Alaska all the way

On July 24th we drove to Seattle, where we boarded the Holland American ZanDaam. You see, David's parents celebrate their 50th anniversary this fall and decided to take their children and the children's spouses on a cruise to Alaska! There are five children in the family, so with everyone we were a group of twelve. I don't know if I can begin to describe the fun we had with everyone! I know we all had a great time. Here is a picture of Sheryl, my mother-in-law and myself on a tender going to Sitka.

That was a fun stop. We bought homemade jelly from a girl who is Orthodox Russian. Her family is large (her mom is expecting #12 this summer). They have a great business with their yummy jelly and sell to tourists in their shop and on the sidewalk in front of their house. There is a large Russian contigient in Sitka and there is a beautiful onion-dome church there as well.

Here's what we did lots of....eating! This is close to midnight and we are eating at the Dessert Extravaganza. Pretty much the only thing I worried about the whole trip was getting myself to the next round of food. It was nice to not have to cook for a whole week. It's a good thing we went dancing almost every night! That was a blast! I never thought we would all end up on the dance floor together! Every night we could boogie to "Billie Jean". (ugh)

Here is Glacier Bay. Seeing the glacier is only half of the experience, though. It makes a lot of noise and there is constant movement as the ice is melting and causing small avalanches that you could see and hear. The glacier made lots of noise! It sounded like target practice was going on! It was a beautiful day in the Bay and so much fun to see.

This is from our stop in Ketchikan. We got off the boat and bargained our way onto Sourdough Jack's tour bus. He was great fun and took us all over. Our first stop was to see some eagles in their nest. Then we saw the eagle above in the top of a tree drying its wings after fishing in the ocean. A little farther down the road we stopped to watch two bears fishing along a stream. It was almost like they were planted there for us to see and photograph! We went to a neat totem park. I was really interested in learning more about the native people in Alaska and this was a great place for that. There were also a couple of lectures on the boat that I attended that talked about the native life in Alaska-super interesting!

Thanks to Dana for staying with my kids during the hottest week of the year without any air conditioning!
The biggest thanks goes to Roger and Sheryl for a great vacation! Thanks for being a good example of marriage and the strength of family. As the sun goes down on the last 50 years, there's a lot to look forward to in the next years. Happy Anniversary!