a post long overdue....

Welp, happy 2010 world!

And now let's go way back to 2009. Halloween to be exact. Last year I was ketchup. I changed things up a little and became mustard and made my friend Britni be ketchup. She loved (meaning hated) dressing up. Best comment of the night "thanks for bringing the condiments." Which tells you how lame the other comments we got were.

Jason and Heather came to Utah the week before thanksgiving. A couple of weeks before that, they invited me to drive back to California with them for Thanksgiving. Why not? So i hopped online and got a one way ticket back... for free, through credit card reward points.

It was a splendid time. Thanks Kathy and Jason and Heather for the wonderful holiday! I didn't take any pictures at Thanksgiving... so in a nutshell, here are the other things we did... Huntington Beach, it was pretty cold, but still pretty.

Saw a pelican just hanging out... I didn't want to get too close...
On another day we visited Hollywood. What a ridiculous place. But kinda fun to see. They wouldn't even let their own kind into the Chinese Theatre! jk. But the doors were locked...
Um, I just think she is so stinkin adorable! No matter where she puts her fingers...
oh haaaaaaay!

And the walk of fame... um is that what it's called? i don't even know.

We also stopped by the LA temple... that temple is HUGE!

And headed out to Santa Monica. Lovely.

My first ferris wheel ride ever. And it was on the pier so there were some fantastic views of the ocean and beach. And these two ladies. And the little guy.
What a glorious day it was! Much warmer than when we went to Huntington. This boy is such a happy fun kid. Well that other guy too. But i'm focusing on the little guy :)
Anyway, all in all, it was a great Thanksgiving. Thanks again!

dumb dog

So at work, there is a dog that lives here. Honey Bear. That's her name. Two other dogs join her daily and all three dogs just tromp around together everyday. Gross. I'm sorry but I just don't like dogs. So anyway, on Saturday, I accidently shut honey bear in the big room where we do all our activities. I didn't know she was in there. Oops. So she was trapped in there for just over 24 hours. I'm pretty sure I traumatized her. Don't worry, she's actually been through a lot worse. Last year over the 4th of July, she got scared of the fireworks, had an adrenaline rush and jumped the fence in the yard, was lost for a few days, and later was found on the freeway wandering around being a dangerous hazard to cars. The highway patrol was ordered to take her down, but instead they just peppersprayed her and took her to the animal shelter which is where we eventually found her. That dog has some good stories. Anyway, back to this weekend. She was trapped, scared and hungry. Lucky for her, our social skills class was doing a gift exchange and had presents under the tree... some of them containing food items. She had a busy 24 hours...

I can't help but laugh about the situation. Most of the things were still intact, but the swiss rolls were all gone, most of the huge box of Dots were gone, 18 of the 20 candy canes were gone, and there is still a gift missing that I'm not sure what it was. And only 8 of the 40 items need to be replaced so that's pretty good, yes?

Anyway, I still have thanksgiving to blog about. Hopefully that will come soon... like before Christmas rolls around...

Prince Rupert

I know, right? This is the LONGEST vacation ever. And it's been over 2 months since I've been back and I'm still blogging about it. But hey, it's the last port and I couldn't leave it out! Although, there isn't really much to talk about. This was probably one of the lamest ports I've ever been to. And the weather didn't help. It was pouring rain for the most part, and the weather was so bad that most of the shore tours were cancelled. We weren't going to do any of them anyway since they were all a couple hundred bucks, but still, I felt bad for the people who were planning to go!

So this is what you see when you come off the ship.

You probably can't see clearly, but this is the phone booth. I didn't know people still used those. haha. Every port we went to there were tons of people using and waiting to use the phone booths. Random.

And here's the welcome sign when you hop off the ship.

And of course I found a funny sign to take a picture of. I think it's the illustration that makes me laugh most.

We were only in port for a few hours and then back to Seattle from there. The weather got progressively warmer and clearer as we came south and on the last night, there was a lovely sunset. I ditched all the participants... ok so maybe not ditched but I sat them down for a show, told them I'd be right back and ran up to snap some shots of beauty. If i hauled all the participants up there, i would've missed it!

So there you have it. The Alaskan Cruise that never ends. But it just did. The end.

Skagway

Port three was Skagway. We had to wake up at the crack of dawn to get ready, eat breakfast and be to our shore tour by 8am. We did the scenic Whitepass train ride... a really really long train ride... i think it was supposed to be 20 miles round trip but ended up being 28 miles or something. Let's just say that it was 2 hours too long (four hours total and it was supposed to be three hours... which is still too long). It was also a cold rainy day.

Here's the big long train. I'm not sure how many cars, but it was long... just like that train ride. LONG.
We started out having a pretty clear view of everything we passed. And it was pretty scenic.
And as we climbed higher and higher up, it got a little foggy. Ok, a lot foggy. But it still looks kinda cool in pictures.
But after you cleared all that fog, it was clear again and pretty!

We saw a lot of random things. Like this old bridge. Looks a little rickety...
We even went into Canada and up as far as Frasier, BC... which doesn't mean much to me because i'm not sure exactly where that is. So here is the US flag, Alaska flag, BC flag, some unknown flag... oh maybe Yukon? i dunno... and the Canada flag at the midpoint of the train ride.
And this sign showing... well, you can read.

On the way back down it was foggy most of the way. We went through this tunnel and the tour lady over the loud speaker said "and after we come through the tunnel, you will be able to see an immaculate view" ...and we came out and... ta da... what a view.
By the end i was just ready to get off, plus we had inhaled a lot of sooty air on the way down... and ugh, it was just getting uncomfortable and... a little boring. Back in town, we found a good touristy spot for pictures...
And then did some shopping in this cute little town! They've tried really hard to keep it looking like it's original self.

And for some reason, i thought this was hilarious, so I had to take a picture. Something about the word butts.... yeah, i'm in high school still. hahaha.
More cute Skagway (yeah, you hate all these boring pictures)
After a full day of outings, we went to the chocoholics buffet on the ship in the later evening. Like the last cruise, the smell was overwhelming but there were several cool chocolate sculptures. Here's a samplin'.

I took a few things to sample... and gross, it was all a mistake. I'm not sure I liked any of these things...

Last port coming up: Prince Rupert, BC!

Juneau

Welcome to the capital of Alaska - Juneau. Glaciers were our main attraction today.

We didn't have a shore tour scheduled here. But we hopped on a bus and went to Mendenhall Glacier. Here's our group.

And here's me at the glacier!

And here is the pretty glacier on its own. You can't get any closer because that lake is in the way. Actually, you could pay for a helicopter tour that lands on the glacier... but that costs like $500! Loaded people do it though, we saw at least 3 or 4 of them while we were there.

After seeing the glacier and doing more shopping in town, we went back on the ship to rest. Later that day after departing Juneau, we went down Tracy's Arm to see Sawyer Glacier... it's there in the distance.
But since there was so much ice in the water, we couldn't get much closer without it being too dangerous. No Titanic incidents here! Here is a piece of glacier ice in the water.
More ice in the water. I was trying to do some interesting shots. And here's me. I know, I look like i've photoshopped myself in. But really, i'm there, don't I look cold?! Because it was. Freezing that is.
Skagway's up next!

Alaska! - Ketchikan

Well, it's been a while. A long while. But I did go on an Alaskan Cruise for work earlier in September. It was a jolly good (and tiring) time. We had 13 participants and 2 staff go. It was a bit breezy and chilly at times - although that didn't stop me from wearing flip flops on a daily basis. But on the ship, I didn't feel like there was as much to do as there was when we went to Mexico. Probably because it was sunny and warm going to Mexico so we could swim and be outside and play basketball... but this time we were cooped up in the ship for some of the time and could only stand about an hour or less when we stood on the deck outside because it was so cold! They had the normal shows in the evening... but oddly enough, 4 of the 5 shows I'd seen the previous cruise! Even the menus on the ship were mostly the same. In fact, we were aboard the SAME ship that we were on when we went to Mexico. The Norweigan Star.

Anyway, I know you just want to see pictures so here goes (of the first couple of days and when we were at our first port, Ketchikan. This here is Seattle, our starting point. We were eating lunch with this lovely view when we boarded.

Then we set sail and all night and all day and all night again we were at sea.

In the morning we arrived in Ketchikan, Alaska.

Salmon Capital of the World (except we didn't eat any)

We shopped for souvenirs (of course! ...as soon as we boarded the airplane to go to Seattle, a few people were already asking about when we were going to shop for souvenirs. Oh brother!). Then we explored a little. And visited the Totem Pole Museum (or something like that).

We passed this sign which I thought was hilarious so of course I had to take a picture.

And did a little waiting around (those are a couple of our guys) for what we really came to Ketchikan for....

The Great Alaskan Lumberjack show!!! They did all the fancy competition stuff... chopped wood, sawed stuff, climbed these thingys, you know, all that stuff you see on ESPN. But it was also like an entertainment show so there was a lot of talking and trying to be funny and whatnot.

Here they are log rolling and this guy on the left just won!

After the show we had to hop right back on the ship so we could set sail for our next destination. We went outside and braved the cold for a while and there was a beautiful sunset. Actually, we were outside because we were told we might catch a glimpse of some whales during this time.

And we did! What? You can't see it? See that little bump right in the middle of the picture? Aw yeah, that's a whale, baby!

Here's a closeup of it... in case you don't believe me.

That's right, I made up for the whale I missed seeing in Hawaii! We actually saw a number of whales and water blowing out of their blowholes. And a bit more of them, but really, it's hard to catch a picture when they are only up for a couple of seconds AND your fingers are about to freeze off. Here's another whale. Yup, right in the center again.

Here's the zoom in... it's its tail going in the water! Woot woot!
So yeah, that excitement ended our day and it was fabulous to watch the whales. So that's Ketchikan. Next stop: Juneau, and hopefully I'll get to that post sooner than later!