for us!

And the town is small, with a population of about 600.  Just as many jewelry stores it seemed.

 

 Our shore excursion here was a rail ride on the White Pass And Yukon Railroad.  Skagway is known as the Gateway to the Klondike.  During the gold rush, it was here that the boat stopped and the hard task of climbing by foot over the White Pass began.  It took prospectors up the snowy 3,500 foot pass and down into the Yukon on the other side.  Canada was afraid that the men would not be prepared for the harsh winter and conditions, so demanded that each man have 2000 pounds of provisions before they could enter the Yukon.  SO….at about 50 pounds on their back for each trip, that is 40 trips up and down the 3500 foot pass.  A lot of them didn’t make it.  The White Pass railroad takes you up to the summit of White Pass.  The misery and hardship of the prospectors seems unthinkable.

The landscape is becoming more rugged.

 

Headed back to sea, headed for Glacier Bay the next morning.

 And here is Glacier Bay, opening up her waters for us.

 

Excitement!  The first of our glaciers comes into view!  This is the Lamplugh Glacier.

 

Next, the John Hopkins glacier.

 Here is a close-up of the glacial ice.

This large glacier is the Margerie Glacier.  It is almost at the very end of the Bay.  It actually calved several times while we were watching!

 Lucky catch!  Looks who is taking a free ride on a small iceberg!  A lazy eagle.

 

 
For perspective on size, here is a much larger cruise boat in Glacier Bay.  This one holds over 2000 passengers.  The national park service limits the number of cruise boats per day in the bay to 2.  I think that is great!  Actually, I forgot – the park service sent 3 rangers onto the ship to give presentations and a running commentary while we were in the Bay.  Really interesting!

 

The water is filled with ice.

 Last, the premier glacier in the Bay.  Huge but slowly receding and thinning is the Grand Pacific Glacier.  But she is black.  Not the beautiful glistening blues of the others.  A landslide covered the glacier a few years ago and the debris is still there.  I was very disappointed.

 Tourists in the rain at Glacier Bay…did I mention that it rained the entire day we were in the Bay?

 

One treat as evening drifted in and the rain began to subside.  A rainbow that started on the surface of the water!  It slowly lifted and eventually shaped into the usual rainbow arch.  It was beautiful and amazing to watch.

 Last shore stop was Ketchikan, a town of about 10,000.  Yes, lots of jewelry stores...

 

 
Ketchikan has the highest rain fall in the US – up to 22 FEET per year!  It lived up to the reputation.  Yelp, it rained.

 

Of course, rain does bring beautiful flowers!

 

The most popular attractions around Ketchikan are the large totem poles.  About 20% of the population of Ketchikan can trace its heritage to 3 predominant regional tribes.   The stories and legends from these tribes are told in the totem poles.

 We took an excursion to visit the Saxman Native Village.  A display of dance was one of the features.

 And more totem poles, made in the village.
 

 Creek Street is a little shopping street, along …well…a creek!
 

 And of course, an ageless business…

 

Fishing is still the number one industry in Ketchikan.  The town has more boats than cars.

 Finally, on our last day at sea, sunshine!

 

More snowy mountains (this time in the sun).

 

This is a salmon fishing boat.  Not sure just how that works…

Early morning and we are headed for Vancouver on our last day.

By 7 a.m., we are back in the waters of Vancouver, our cruise finished.

 We did see a few whales at a distance, 3-4 eagles, and a couple of sea lions but no bears, no moose, no fox, no puffins.  It still was a wonderful cruise and experience. We loved it!

Smokey loved the fact that we came back and got her.  She talked to us incessantly for about 15 minutes, and then kept up conversations for hours.  Attention is top on her list and she has really been a pain – but, of course, we love it.  Nice to have my little princess back again.

 A couple of days here in Vancouver, then back to the States to explore the northern Pacific coast.

 

 

 

 

 

It's all about Smokey

Yes, it’s all about Smokey…..today we zipped her off to the Phat Cat Inn, her new residence while we are on our cruise.  It’s a cute little place, set up for about 10 cats, each with their own “suite”.  Smoke gets 1-2 hours each day with one-on-one with the owner, hand feeding of treats, and one of the nights she will have full roam of the communal area (with her door open, of course!)  That is Smoke's window beside the door.

 

Not sure at first, Smoke settled quickly.  She checked out the big community room (no, they don’t let all of the cats out to play together..hiss, hiss!!) Then wandered into her suite, door open.  If you look carefully,  you can see that her tail is still about 3 times the normal size!

 

We checked out the bird life from her window – lots of them to chatter at.  Tail is back to normal by now.

 

And I think she liked the view.  She was watching intently by the time we left. 

 

Sigh, just like leaving a child at day care for the first time! LOL

OUR vacation starts tomorrow.  On the ship around 11:30, set sail at 3.  I will try to post at least 1 picture each day but no promises.  If not, we’ll get a good catch up blog as soon as we return.

Anchors aweigh!

The Space Needle and Oh Canada!

 Written on Sunday, posted today...

Off to see the Space Needle with Phyllis and Peter.  We did a better job of riding the bus and monorail this time (practice is everything!)  I will go on record as saying that Seattle has a lot of great things to offer, but I’m not sure it’s worth the traffic.

The Space Needle is bigger than life – at 605 feet, it is tall!

 The view of Mt. Ranier from atop the needle is wonderful.  Snow across the top peaks, it watches over Seattle.

 

 Here is a nice overview of the city and Mt. Ranier.

 

 On the other side of the Needle, the view is different, but still shows the tremendous population density and the vastness of the city and surrounding neighborhoods.

Tourists – of course!

 At this height, a seaplane is a lot closer.

 

In the area of the Space Needle, there is a Chihuly exhibition.  We didn’t pay the extra to go, as it was way past our dinner times by the time we left.  This piece was the “teaser” – almost worked!

On Saturday, Luke and I braved the traffic and drove to see the locks connecting the fresh water Lake Union to Puget Sound.  Even with GPS and a weekend, it was not a fun drive.  The locks were worth it, though.

Of course, we’ve taken Latitudes through locks on the Dismal Swamp Canal, so we were not as fascinated with the locks as the other attraction there – salmon fish ladders.  You get to go down below the water level into a dim room with big windows and see them pass up the ladder from underwater

And, there are the salmon!  They seem to frantically swim back and forth in the fast moving water, trying to up the courage, strength, and energy to make one of the jumps up the “ladder” to the next level.  They are absolutely amazing.

 

 Later we drove to the Fishermen’s  Terminal, the true work terminal where the salmon fishers bring in their catch.  A fish market is right there so you can buy salmon right off of the boats.  The fish ranged from $12 - $35/pound.  We bought a ½ pound of a medium priced fish for dinner tonight.  Luke grilled it, and it was great!  One of the local fishermen was getting his boat ready to leave for the "fishing grounds" - he struck up a conversation and we learned a lot more about salmon and Alaskan fishing than we knew before.

 The boats from the reality TV series “The Deadliest Catch” were there, preparing to leave for the summer fishing season.  Unfortunately, they were on the other side of the marina. But we did get some nice shots of fishing boats.  Here is a favorite.

 

Back to our park-like RV setting for one more evening.  A little green frog was hiding in the shallow of the pond.  Too cute!

Sunday we finally drove into Canada!  Glad to be here, but unfortunately, our phone plan does not include international data.  We are forced to find wifi (we are so spoiled, with our smart phone).  The office at our current RV Park does have free wifi and I will use it tomorrow morning to post this blog.  Not now --- it’s 10 pm (that is 1 am VA time …yawn…)

 

Coeur D'Alene and Seattle

Catching up!

When we first arrived at the Wal-Mart in Bozeman, MT, a pair of magpie birds immediately found both our RV and Smokey.  They teased her mercilessly.  Or so we thought  - we learned why they were so upset with her presence the next morning.  A baby had apparently fallen from their nest and was in the grasses beside the RV.  It was asleep early in the morning, head tucked, eyes closed. I don't have much hope for such a round little rascal with no ability to fly.  It is large, probably bigger than a softball for sure!  The long trademark magpie tail hasn't developed yet.

As we motored westward towards Seattle, we caught our first glimpse of the western mountains that awaited us.

After a long drive, we finally arrived at our destination, Farragut State Park Campground in northern ID, about 1/2 way between Coeur d' Alene and Canada.  MUCH better than the Walmart parking lots that we've been using!

Smokey was thrilled to be able to finally go for walks again

Canadian friends Conny and Alvin, plus their friends Linda and Burt, met us there for a couple of days.  A wonderful time!  Campfires and outside grilling with friends - that's camping!

We left the park and again headed NW, past the Columbia River Basin.  Very impressive

Onward further into Washington state, finally to Seattle.  OMG, I don't miss big city traffic!!!  But we made it incident-free to our new campground about 20 miles north of Seattle.  This place is around a little lake (well, not too little - there are 230 campsites) and we have a site that allows us to see the lake outside of our front window.  Beautiful.

The best part?  ducks!!! in the lake!!! in front of the RV!!!  Smoke is in heaven.

Today we took the city bus line into Seattle (to avoid both the driving crowds and the adventure of parking downtown - not our best decision...).  We toured Pike Place Market.  They have everything and it's a wonderful adventure!  Fish!  fresh fish!  lotsa fresh fish!  look at those lobster tails on the bottom left (and the $39.99/lb price)

Want some fresh octopus?  No problem...

Some mushrooms?  some pricey mushrooms...

or other fresh veggies (yum)!

How about a huge bunch of flowers, just to top off the dinner table?

I loved the bathrooms - the entry is decorated with the old black and white tiles, definitely letting you know it's the bathroom.

Just to be sure you know you ARE in the right bathroom, check out the floor for your chromosome.

The original Starbucks is there, too.  It's a popular place, with lines outside the door, waiting for a tall coffee mocha latte.

The Seattle Space Needle!  Planning to go to the top tomorrow or Saturday!

Luke caught this great picture of the skyline.

Sorry~

We were surprised to find no cell coverage or internet  at the campground area in Coeur D'Alene.  En route to the Seattle area and will post soon as possible!  We ARE having fun!

The Badlands of South Dakota - and Minuteman Missiles

Wow.... we love this place... Stunning vistas all around .....

 

And, in addition to all of the beauty, there is exciting history here!  Remember the 60's, when the US undertook a policy of "Mutual Assured Destruction" as a balance of terror with the Soviets? This destruction was based in part on the deployment of over 1000 missiles in silos in ND and SD.  Each missile was carrying the equivalent of 60% of all of the bombs set off in WWII?? Well, hundreds of these missiles were planted in the farm fields of South Dakota.  If you know what you are looking for, you can see them from the interstate.With the START agreement with the Soviets in 1984 (?) over 500 Minuteman II missile silos were deactivated. Of these, what remains is the Minuteman Missile National Historic Site, run by the National Park Service, located right next to the Badlands National Park. The site consists of a visitor center, a launch control site, where the two AF officers both had to use their keys to activate a launch, and a missile silo, complete with disarmed missile, all accessible to the public -- sort of. To tour the control site, you have to be at the visitor center before 8:30AM on the day of the tour to pick up your free ticket for a specific tour reservation that day. And, oh by the way, this tourist attraction is closed on weekends ??? Well, we missed both time filters, so we just had a look at the closed facilities from outside. For details click on www.nps.gov/mimi/

 

 

This silo was at the edge of the Badlands.  Today you can get a tour of the Command Post (24 hour shifts below ground strapped into your chair....) and one of this missile site.  Since, they aren't open on weekends, that is for the next trip!

 

SO much to see --- I can't begin to cover it all.  Check out a couple of websites ---  http://travel.nationalgeographic.com/travel/national-parks/badlands-national-park/

 

 

 http://www.travelsd.com/Attractions/Badlands-National-Park