Cruise Day 3

Day 3 of our cruise was a port stop in Juneau! Alaska's tiny isolated capitol. (They don't like Sarah Palin there, because she wants to move the capital to Anchorage.) It's only accessible by boat or plane, so even as a capitol city it retains its quaintness. Above is a view as we were pulling in toward Juneau.
The first thing we did was take a shuttle up to Juneau's famous glacier, and went on a little hike to a waterfall that was near it.
This is the Mendenhall glacier. It is beautiful and grand (or so we thought until we cruised Glacier Bay the next day.)
It was a gorgeous day outside. Russ thought it was funny to see people sunbathing with a glacier in the background!

There were huge icebergs all over the place. They seemed out of place in the warm weather, actually. I don't think I'd want to go swimming in that water!
After visiting the glacier, we went on a gold-panning shore excursion. It was pretty fun-- and yes, we got a few gold flakes to bring home. It is actually quite difficult, but I'm sure would get easier with practice. Unfortunately I dropped my camera case in the water (thank goodness it wasn't my camera!) and then left it on the bus.
I love this next picture, with the sunlight streaming down on Russ. Need to cut out the lady on the side though!
After gold panning, we went to an outdoor salmon bake with all-you-could-eat salmon cooked on a big grill. A bit disappointing, actually, perhaps because the food on the ship was soooooo good. But there was a pretty area with some old mines and another waterfall.
And good-bye fair city Juneau!

Sailing off into the sunset. Oh wait, cruising off away from the sunset. Nearly time for a movie and midnight snack. Who am I kidding-- our midnight snacks were another full meal. No wonder I gained a few pounds.

Alaskan Cruise Day 1 and 2

Alaskan Cruise Day 1: We were dropped off at the pier by Russell's mom. The kids were pretty happy to have Nanna around for a week to be with them, especially Sissy. It was a bit hard to say good-bye though. BJ was really mad and wouldn't even look at us. I think he really wanted to go on the BIG boat that we pointed out and told him that mommy and daddy were going on it. But I'm sure he got over it quickly. Anyway, off to board the Zandaam with Holland America! The first couple of days we really didn't take many pictures because we were on board the ship the whole time and mostly in the middle of the ocean. We did have the chance to be on a game show called "stack that plate!" I got to put fake food one a plate attached to a helmet they put on Russ, and he had to run across the stage and dump it into a bucket. We didn't get great pictures, because the couple we gave our camera to were off on the side. But hey, we won! Yippee! Our prize was a free lunch at the super fancy restaurant on board. Other than that we spent our day reading and relaxing, and getting accustomed to constant vibrations and swaying.

The second day was spent all at sea, for that long haul up to Juneau. We read, ate, slept, read some more, ate A LOT, explored the ship, and just generally relaxed. Dinner that evening was a formal affair, so we got ourselves all gussied up and had a fabulous meal.

Here is our first towel animal:

Stay tuned for Day 3, Juneau!