Alaska is probably the most beautiful place we have ever been. It is a natural beauty, sparkling with a full array of Gods creations that showcase a natural envirement of beauty in an unspoiled natural state. Alaska is a place everyone should experience. No one leaves Alaska thinking they have wasted time being there.

Airplanes are scary, but helicopters are fun.

The scary animals we encountered became our friends.

One should bundle twice as warm as we did if they are to walk on a glacier

. The cruise ship lines own Weight Watchers, so they overfeed us for a week so that we will be forced to go to weight watchers 7 days a week for the next year.

Travelers to Alaska should bring back a husky dog as their souvenier.

When it was time to leave the ship, we tried to hide so we could do another round to Alaska, but they caught us and made us debark.

Seattle is a wonderful city to visit. The weatherman lies, because we did see sunshine both days we were there. We love Seattle because we have a nephew and cousins there, and they are wonderful.

We plan to go home and rest for a week, and then we want to do the trip all over again. That is if we win the lottery. We really do have to go back, because we both left a part of our hearts in Alaska. This has been a most amazing journey and we are so greatful to have been able to make the adventure.

We sailed through customs upon leaving the ship, and found our hotel, to spend our last day in the beautiful northwest.  I am so happy to report that during the entire trip, including the rough waters on the sea day coming back, I didn’t have any sign of sea sickness.  Thank you Brian, for encouraging me to get the patches. 

 After a little bit of rest, our handsome nephew, Todd, came to visit us at the hotel.

Todd is such a good guy.  He visited us for nearly 5 hours on a Friday night, without yawning one time.  He is such a pleasure to visit with, because he really enjoys the area where he lives and visits surrounding areas with a focus of the nature of the land.  We really enjoyed our time with him. 

Later that evening we had dinner with my cousing Nancy, her husband Phil, and Todd.  Nancy and Phil drove for several hours for the visit, and they can’t imagine what that meant to me.  I haven’t seen Nancy since I was a child, yet we were able to remember visits and situations from way back.  One of the highlights for me was sharing memories of our Grandma Gillette.  It was great to talk to someone who loved her like I did.  Her husband is delightful, and Phil and I share an appreciation of the enjoyment of watercolor. Todd indicated that he enjoyed hearing about his grandmother, my mother.  This was a very memorable visit with 3 people that I love. 

I think today in Seattle, was like the icing on the cake to this wonderful  trip.

We have had to say goodbuy to beautiful Alaska, but have one last gem on our trip, called Victoria, BC.  It is a quaint little tourist town, and captal of BC, located on the coast.

There is a perfect way to travel through Victoria, so we did the perfect thing.

This city is filled with beautiful flowers, hanging baskets, and the name of the city is written with flowers near the harbor.

There is a beautiful, old, vine covered hotel in downtown Victoria, that our family stayed at when I was a child.  My brothers might remember our trip to Victoria.

And we headed back to the ship for our last night of the cruise.

Super, we have 1 1/2 days at sea, so we can rest up from our Alaskan adventures.  There are many fun things to do.  First of all we have learned well, how to eat three times the needed amount of food.  We have practiced all week, and are pros.  So  we will be sure to do that during sea time.  We loved the comedian on board, and the arealists so will make sure we go to their entertainments.  We have the best naturalist in the world on board, and will still be able to learn about sea lions. and seals.  It is amazing to make this cruise with a balcony outside our suite.  Much of the time we can see beautiful mountain ranges from the balcony. 

We are finally safe, as I don’t think there are anymore dangerous animals around.

Oh my gosh,  Did I really agree to get on that helicopter?  Yes I did, and I’m going to do it.   OK,  those of you who know about my flying anxiety, please sit down.  They placed me in  the front seat of the helicopter, AND,  I loved the trip. 

 I actually enjoyed the travel over the mountain peaks by helicopter and it just helped to further my belief of how beautiful Alaska is. They prepped us with a video, vest, and galosses, and led us to the helicopter. 

 
We landed on this beautiful glacier, Meade, and walked around for a while, looking at the striations in the ice, as well as some very deep crevices.  I loved the beautiful clorations in the layers of ice, with blues, lavender, and white.  It was sooooooooo cold on the glacier. But it is an amazing experience to stand on that beautiful glaceir.

  But all good things come to an end, So we boarded the helicopter and took off for back, to the ship.

I hate to admit to being such a whimp about the cold, but once back in the cabin I covered up with a heavy blanket to warm up again.  We are relaxing/resting and will attend a comedian show before dinner.  

One last scary experience before we left Skagway.  We know that a Moose can be vicious, and definitely could have booted us to tim buck too.  But when we encountered one, we decided to treat it with kindness, and made a new moose friend.  See for yourself.

Here we go again.  Up before 6am.  and off we go.  We joined the musher group and took a bus up to the Musher camp.  This is a summer training center for the dogs.  Once at the Musher camp, we were loaded on a Mercedes 4 wheel vehicle that had ais a  canapy covered vehicle.  It seemed like they took us straight up the side of a  mountain, and also did a lot of winding.  Finally we arrived at the sledding place, and boarded the vehicle attached to the dogs.

  They are beautiful dogs, with high energy.  They jumped and yelped when they saw their individual drivers, because they love to run, and didn’t want to wait for us to fiddle around.  It was a little bit of a bumpy ride, but so much fun to participate in.  They had a couple of young dogs on our sled, who were learning to run with the harnes in, and in sync with the other dogs.  They were so funny, because they wanted to stop and explore frequently, as well as relieve themselves. They are friendly dogs, and loved to be petted.  Some of the adult dogs run in winter comptition and have taken many ribbons.  We got back on the una thing and went back to the camp where we had hot chocolate, learned more about the dogs, and got to play with the beautiful puppies.

 The puppy’s have already learned to love running, and are working the pupple wheel, (which operates like a hamster wheel,) It was so comical to watch the puppies jumping on the wheel and running as it turned.  A puppy would fall off, then jump back on, pushing another puppy off.

  The puppy that Michael & I both held was 20 days old. 

I have made arrangements to have 7 puppies shipped home, which is one for each member of the family.  I will deliver them to you soon after I get home. 

 This excursion is high on the list of our most fun adventures. 

After viewing Tracy Arms and all that beauty, we are due to arrive at Junea early afternoon.  It is amazing how many of the towns in Alaska can only be reached by boat or planes.

Shortly after arriving at Juneau, we met our excursion crew, and headed to Mendelson Glacier welcome center.

We were very close to the glacier, and how beautiful it is.  The Alaskan glaciers are thousands of years old, thus they must carry a great deal history within the layers of ice.  Some of our co travelers took a hike while we were there, and saw a brown bear. 

Next we headed to a nearby harbor, and boarded a catamaron.  We were going whale watching.  We were only out about 20 minutes when a humpback whale was spotted, so we drew near and turned off the engines to watch.  There happened to be a mother and baby humpback and they were really putting on a show. I guess the mother whale was trying to teach the baby how to act like a whale.  They jumped out of the water, did there turn, and came back down into the water with the beautiful tale going in last. We have learned how intelligent whales are, and wonder why we let people slaughter them for no reason for many years.  The waters were rough, which seems to be a favorite weather condition for whales which makes them very playful.  We watched them for about 20 minutes and marveled at how graceful they are in their jumps, turns and dives back into the water.  However the baby seemed to do a number of bellyflops.

  We moved on and then found a group of about 5 orca’s or killer whales.  Their antics were equally amusing and at one point they actually got very close the the boat.  We moved on and found another group of humpback whales which were bubble feeding.  This means that the whales get in a circular ring, and blow bubbles to the surface which traps the small shrimp and krills, so that they are confined to the inside of the bubbles.  The whales swoop up with their mouths open, catching the little fishes.  Now, isn’t that smart.  They were so beautiful that it kind of left us awestruck about these amazing creatures.  Apparently they eat about 1000 lbs of fish a day. Look what we have in common.  When we are on a cruise, we eat & eat & eat, and the whales each a great deal everyday. 
and then returned to the ship to eat another gourmet meal.  We are so moved by the amount of care the staff does to serve us perfect meals.’
We went to a late Broadway show, and it was wonderful.

We have learned a lot about Bald Eagles, which are plentiful in this area.  We are quite aware that they are birds of prey, and could rip us apart with their talons (claws).  And it happens that we encountered an Eagle while in Juneau, 
We were not afraid, because we are very brave.  We knew that if we were kind to the Eagle, she would not hurt us.  Here is the proof.

And the ship is now heading for Skagway.

What in the world are we doing up at 6:30 a.m.  Oh yes,  it’s time to bundle up and get ready to go to the observation deck to watch our trip through Tracy arms.

  It was most breathtakingly beautiful and well worth the early rise.  We sat on the observation deck until almost 9:00 a.m. and drank hot chocolate and took pictures.  Finally we approached Sawyer Glacier.

 Stunningly beatiful in it’s magnificance. We are told that a new record was set as the captain got quite close the to glacier.  There were many small ice break offs floating everywhere, and we were able to see some seals sitting on the ice, and slipping in the water.  I get cold just thinking about it, but it was exciting to watch. 

 When we came back inside, we watched one of the kitchen staff, carve an ice sculpture of a whale.    Wow, what an art.

We are now back at sea heading for Juneau. Here is Juneau, in a beautiful mountain cove.   We have an exciting excursion scheduled to come back and find out what the Venclauskas’s are doing in Alaska.

Up early today, to get breakfast, and then bundle up for our first excursion.  Ketchkan is a cute little harbor town in southern Alaska. 

  We had chosen the Misty Fyords Wilderness trip.  We boarded the catamaron and the excursion began. 

 The Fyords were majestic, beautifully surrounding the channel that our boat traveled.  The clouds were low in someplaces, and looked beautiful against the green, blue, purple and gold colors in the mountains.  This area is completely unspoiked and because of the frequent rainfall, it is gorgeously green.

 What a beautiful state. We found Ketchikan to be a cute novel town, with population around 14,000.  Most of the industry has to do with the cruise ships, and pier stores which are jewelry and souveniers (most of which are imports from China).  I think the harvesting of Salmon is also profitable for this city.  Well, back on board and we went to a lecture on whales.  Very informative, and I hope everyone I know will support the save the whale groups.  They are beautiful, intelligent mammals, who are monogamous with their mate through life.  There is no good reason to butcher them.  Another tidbit I learned today is that salmon are also monogamous with their mate, and do not choose another mate, unless theirs dies.

Michael & I are two of the bravest people you will ever meet.  Today we encountered a bear.  We treated him very kindly, and he did not bite us, or mall us.  Yes, we are so brave!!!!!

Saturday Aug. 13

Today is our first day at sea. Breakfast was delicious and we were off to hear the Naturest talk about the history, and traditions of Alaska.  His name is Brent, and he has made me fall in love with the Alaska that I haven’t even seen yet.  I will definitely try not to miss his lectures.  Michael tried to get into an iphone class, but it had filled too quickly.  I went to a watercolor class which I loved.  It’s been a long time since I painted, and it was fun and challenging.  Big lunch again, and boohoo, we both took a nap.  We missed the lecture on bears, but all his lectures are available on the big screen in our room.  Dinner was wonderful, and we are learning a few words to help us order our meals with some of the gourmet ingredients that we aren’t familiar with. We went to the later show, which was Broadway.  Wow, so much talent.  Definitely my cup of tea. It’s been a great day.