Shelby's Life and Whatnot

But I Have A Very Good Excuse

We've just arrived back from our 14-day Alaska cruise! It was a fabulous vacation to say the least. I didn't want to leave my blog readers hanging, but I didn't want to say, "We're abandoning our house for 2 weeks so come on by!"

It's the vacation that almost didn't happen. We were supposed to fly to Vancouver and board our ship, the Celebrity Summit, there, but the morning before we were to leave, I discovered that my passport was nowhere to be seen. We searched for hour upon hour and never did find it. We ended up flying to Seattle instead, and driving into Canada, since you only need a passport to fly into Canada, and can drive there with just a birth certificate. Fortunately that went without a hitch and we got on board in one piece.

The cruise was fantastic. Our ports were Ketchikan, Skagway, Juneau, Sitka, Victoria B.C., Astoria, Oregon, San Francisco, Catalina Island, and we ended in San Diego where we took Amtrak back up to Anaheim. It was a repositioning cruise for the Summit, finishing off the Alaska season. Today the Summit headed out to Hawaii.

It's hard to summarize a 14-day vacation in one email. I'll just hit the highlights of the cruise:

*Taking a float plane (a small propeller plane that takes off and lands on water) over the Misty Fjords in Ketchikan
*A scenic mountain railroad trip in Skagway
*Running with real sled dogs in Juneau (my favorite excursion ever)
*Coming within spitting distance of a giant glacier
*Having Royal Tea at the Empress Hotel in Victoria
*Lots and lots and lots of scenery
*Great food
*Being out of touch with the world for pretty much the whole time

I also almost won the Bingo jackpot on the second-to-the-last day. Almost. Cruise ship Bingo tradition has it that when you are 1 square away from Bingo, you stand so everyone can see who's close to winning. Well the big Bingo jackpot is one that rolls over every game from the first day and you have to have all of the squares on your card covered to win it. We got right up to the very end and one other woman was standing and so was I, and then they called her number. The jackpot was over $3,000. Yes, I almost won 3 grand, if not for O-72.

Anyway, I'll be posting more about the vacation for sure as well as some pictures when I get the chance. Glad to be back!