Filed under: travel
Today was at sea. The ship turned around and headed back towards Seattle.
Sunrise at 4:30am from the top deck. I got up before even the crew and did my laps.
We went to 2 lectures. One by the naturalist Brent Nixon on Orcas. The second by his wife Mary Amanda, an ethnomusicologist, about the last song played on the Titanic. Both lectures were entertaining as well as informative. The lectures were one of my favorite parts of the cruise.
The ship had a Corning Hot Glass Show on deck. We were mesmerized as the artists created works of glass art.
The ovens were very hot, The pieces were complicated and exquisite.
It was formal night on the ship so we dressed up for dinner.
The food sculpturer that we met on our kitchen tour was amazing. His medium was food and ice.
The illusionist magician Jason Bishop was excellent and funny.
All in all a lovely day at sea.
Filed under: travel
The clouds cleared and the sun came out as we arrived in Skagway at 7am. Skagway was the most northern stop on our cruise.
The front of the train as seen from our car in back.
From the comfort of the railroad car we saw panoramas of mountains, glaciers, gorges, waterfalls, tunnels, trestles and historic sites
We rode the White Pass & Yukon Route Railway! We took a bus from tidewater at Skagway to the Summit of the White Pass, a 2,865 foot rise in elevation! On the way back we rode we rode the White Pass & Yukon Railway. Built in 1898 during the Klondike Gold Rush, this narrow gauge railroad is an International Historic Civil Engineering Landmark along with the Eiffel tower and the Statue of Liberty.
The highest point of the pass.
feat of engineering
Filed under: travel
On the dock in Juneau. Our cruise ship is behind us.
Lake Mendenhall
We headed up to Juneau, arriving at 1:30pm.Aafter all that sunshine, the rain surprisedus and then it poured. We went out to see the Mendenhall glacier anyway. Mendenhall lake had flooded so we couldn’t get very close to the glacier but it was amazing anyway. We left Juneau at 10:30pm.
Filed under: travel
Hubbard glacier with calved ice in front.
At 6am our ship cruised into Tracy Am Fjord. The scenery was beautiful. we saw waterfalls and the Hubbard glacier. For 4 hours we oohed and aahed. At 10 am we reentered the inside passage and clouds descended.
View from the cruise ship.
water cascading down the sides of the fjord.
clouds descending as we left the fjord.
The fresh never refrigerated peaches from Stonewall, Texas are the best. My friend Catherine brought me some of her homemade blueberry and peach pie and it was awesome so I decided to make one too. I bought Canadian blueberries fresh too.
- 1 cup whole wheat flour
- 1 cup white flour
- 1/2 tsp. baking powder
- 1/5 tsp. salt
- 1/3 cup oil
- 1/3 cup ice water
- Mix the dry ingredients in a glass bowl.
- combine the oil and water in a ball jar, cover and shake well
- With a fork, quickly add the wet to the dry ingredients
- With your hands make 2 balls to roll out for the crust.
- roll out bottom crust and put in pie pan.
- 2 cups blueberries
- 4 cups sliced peaches including skins
- 1/2 cup sugar
- 2 TBSPs of lemon juice
- 1/8 tsp. salt
- 2 TBSP quick Tapioca
- Combine all ingredients in a bowl and put in bottom curst
- Cut top crust into strips and put lattice top on pie.
- Place pie pan on cookie sheet and put this in oven
- Bake in preheated 450 degree F oven for approx. 45 minutes.
- Cool and serve a la mode.
I did not do step 3. The pie boiled over onto my oven bottom and the element cracked. The bright side? I will get a new oven. the pie was delicious.
Filed under: travel
Our first stop was in Ketchikan, Alaska, 700 miles north of Seattle. It is at the southernmost entrance to Alaska’s famed Inside Passage in the Tongass Rain Forest.The average annual rainfall is 162 inches, Luckily for us the sun shone.
We walked around town, went to the creek to see the salmon swim upstream, but because it was sunny they didn’t appear.
At the dock.
View of the inner passage from high up in Ketchikan.
‘The Rock’ was designed to honor in life-size 7-figures from Ketchikan’s past: Chief Johnson, The Logger; The Fisher, The Miner, The Aviator, A Native Elder Woman, and an Elegant Lady. The principle artists were David Rubin, Terry Pyles and Judy Rubin.
Filed under: travel
The Celebrity Solstice is a great ship. Our cabin was large with a balcony. The first day was at sea so we explored the ship, went to a lecture by Brent Nixon , a naturalist, about Alaska, read, ate breakfast lunch and dinner, listened to music, went to the evening show and relaxed. We entered the inside passage around noon and were mesmerized by the beautiful scenery.
Filed under: travel
We flew to Seattle the night before our cruise started. The city is beautiful and we walked around to see the sights. After a good breakfast at our hotel we took the hotel shuttle to the city center and started to walk to the cruise terminal. On the city map it looked like it was 6 blocks from the Space Needle to our ship. We walked straight down to the water but when we got there no cruise ship. We started walking north and saw nothing. Finally we asked someone who said we were on the correct path but it was an hour walk to the cruise terminal. What to do? We walked with our rolling suitcases and backpacks. An hour later we finally saw the Celebrity Solstice. It was a great walk along the water especially when John rolled both suitcases! Apparently the map was not to scale.
Eat Veggies, save the planet 