Hi Everyone! Sandy White here (aka Babe, Mom, Lolo, Aunt Sandy). With family spreadout across the land, we are finding that blogging is a great way to keep in touch. I enjoy checking out all of your blogs and hope you have fun here also! Family is such a key part in all of our lives and is very important to me. Love to you all and enjoy sharing our times toget her and the beauty of our desert!
Up Close and Personal - Photography by Sheila
Saturday family and friends headed up to Oak Glen for our annual apple picking venture. Chelcie grabbed my camera and decided we should get creative with our picture taking. She has quite the eye and got me going at it also. We had fun with the black and whites.
Corynn and Camdyn were in a fashion show last Saturday at the Lakewood mall. Jack Sparrow and Cinderella! How pwetha!! They got to sit on a CHP cycle after it was all over.
After leaving Anchorage, traveling down the coast and through a 2 and a half mile tunnel, we boarded the ship in a little town of Whittier. What an adventure we were starting!
First morning we woke up with the view of the glaciers as we headed into College Fjord. Quite spectacular! We explored the ship and Mark played a little golf (won 2nd in closest to the pin) and a little chess and I took a swim and tried his cigar!
Next day we headed into Glacier Bay. It was damp, cold and windy, but beautiful! The colors on the glaciers are so spectacular. That is a seal sitting on one of the little icebergs.
Tuesday we docked in Skagway, which was my favorite town. It was colorful and still had its uniqueness of history. We took a buggy ride through the city, checked out the train (the front is set up to cut through the ice) and then headed out on a catamaran to Glacier Point. We hiked through the forest and then got into canoes and paddled to Davidson Glacier. Awesome!
Wednesday we were in Juneau, state capitol. We suited up into extremely warm clothes and hiking boots and took the helicopter up to Mendenhall Glacier, where we hiked around for about an hour. We got to drink true icy glacier water as we watched it flow into bottomless holes. What an experience! Once back in town, we visited the Red Dog Saloon for some smoked salmon.
On Thursday we were in Ketchikan for our snorkeling adventure. Due to health reasons, Mark was the designated photographer and got some really cool pictures! The snorkeling was not like snorkeling in Hawaii, it was more of just having the experience. I saw a lot of starfish and jellyfish, but not many fish!
Friday was just a relaxing day cruising and then we docked in Vancouver on Saturday, where we took a city tour that included Stanley Park and the totem poles, before heading for home.
Enjoy an extremely small few of the pictures!
The other morning at 6:30 am, as I was driving home from Curves down 111, I couldn't resist the beauty of the sky with its patchy white clouds and the sun peeping through. What a great picture that would be of the highway with the mountains, clouds and sunrise in the distance, but I didn't have my camera with me. Normally, by the time I get home (which is only a matter of minutes), the moment is gone.
Anyway, as soon as I got home, I went into the yard and took the first few pictures, but then decided to run down the street to the gate and out onto Fred Waring to see what I could catch. As traffic was light, I stepped out into the street and snapped a few pictures into the sun.
Imagine my delight, when a couple of days later I uploaded the pictures and found that I had caught some balloons going up, off in the distance!
We left Denali behind as we headed south to Anchorage. The drive was beautiful and we made several stops along the way to take in the sights. We had a great bus driver (her name was Anna Heim-can't forget it-just think Disneyland!) who would stop and pull over whenever anyone thought they spotted any wildlife off in the distance. Mark yelled to stop as he thought he saw a moose or caribou off in the distance. Sure enough, people started saying they could see it. Funny thing though, what Mark thought was the moose, wasn't, and even though others said it was there, he couldn't spot it! Power of suggestion??
We stopped at the Iditarod Trail Headquarters in Wasilla and checked out the new puppies (Chelcie was madly texting me to bring one home) and took a ride in the wagon pulled by the dogs.
Next stop was to the Eklutna Indian Village to visit its unique cemetary of colorful "Spirit Houses." Quite colorful indeed! Here's a little history for you - "Eklutna Cemetery, dating back to 1650, became a historical park in the 1980's and consists of a small museum and gift shop, prayer chapels, two Russian Orthodox churches, and the cemetery that is still used today. More than 100 brightly-colored "spirit houses" are on the burial ground, a custom that combines Athabascan and Russian Orthodox practices."
We then pulled into Anchorage for a one night stay as our last land stop before boarding the ship. In the morning we went to see "AurorA - Alaska's Great Northern Lights" which is as close as we got to seeing the Aurora Borealis. Pictures were beautiful though! Then we took a sightseeing tour of Anchorage before heading for the ship.
