Tag: travel

Skagway

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No snow!

25 July 2017. Our next port of call was Skagway, a small town of under a thousand people, a population that doubles in the summer to work the tourist trade.  Big cruise ships like ours are the usually visitors.  And so, three to five thousand people stop by for the day.  We docked with another big ship and we all flooded off our floating fortresses to walk the boardwalk streets and find adventure.

The center of town is only a few blocks long and fewer wide.  It is well painted and well kept.  One peculiarity of our two Alaskan ports was the number of jewelry shops featuring diamonds that each town held.  Do people really buy expensive jewelry on vacation? Continue reading →

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Glacier Bay

IMG_5588Early on the morning of the 25th, our very huge ship crept into Glacier Bay and stopped. There was an eerie silence which replaced the constant hum of the motor that I had stopped be conscious of hearing.  We could hear the water lapping against the ship but it was a small and quiet sound.  Julia and I had not woken up to see the approach to Glacier Bay, but right after we stopped, we dressed hurriedly and stood out on our balcony.  Had we not had a balcony, it would have been truly fine to share the sight with others on an open deck, but we didn’t need to share at all.  It was like being alone with magnificence.  We stood, watching, taking pictures in awe and wonder.

Then the motors started again and the boat began to turn in more than one complete circle before we left the bay. Continue reading →

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Juneau

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Juneau from across the Gastineau Channel on Douglas Island

We landed in Juneau at noon and started out first land excursion an hour later.  I bought a non-cruise line tour from viator.com and our experience was very good.  The drivers of the buses and boat were knowledgable about their city and what they hoped to show us.  We had a short tour of the city which was followed by a visit to the Mendenhall Glacier where we explored by ourselves.  Favorite facts about the city include that  there are no roads connecting the city to the rest of Alaska or to the rest of North America.  Residents and visitor get to the city by water or air.  Also, The settlement was founded by Joe Juneau and Richard Harris, and was originally called Harrisburg after a vote by the miners.  According to one of our guides, Juneau was not happy with the result.  He waited until Harris was out of town, treated the miners at the local pub, called for another vote and registered the result in DC.  If the story is not true, it is still a good one and a good reminder the politics have not really gotten any better or worse. Continue reading →

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Alaskan inside passage

29 July 2017: We did not have an internet connection that allowed for posting to Chasing Joy during the cruise.  So, over the next few days I’ll be posting pictures from our travels. I groused about the lack of internet and was quite grumpy about it.  The IT guy was generally unhelpful, promising something better each day which he failed to deliver.  Had internet been free, I would have had little reason to complain but internet packages are pricy and I had sprung for both internet and streaming.  Needless to say, we never streamed anything. Finally, on day five, I cancelled the service.

23 July 2017: After a day cruising up to Juneau via the Inside Passage.

Privilege. Privileged.

This morning I ordered room service for breakfast, wanting to avoid another pass at breakfast buffet madness.   Fruit plate, an orange, blueberry muffins, bagel with cream cheese. Coffee for me and a glass of lactose free milk for Julia.  Julia asked if she could really eat in bed.  I pulled up a comfy chair to sit in front of our balcony.  It is cold on the balcony and although we have blankets, I cannot get julia to enjoy the cold balcony. Continue reading →

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water & wake

IMG_5325Embarkation: Yes! Sleep was better. Overtired and late night food—Julia’s choice of chicken strips and fries which were, I admit, superior but not conducive to sleep—and Wisconsin morning time were our challenges yesterday. Today, my eyes are open and julia is bushy tailed.

We are ready early. Kinda’ a theme of this traveling which is not without benefit. We are up, showered, breakfasted and re-packed and still have almost an hour til the shuttle to the ship. Julia’s smallish anxieties about the ‘boat’ have eased. We’ve talked a lot about the size of the ship. Continue reading →

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Seattle cups

IMG_5315We landed in Seattle Wednesday night. Late. What follows is from Thursday and upon waking on Friday.

First impressions. The cup provided for coffee at our hotel’s breakfast buffet was a huge mug. Julia needed two packets of powdered hot cocoa to make a full cup. Such is Seattle.

Seattle is a port city and I was reminded of Genoa. In port towns the very industrial process of shipping is visible from roads and overlooks. Lots of  hills in the small portion of Seattle we walked this morning, lots of hilly walks in Genoa. But Seattle it is a city vibrant and expanding, construction on every block. Genoa has not know growth for a long time. Seattle is youthful — shapes and colors are neither staid nor classical. Genoa must have appeared just like this a few hundred years ago. Continue reading →

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land of lupines

img_1138We drove up to Ashland, WI, during the weekend, a short trip to go to a memorial service.  I’ve not been that far north and although the weather was wet, damp, then rainy and rather cold, there were trees to drive through and lake beaches to walk on. I fell into writing about where Julia is this summer which I’ll post separately.

I loved getting out of Madison!  Apart from a very few quick trips to the Chicago burbs, its been months since we’ve left. I love Madison but I crave travel. Driving up north was unexpectedly satisfying. Quiet, gray, rolling hills, lots of evergreen trees and water.  The lake looking so vast that a casual observer might mistake it for a sea. And the lupines! I have not driven through a landscape of wild lupines.  Like in Barbara Cooney’s story of Alice Rumphius, a kid’s book I haven’t thought about in years. The lupines were beautiful. Someone at the memorial said they were invasive. It may be wrong but I wish to be invaded by lupines.  I stopped by the side of the road more than once trying unsuccessfully to capture what I saw.

The lupines were worth the drive. Continue reading →

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movin’ may

4:00 p.m.: I’ve spent the day in the garden beds, digging up the last of the bulbs in the front terrace beds, transplanting ajuga from those same beds to the side in front of the fence.  This is a place where the worst weeds grow. Ugly, ugly, ugly.  I planted ajuga on the fence line last fall.  About a third of it took, so I’m trying again. Cutting back spent bulb plantings and weeding just a tiny bit. I have some mighty incredible weeds after our week of rain.

Julia is working on cover art for a class project while she listens to music. Kid bob mostly with a bit of classic rock mixed in. “I just love ‘Thriller,’” she tells me. How can I not smile indulgently?

For the cover art, Julia sketched the old fashion way and then transferred her drawings to an iPad app for coloring.  When finished, the enhanced drawings will all go into a collage app to be arranged on a background and titles. For a child who stumbles over simple directions, she has figured most of this out by herself. When she’s run into problems and asks me, which surprisingly she is doing with more regularity, she is patient as I figure the problem out and usually fully understands my solution about half way through my explanation. Continue reading →

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dane county farmers market

 

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Sitting in front of the Capitol.

I miss writing about our travels, but of course, we haven’t been anywhere for awhile.  Browsing the NYTimes Saturday morning, I found an article about Genoa  and I melted with the memories of last year. I added my favorite restaurant and B&B whose owners took such good care of us to the comments but I was ready to sink into my grumpy, petulant child self because there will be no travel like that this summer. And then, after breakfast Julia and I bundled up and went to the Madison Farmers Market and I decided do some writing about the pleasures of Madison and surrounds from now until the next time we board a plane.

So, the Madison Farmers’ Market. Correctly titled the Dane County Farmers’ Market began in 1972 and is America’s largest producers-only farmers’ market. It hosts 300 vendors and completely encircles the Capitol Building. Continue reading →

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bits

IMG_5071A friend explained that she was distracted because she heard of another death. My first thought was of how another person was going to have to go through that journey. I sighed and felt bone tired weary.  I know, I know, it’s inevitable and I know every journey is different — beloved partner to acquaintance, tragic, expected, prepared for, unexpected — but it is the journey from brokenness to the Kinisuga masterpiece of a life. That is, if we are fortunate enough to recognize the journey is necessary and patient enough to make it.

The urge to grab onto a bit of melancholy is due in part to Friday’s memory of transplant day. It’s been seven years, and over this past year I’ve started looking again at the memories Facebook offers to share. I stayed away from those memories for a long time. On Saturday seven years ago, I posted that David was sitting up eating Jell-O and how glorious that simple act seemed. There has been so much work from that time to this. It feels like a mere girl wrote those words not the woman who was looking forward to her 30th wedding anniversary. Continue reading →

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