Alaska: Part I

Alaskan wildflowers

Soooo. We went on a cruise to Alaska last week! Talk about relaxation. I don't think I did anything but eat and sleep. (Maybe that's why I don't have very many pictures of our trip, either.) There were 13 restaurants on the USS Gluttony, and of course, we had to try all of them. (Of course!) Thank goodness for the fitness center, although I probably should've visited it more often than its neighbor, the ice cream shop. Why, why would you put an ice-cream shop right next to the gym?

We also made lots of new friends on the ship, mainly because mostly all the service workers were either Filipino or Indonesian. Our stateroom steward, the ice-cream lady, our waiters and waitresses, the youth counselor at the daycare, and on and on. Nonna and Poppy were popular with the waitstaff in particular, because they'd speak Tagalog (or Cebuano, or Ilocano) to the Filipinos, then turn around and speak bahasa to the Indonesians. It was like a parlor game after awhile... can you speak Croatian? How about Russian?

As for Alaska itself: I wish I was a better photographer, because the shots I took don't do any kind of justice to the amazing wilderness. Here are some from our first couple of ports in Ketchikan and Juneau:

This totem pole stands near an entrance to the
Tongass National Forest in Ketchikan

There's a teacher read-aloud story in the third grade anthology about Tlingit Native Americans from Ketchikan and their totem pole traditions. My students and I (both years I taught 3rd) loved that passage about "talking trees", and we'd hunt for images of totem poles and find out stories behind some of them. I was thrilled to see the poles up close and personal, and wished I could've brought all my students with me!

Staying cheerful in the rain (it looks like it stopped, but
30 seconds after I took this, it started up again.)

The bald eagle, baddest m*f*kin bird in the world
(I'm not fond of birds anyway, but these ones are hella scary.)

There are bears where?

Mendenhall Glacier in Juneau