Thursday

Hello Everybody!

Finally able to post again ...

It's hard to believe we're already at Thursday and just a few more days to go. Yesterday we went to the itty bitty port town of Skagway, AK and walked through a few shops and then took a 6 hour tour that covered 140 miles out into the Yukon territory where the gold rush took place. We went into Canada and back out again. We learned so much history and had the most fantastic views. This whole area is so breath-taking that even the pictures we took will not be able to come close to just what we've seen. We kept hoping to see lots of wildlife but we only saw an eagle and a few mountain goats. We went to Emerald Lake and other stops along the way. We got back to Skagway and went to a little restaurant by the water for fresh halibut and salmon. Philip said it was the best salmon he's ever had! We got back on the ship, rested a bit, ate, and went to a comedy show by the Second City comedy troupe out of Chicago. We are still so fouled up with the time difference of 4 hours and the sun setting at 10pm and rising at 3:30am. Even though we have a room darkening curtain, I think our bodies know we should be up and at 'em so we're awake pretty early.

Today we cruised Glacier Bay and it was the most magnificent weather and day overall. In fact the captain said a little while ago that it was probably the prettiest day of the whole season since May! A few park rangers from Glacier Bay got onboard early this morning and gave us lots of info over the loud speaker throughout the day to keep us informed about what we were seeing. We stayed out on one of the decks for several hours with cameras and binoculars in hand hoping to see some animals! Well guess what...WE DID!! Philip spotted 2 bear along the shore and even with the binocs, they were small, but nevertheless, we saw bear! We saw lots of otter swimming by and lots of seal lions were lying on several areas we passed. At last....what we had been waiting for.....WHALES! We never saw one jump way up in the air like you see at Sea World (I was praying as hard as I could and had my fingers and toes crossed) but we saw their tails and lots of spray from the blow holes. At one point, it almost looked like the dancing fountains at Disney because about 6 of them were blowing one right after the other. The glaciers were very interesting and we learned lots about them as well. We finally ate dinner in one of the dining rooms and they gave us a cake and sang "Let Me Call You Sweetheart" since they knew we were celebrating our anniversary. We went to a show called "Sharkbait" that was a couple of guys doing amazing juggling, etc acts. Then we listened to the Showband playing some tunes. It's 9pm and the sun is still shining but we're getting tired. I think we're going to go hear another group play some music and then go to bed.

We get to Ketchikan tomorrow morning at 6am and so we're planning to head down the gangway to see the sights just after 6!

As I said, it will take so long to upload pics with this slow dial-up from the satellite so I'll do that next week.

Everybody, start planning now to come up here and I PROMISE you will not be disappointed! This scenery is just breath taking! God is so awesome and I continue to be in awe of His handiwork over and over.

Signing off...we haven't been to the ice cream area in the last 5 hours, so we're behind
schedule :-)