Monday, September 22, 2008

Alaska Overview

I just returned from the most amazing vacation ever! I was on a 7 day Alaskan cruise out of Seattle. I am just beginning to go through my pictures and I am not sure when I will have them all, but I thought I would do a quick overview and then go into more details as I go through the pictures.

I arrived in Seattle on Saturday September 13th on another beautiful sunny day. Here is a picture of Mt. Rainier from the plane
We spent Saturday afternoon, evening and Sunday morning touring around Seattle. My favorite thing was the underground tour. A must see if you are in Seattle
Then we boarded the Star Princess – our home for the week. We bought some flowers from the Pike Place Market to bring on board; they brightened up our room for the week.

Our first port stop was in Ketchikan – the weather was beautiful – no rain, which is rare the city has 280 days of rain a year. We went zip lining there – this is Shannon on the zip line.

Our second stop was in Juneau – there we went kayaking. Here we are with our kayak guide.

Our third stop was in Skagway. We went mountain biking here. It was so much fun! Here is Shannon all decked out in bike gear. Our days at sea were filled with activities too. We got lots of pictures taken – here is us one of the not formal nights.

Here we are on the second formal night.
Our cruise director was JJ Ullrich. Every morning he would host Good Morning Alaska which went over all the activities of the day and give any pertinent information. Every morning we watched to see what was going on. I am going to miss having someone lay out my plans for each day for me. Here is a picture of him on TV.
JJ was a great cruise director and I enjoyed chatting with him a bit.

The week went by so quickly and I was so sad to have to leave. I miss the boat and the great people I met. I will post all the fun stories from the boat as I am able.

Back to real life…

I had every intention to relate the tales of the bike tour over the summer, but for a variety of reasons I was not able to. Part of it was time, some of it was emotional and part of it was just mental over load. I have posts started and will at some time go back to tell the stories from this summer. Until then a bit of catch up; during the summer I did minimal baking, but I did fine a great cheese muffin/roll recipe. Of I forgot to take pictures of them, but I will the next time I make them.
I also made, what turned out to be one of my favorite blankets, for a darling new daughter of a dear friend of mine.

Tuesday, September 2, 2008

As seen in Time Square Sunday night

For a closer look...