Monday, Monday

Gotta love Mondays!! I was really busy today. I had to take the '56 to the body shop. A chrome piece fell off and needed new clips put on. At least it didn't cost me anything this time! Then I had Bible study where we had 10 people today! Fun group - I've missed it! This evening I had an Evangelism meeting at church. We are planning an ice cream social and carnival for August 28th, so this was our wrap-up meeting before that event. I sure hope it's a success!

More Alaska pictures...We were in port at Juneau from 6:00 AM until 8:00 PM, so plenty of time for everyone to shop for goodies and to see all the sights. We did the two hour tour of Juneau, some shopping, and then went back to the ship for a late lunch. Tuesday night onboard we ate at the Bayou restaurant, where they had the best steak I may have ever had! It was a 10 ounce filet and it was fantastic! The food was great all of the time. Every morning for breakfast we had a buffet OR you could have eggs done the way you like them...so I had 2 eggs over easy most mornings. The bacon was greasy tasting, so I didn't eat any bacon all week after I'd tried it. Every thing else was wonderful, though!

When we arrived in Skagway this is what greeted us! Skagway only has about 800 people in it...and then add the 10,000 from the ships! Can you imagine! It's just a little bitty town nestled into some beautifully rugged mountains! For some reason a lot of the ships who have sailed to Skagway, put their logos and dates on the side of the mountain at the dock! It was a little strange to see "graffiti" in such a beautiful place. We all decided that we wanted to ride the White Pass train up into the mountains, so we had arranged for this in advance. Part of the Frushours were train employees, so this was fitting and proper for the next generation to do this!! Here is the train we rode at the bottom of this mountain. It was a beautiful trip - well worth the time! The train travels all the way to White Pass and into Canada. We weren't allowed to leave the train at any time, but it was wonderful to watch the engines switching and to see how we switched our seats so we didn't go down the mountain backwards!!

Lots of fun and absolutely fantastic scenery!I'll show you more pictures from Skagway tomorrow. It was a cute little town! More later...

Beautiful Sunday!

We got up this morning and went to church - we've missed a couple of Sundays so I was afraid we'd have to wear nametags so people would remember who we were! But I didn't need to worry! Last week, Pastor David started on a series about the book of Ruth. We did Chapter 2 today. We had 2 new couples at church today - both young couples - that was nice!

Back to the Alaskan travelogue! Today we're in Juneau...the capital of Alaska. I don't know why they chose Juneau - it can't be reached by road and it's definitely not the largest city! It is a unique town though. It's got an historic district called Creek Street - actually it's a red-light district from the past. Mostly it's little shops now though. Dolly's is still there - complete with girls calling you to come tour the place for $5.00...it only cost $3.00 for 3 minutes to visit Dolly! I guess that's inflation!! In the middle of the street is a little "creek" with tons of fish and even a seal! I believe these are a different kind of salmon, but you couldn't prove it by me! That's probably why the seal was there - they eat salmon too! The seal was the hit of the day - he was just having a great time playing to the crowd!Here are the girls from Dolly's. They didn't have a lot of business that day. They said it was pretty slow even with all the ships in port!Today was the day we got to see our first whale too. Here he is. If it weren't for the spout, you'd never know it was a whale. It was black and not very big, but you could really follow him because of his spout. If we'd been on the other side of the ship after Skagway, we'd have seen a BIG whale breach - jump out of the water. But we were on the starboard side and it's not easy to run across ship when you're on your balcony! Mary got a picture of it, so we'll have a print when she gets them sent to us. Regardless of his size, we DID see this little whale. After this one, we saw several more, along with porpoises...but I gave up trying to get a picture and just watched them! Our naturalist told us when you see birds, you know there are fish...if there are fish, there are whales!

More later...

Saturday Thoughts!

We had another near perfect day today. Several of us took our old cars to a benefit for Diana at Prairie Ridge today. They had 15 different bands performing and they served food, sold CDs, had auctions - all to help the family. Diana is making remarkable progress. I guess she's now had 6 surgeries, but is standing and talking. Her daughter said she has the best attitude - always joking with the staff at the rehab center. Steve said it's truly a miracle...thank you, Lord!

Tonight, I continue my travelogue of Alaska with Ketchikan (August 1st). Ketchikan was my favorite town in Alaska! If you could imagine it without the cruise ships and 10,000 people from the ships, you would think you were back in the 1800's. It's even got wooden streets!! We docked about 5:30 AM. I had gotten up at 4:30 or so because I was so excited. It was so beautiful and so quiet coming into port. Shops were starting to open already because we weren't the first ship to dock!

We started out with jackets, but shed them very early! This is Milt and me and the next picture is Pat with Dave. Suzy, Greg, Mary, and Steve were already shopping!

I had to take a picture of this trolley because it said Vanness Street - where we live! We didn't go on this trolley though! Our tour guide here was Alan, who is a Tlingit Indian. He was absolutely wonderful! He found us eagles, black bears, salmon, salmon berries, an eagle's nest, and entertained us with wonderful stories for over 2 hours!!

This is a juvenile bald eagle who got a little nervous with all of these people around him...plus, he might have seen Mr. Black Bear coming around the bend in the stream!!

I guess he was hungry because the stream was chock full of salmon! It was really fun watching him!!

We only got part of a day in Ketchikan. We had to be back on the ship by 1:30 to sail for Juneau. Ketchikan has a population of about 8,000 but swelled to 18,000 with 5 ships in the harbor! Great place to shop for bargains, too. We did learn though that the cruise lines own a lot of the shops in the 3 towns we stopped in. We always looked for signs that said locally owned!

More later...

You've Got to Love Days Like Today

As far as I'm concerned, this was an almost perfect day! I had a Dr. C appointment today. He worked on both my knee and my back. Needless to say, I'm a little sore - but tomorrow should be much better!

Tonight I'm continuing with pictures from our Alaska trip. We sailed out of Vancouver at 4:30 PM PDT, which was 7:30 here. The weather was absolutely fantastic and the water was as smooth as glass. We sat outside as long as we could, soaking up the sun's rays and enjoying the views.In fact, we got a little hot outside so we actually were seeking shade when we first started out. When we left Vancouver, you could hardly tell we were moving - it was just so smooth. We only had one day when it wasn't smooth and that was because the wind was blowing so hard. The waves were still just 1.5-4' so the water wasn't even choppy - it was just the wind buffeting the ship around that made it hard to stand up!! That was our next to the last day on board - good thing it wasn't this first night!Every time we looked to the back of the ship, we saw another ship right behind us. It's kind of fun knowing that there's another ship nearby when you can't see any land anywhere!!
See what I mean about the calm waters. The next morning, which was Sunday, Dave and I got up and went to church. It seems, though, that the cruise personnel who was to lead the service forgot to show up...so "Larry" who was a passenger got up and talked about his God journey and another passenger got up and led us in a couple of songs, and another one led us in prayer. It was a good start to the day. We sailed all day on Sunday and on Monday morning, we arrived in Ketchikan at 5:30 AM. I got up at 4:30 and went out on the balcony just to watch...we were right up against the mountains and the quiet was simply amazing. This ship made no noise (except the fog horn) - you couldn't hear any engine/motor noises at all...and at 4:30 AM, there's not much moving anywhere! We docked at 5:30 and were able to go ashore at 6:00 or so. The shops all started opening just as soon as we docked! We were only in Ketchikan for 7.5 hours so everyone wanted to get a head start on purchasing their souvenirs!!

I loved Ketchikan and I'll tell you more about it tomorrow. More later...

First Day Home

I'm TIRED!!! I slept until 10:15 this morning and didn't want to get up then! Dave's been asleep in his chair for about an hour already this evening. Our vacation wore us out!!
I'm including some picture highlights of each day of the trip. We flew into Vancouver on July 28th and had the rest of that day as well as all day on the 29th to sight-see...then we boarded our ship on the 30th and set sail for Alaska! This is a picture of us, as well as Greg, Suzy, Pat & Milt (Dave's two sisters and their husbands). Steve and Mary didn't join us until on the ship. The night we arrived in Vancouver, we went out to dinner at the Fish House where they had wonderful food and wine! We drank enough wine and laughed until our jaws hurt. Then we gulped when we finally got the bill - this was NOT a cheap vacation! Then on Friday, we took the sky train (which is named inappropriately because most of it is in a tunnel under the city!) to Canada Place where we got on a trolley to see Stanley Park and the city of Vancouver. Stanley Park is wonderful. That is where these pictures were taken.
It was an absolutely gorgeous day - shorts were definitely appropriate! On the way home from the trolley/train ride - we had to walk about 10 blocks to get on the train - I stepped off a curb and sprained my knee (that's my only accident this trip!) and walking got increasingly more difficult during the trip. However, by morning most days, I was feeling better, so I got along fine - I just was a little slower than I wanted to be!!
This last picture is of the totem poles in Stanley Park. They were beautiful sculptures, but the ones in Ketchikan were even better!

Tomorrow I'll take you on a sea voyage to the land of the midnight sun! More later...