Cruise in Review

I have a few moments and wanted to update our journey, beginning with the cruise to Alaska.  We left Seattle on Saturday, June 6 on the Norwegian Jewel cruise ship.  Seattle is a beautiful city and we enjoyed spending some time there.  We embarked and get settled in our cabin.  We had a great cabin with a good sized window to look out, such amazing beauty all along the trip.  Every night when we returned to our room our ship's steward, Christus Alfred from San Lucia, in the Caribbean would turn down our room and put a new "towel animal" on our bed...the first night was a rabbit...with my sun glasses!

We were at sea all of Sunday June 7, a nice day to relax and get to know the ship a little.  Early Monday, June 8, found us coming into Ketchikan, Alaska, our first stop.  I was waking up early with the sun coming into the room, so I would head up on deck to observe the beauty.  This is what I saw coming in...

Ketchikan, Alaska is the southern most city in Alaska and is the Salmon Capital of the world!  It is known also as the rain capital of Alaska!  It receives over 150 inches of rainfall on average with a record of over 200 inches of rain...we caught Ketchikan on a rare sunny day and we were told that it was indeed rare, the day before we came the rain was "coming in sideways" as it was blowing so hard...

We started off the day with yet another "duck tour" of the town and the bay, really a fun time with our captain Bruce and our narrator, Lacy...They took us around to see the sights of Ketchikan and tell us some of the history of this interesting town...it was a pretty rough town with miners and loggers and gold hunters coming through...

One of the more famous, or perhaps I should say infamous buildings in town was Dolly's house on Creek Street, a local brothel in the red light district...turns out that the salmon weren't the only creatures interested in spawning!:)  Men of the town would frequent this home of ill-repute but would get caught, so they made their way down a dirt trail which became known as "married man's trail"...a preacher in the 1930's bought the house next door to Dolly's and tried unsuccessfully to reform this seedy part of town, the only thing he was successful in doing was changing the house number on his house from 28 to 208 to try to escape the stigma of being in the red light district!  There were 33 houses of ill-repute operating in the late 1800 and early 1900's...

 

You can see by the above pictures that pretty much the whole city is built on stilts.  The water level changes as much as 25 feet from low to high tide...Ketchikan is an island itself and is ruggedly beautiful. 

We got to see some amazing bald eagles in Ketchikan, I found out that bald eagles don't turn "bald" until they are about 5 years old, the younger ones have brown feathers on their heads until they mature.

 

Of course, this town is known for the salmon that swim up stream and spawn in part of the Ketchikan river.  Because the waterfall in town is so challenging for the salmon to overcome, a "salmon ladder" was put together to help the salmon get past the waterfall...

 

The salmon ladder bypasses the waterfall and helps the salmon move past that obstacle...you can check out this youtube video for a better look: Salmon Ladder Ketchikan

We returned to the ship and started out for Juneau, Alaska, we enjoyed some amazing food on the ship and when we came back to our room, this was hanging from our ceiling...our favorite of the towel animals:

More to come...thanks for tuning in!

Cruise done, off to Turkey!

Well, I had hoped to update the blog a little while we were still on the cruise, but my laptop crashed and so it has made it difficult...I now have a back up computer that I am using, so will be able to share more later when I have some time to put it together...but for now, here is Paula and I at the Sea-Tec international airport waiting for our first leg to Turkey!

It's about 5 am, and our first leg is to Chicago, then connect to Frankfurt, Germany, then to Istanbul, Turkey and then finally to Izmir, Turkey!  We will join our friends, Susanna and Ismail Omac who will show us the sights of the 7 Churches of Revelation (Revelation chapters 2 and 3) over the next couple of weeks.  CTK member, Jeff Bolduc will join us for the first part of this experience as he and his wife, Tammy have already seen part of this while they were on a Mediterranean cruise over the past couple of weeks. 
Tammy had to head back to Fallbrook, but Jeff will join us tomorrow in Izmir from Athens...Thanks for all your prayers and concern...the Alaskan Cruise was beyond amazing!  It was nice to have so many amenities at our finger tips...but we are really looking forward to this next journey!  More later when I have some time...but we board soon!  Love and blessings to you all!

Arrived in Seattle

Well, Paula and I arrived in Seattle yesterday, June 4...flights couldn't have gone smoother!  We stayed with a friend of ours, Sarah Urie at her parents home in Sammamish, Washington, about 45 minutes East of Seattle.  She introduced us to her next door neighbor's donkey, Gus...(pictured below).

Gus makes a lot of noise at all times of the day and night, very late at night, but he's cute so we didn't get too mad! We played board games with Sarah...Settlers of Catan and Dominion and of course, Nertz!  I dominated Thursday night...Friday morning, not so much...:(  But we had a great time!  Thanks Sarah!

We left Friday morning, June 5 for downtown Seattle, where we headed for the Space Needle...but we got distracted by this:

 

In World War II, they used Amphibious Assault vehicles for water to land attacks, like D-Day, they were called "Ducks" and they looked like this in those days:

After the war, they retired them and sold them off to private companies, like the one we took today...this is what they like today:

As you can see, Paula and I got fully into the experience!  We rode in our "duck" for about an hour and a half, touring downtown Seattle and then entering nearby Lake Union, one of the many bodies of water that are all connected in the Seattle area...so beautiful!  Our captain, Barry D. Treasure was our fearless skipper who narrated the whole experience...think 90 minute Jungle Cruise like at Disneyland...I think I have found what I want to do when I retire!:)  I think he was a Viking Fan, check out his hat!

Some pics from our trip:

 

After the "duck" experience, we went to the EMP Museum, or Experience Music Project and Science Fiction Museum...it started out as only a music museum but has morphed into music appreciation, and Science Fiction movie and a other things...really an eclectic mix of pop culture...but it featured a Star Wars exhibit that was amazing!  I was in heaven, it was really cool!  Here are some shots...

 

We set sail for Alaska tomorrow...can't wait!  Thanks for checking in!