We've been married for 15 years!!! Let's go to ALASKA!!!

Part 1:  July 1:

We woke up (if you can call it that...since we really didn't sleep) at 2:00am on July 1 to drive down to LAX to catch our 6am flight to Seattle.  The flight was good, but we will NEVER take Spirit airlines again.  They charge you for EVERYTHING...even water on the flight!

Anywho, we got into Seattle at 9am and took an Uber to the dock.  We had planned on dropping off our luggage and seeing the city before getting on the ship at our designated time of 2pm, but they told us that we would actually be able to get on earlier if we just hung out.  So at around 11am they let us into the terminal building to check in, then we waited for 1 hour and got on board.  We put our things away, and went to have the first of our many "free" lunches at the buffet.

Our room :  Partially obstructed window......not really partially.....we looked into the lifeboats and could see the water through the windows of the lifeboats...but it was nice to have a window and not feel claustrophobic (plus it saved us $400)

The room was actually a pretty good size

The shower not so much...

Our obstructed view....that's the lifeboat you're seeing :)

We said good-bye to Seattle and then spent a day at sea on our way to Juneau. We were trivia masters (not really...but we went to most of the trivia challenges) and ate way too much.  Then we got to Juneau.

Day 3: Juneau
We had booked an excursion to take a bus ride up to the Mendenhall Glacier. On the bus ride up there we saw about 10-15 Bald Eagles just hanging out in a field. We arrived, took a hiked down a paved road to the closest we were allowed to go to the glacier, saw some bear tracks next to the lake, and got really close to the waterfall and really wet.  It was rainy, chilly, but super beautiful.

Getting sprayed by the waterfall with super cold run-off water!

Glacier on the left looked blue in the overcast light. Waterfall on the right. 

Path up towards the glacier. You can se it on the top of the middle of the picture.

After the excursion we went into town, had some local grub...Teresa got the fish and chips (yum) and did a little bit of tourist shopping.  We got back on board, changed for dinner, more trivia, tried to watch a production show (really, really bad), left, and hung out.  Sunset was at 10:30pm, so it felt much earlier than it was. We set sail that night and made our way to Skagway.

Skagway:  Day 3.......July 4.   Temp 48 degrees and rainy.  

We didn't book an excursion for Skagway since it was the 4th we thought there would be a lot going on, and there was.  The town is pretty tiny, but really cute. They had a parade down their Main Street and lots of events all day long like arm wrestling competitions, egg toss (which was a bad idea......eggs left on the street =smelly) , pie eating contests, etc...   We decided to go on a hike up to Lower Dewy lake.  It was rainy and the hike was uphill the whole way there. So by the time we made it to the lake we had both taken off our jackets (too hot) and were drenched.  However, it was really worth it.  Hiking out in Alaska is not something you get to do everyday! Everything was so green!

On our way back down the mountain after seeing the lake.  Cruise ships docked behind us. We're drenched!

After the hike we went back to the boat to change into dry clothes. We ate lunch on the boat since it was "free" and then went back into town for shopping, watching the local July 4th festivities, and generally hanging out.  We both thought this was the best day of the cruise thus far. Skagway is super full of crazy Klondike gold rush history. The whole town is basically a historical sight complete with archeological digs and great stories.

That night we set sail around 8pm for Glacier Bay.  We saw some locals setting off fireworks as we left. Again...BEAUTIFUL!!!

Mammoth

The next fun thing we did this summer was to take a family trip to Mammoth. We rented a 1 bedroom condo from VRBO which was perfect for us. There was still a lot of snow in the Sierra so some of our plans had to be rearranged. The kids still loved to swim in the pool and we took a gondola ride all the way up to the top of Mammoth Mountain,  11,000 ft!  We had planned to go to the Devils Postpile, Red's Meadow and Rainbow Falls but those we all closed. We also had planned to go to Yosemite Via Tioga Pass Rd but that was closed at the entrance gate to the park. We drove up there anyways to see all of the snow.

Tioga lodge collapsed due to the heavy amounts of snow this winter!

As the snow melted, the river grew so much that it even washed out the cabins that used to lay on its edge!

On the drive back from Tioga Pass we stopped at Mono Lake. There are giant tufa towers that are millions of years old. It was scenic but pretty hot.

We also went and visited the hot springs, but most days were in the upper 80's and at that elevation, the sun is HOT!!! So.. ..we ended each day by the kids getting to go swimming. We ate good food and had a good family fun time.

RTSZA