Alaska ~ Really Cool Place

Barbara and Ed enjoy the caribou antlers in Talkeetna, Alaska,
June 16, 2011.

We're back in Maryland now, and I'm working my way through about 600+ photos. Lots of junk photos, but it was fun to try and get some good shots anyway! As you can tell from this photo we got extremely lucky and had beautiful weather! It was awesome! Not hot, mind you, but pretty and clear for the most part. Alaska is a pretty rainy place, didn't realize it is a rain forest in some parts. It sure is big and it sure is amazingly beautiful there.

The state bird is the mosquito - note the Deet treated mosquito scarf around my neck. That yellow hankie is not just so I'll look adorable! Thankfully, this wasn't too much of a problem on-board the ship. However, we did have some land portions of the trip and we definitely met the Alaskan mosquitoes.

I had intended to post updates along the way, but this is what I learned about technology on this trip.

In remote areas and on-board sailing vessels, the Internet connections are, by and large, the product of satellite connections. They are EXPENSIVE and incredibly slow. I could barely get one photo per day uploaded to FaceBook (FB). I chose to purchase time on the Internet, but to give you an example:

Printing my boarding pass for the flight home. Simple, right?
Took more than half an hour! Really!
Total cost just to print my boarding pass: about $7.89

It was crazy!

Occasionally, when we were close to shore, I could snag an AT&T 3G signal for a little while. But, I never knew when or how long it might last.

So, the trip was in some ways, a brief vacation from technology. In a way. But, I really love technology.

We had John Muir's book, Travels in Alaska with us. (Loaded on the iPad2 under the Kindle App.) I wonder what John Muir would have thought. This was truly fun to think about the contrasts between John Muir's visits here and our own. Wow.

Some of our tour guides and park rangers referenced Muir, to my delight!

I'll post more about our trip as I get more organized and have a bit more time.

Anticipation might be the best part - Let the Count Down begin.

Well, it is official, only 15 days until we begin our Alaska journey! We're pretty excited, I can tell you. We will need to behave ourselves so as not to embarrass John and Pam!

We'll be flying to Anchorage on June 15th, returning home on Saturday June 25th.

From Anchorage, we will go to Denali and explore on the land based portion of this trip. We'll be on a train for part of this, exploring a bit more of Alaska and taking a few side trips. We will be staying in Princess Lodges in the Denali National Park for a few nights.

When we board the ship, it is the Princess Diamond, a really large cruise ship. I'll be posting some photos and trip stories as we go, hopefully. I think this ship holds a couple thousand passengers. It has shopping, theatre, spa, all that fun stuff.

Ed and I have never been on a long cruise. We went to Mexico once for a 3 day cruise for Ed's birthday, but that was not too much compared to this one. My birthday will be spent in Denali this year! Yay!

We are also celebrating our 40th Wedding Anniversary this year, so this will be a good place to have a toast to longevity in marriage. (Although, seriously, it doesn't seem like it could be 40 years.)

Alaska will be cool in June, we've been advised to bring fleece jackets and a rain jacket, and dress in layers. Yes, it does rain there, that's why it is so beautiful and green. We figure we'll offset this with a trip to Aruba later if possible. (Need to keep balance, right?)

We are meeting John's Shriners group in Anchorage where we will stay at the Capt Cook Inn the first night. Most of John's group are flying out of Pittsburgh, but we'll fly from Dulles.