Bucket Lists

At times, most everyone says, “that is on my bucket list.” Well, one on my list was finally fulfilled last week. We haven’t vacationed in 7 years, a couple of short trips to visit one son and family, but not a vacation to far away places. On Saturday, May 10, we left the Virginia Mountains for Seattle, Washington to board an Alaskan bound cruise ship on Sunday, May 11. The boarding was chaos with two large cruise ships from two different companies boarding simultaneously through the same terminal. We embarked through the inner passage, with 4 ports plus a cruise up another fjord to a glacier.

What a glorious majestic place is Alaska!

Most of the inner passage follows fjords between tall rugged peaks, many snow covered. The weather was mostly kind with the rainiest days on at sea days. That did make for rougher travel, but the in port days occasionally had short bursts of light drizzle, but mostly mild temperatures and broken clouds. The second photo is near the top of White Pass on the train. This is the path the miners in the Klondike gold rush traveled.

There was fun on the ship as well with comedians, large musical production shows, games, karaoke (not our thing), and photo fun such as this moose who was in a different place on the ship nearly every day.

Though we didn’t participate, if you found it, took a photo and posted it on social media, you were entered in a prize drawing. We enjoyed stumbling across it as we moved about the ship.

And cruises are never ending food! The International Market is themed buffet styled aisles open from 6 a.m. to 11:30 p.m. included in your cruise fare. If that wasn’t enough, there were 3 “fancy” restaurants, a pizza restaurant, a sushi restaurant, and an Irish pub, 3 fancy coffee bars, 1 gelato bar, and numerous alcohol bars all at extra cost.

There were bands, singers, and other musicians that performed in the various bars around the Piazza, a three story center portion of the ship.

Yesterday, we were up very early and off the ship to an excursion in Seattle by 7:30 a.m. We got to go up the Space Needle, then over to Pike Place Market where we left the tour as they were then going to the airport by noon and our flight wasn’t until midnight. On our own, we spent many hours walking the waterfront, exploring the area and taking a ferry to Bremerton Island and back, then finally using their great light rail system to travel across the city to the airport for only a few dollars each. After a night and early morning of flights, we arrived home around lunch time, tired, still trying to still the wobbles from the ship and flying, but excited and happy about our adventure.

Now the grass needs mowing, the house cleaned, the laundry done, and back in the routine. It is worth it after all the fun.