Serenade to Alaska

It has been almost a week since our return from Vancouver and our Alaska cruise, and I'm only now getting around to posting here again.  Just getting our mail sorted out, the bills paid, and the laundry done has taken some considerable time, as did other duties of a pleasanter nature, such as attending our granddaughter's high school graduation ceremony.

On this cruise, our group of over thirty people might have seemed too large to be really wieldy, but in the event, it really wasn't, and everyone in this contingent of friends connected well and often.  We were blessed with fine weather, sunny and warm most days except for a sprinkle or two when we got to Ketchikan.

The massiveness of the Hubbard Glacier has to be seen to be fully appreciated.  Mere photographs cannot do it justice.  The captain guided our floating city to within a harpoon shot of the glacier's mighty rim, close enough for the sights and sounds of the calving ice to be recorded by a thousand digital cameras, many of whose electronic flashes sparkled needlessly in the bright sunshine, as their owners crowded along the ship's rails and clicked and clicked.

The towns we visited, including the state capital of Juneau, are set into the edges of some of the state's most placid bays and fjords, and one could be forgiven for thinking that their citizens do nothing more than sell overpriced jewellery and oversized T-shirts and locally crafted gewgaws to the summer's flock of tourists. Russian products are much in evidence these days in Alaska.  Among them are brass samovars, religious icons, and even Soviet-era fur caps complete with tied-at-the-top ear flaps and the old hammer-and-sickle insignia.

The tourists came from all corners of the world.  We shared meals and conversations with our friends from Canada, Australia, Hong Kong, and the United States.   We sat and chatted at breakfast with strangers from New Zealand and Michigan and Wales.  We took an exhilarating journey from Skagway in an 1890's railroad car up through mountain passes and tunnels and rushing streams and waterfalls.  Our travel companions on this ride included a family from Indonesia.

We took group photos — oh, there must have been dozens of group photos in every one of the digital cameras that each member of the group brought along.  We captured video shots of one another at every opportunity, to be edited eventually into a suitable memento of our trip.

We are happy to learn that two members of our group who fell ill on this cruise are now fully recovered.  We look forward to seeing them again, together with all those with whom we shared this fun week.  And very soon.