Flamingo on a Stick

Got word today that our 5th Wheel is on its way! Thought I'd stand in for John tonight and let you know our great news. Now the interesting part It won't be ready until the day before Thanksgiving. Not sure how all that is going to work but we've changed our plans so that we will be here and ready. Since I don't have photos of our actual rig thought I'd give you a couple from the website for now. Enjoy the preview.

Our cruise ended at Vancouver, which was why the cruise required passports, but we had signed up for an extra day in Victoria and a couple of extra days in Vancouver before returning home. Before leaving the ship, they delivered our bill for our drinks, the pictures we had purchased from all those evenings we had dressed up, and the gratuity for all of the above (remember that handy credit card they gave us at the start of the trip?). Uffda. We had a fine time. Our trip through Canadian customs was expedited because we had to catch a bus to Victoria. That worked out well. Victoria is an island, so we got a ferry ride also. Our first stop was Butchart Gardens in Victoria where we spent a few hours wandering around in an amazing botanical garden. The weather was back to being perfect again, so it was a very pleasant visit. The bus then dropped us off at the Empress Hotel, right down town Victoria. The Empress is an old restored hotel, so the rooms are large with high ceilings and you can...

Next stop was Ketchikan, where of course the weather was perfect. More shopping, but we took advantage of the weather to walk around the town. There’s a salmon stream where a lot of the shops are (former bordellos that serviced the miners during the gold rush days) , that provided a great view of the salmon. This stream was more like a series of cascading waterfalls. The salmon would queue up waiting (resting?) for their turn to try to jump from pool to pool as they attempted to get past the waterfalls. It looked like a lot of work to me, and a lot of them ended up back at the start where I suppose they rested up for another try.

Turns out we didn’t have to wait until Ketchikan for the rain because our next port was Juneau, and it was raining. Juneau was our first scheduled excursion; a “bike and brew” where you tour some of the local scenery on a bike and end up at a local brewery. The group that put it together also provided rain gear and since we were in a costal rain forest, I suspect most of their trips were in the rain. It was a lot of fun. We not only got to see a glacier, but we were able to sit on one, or at least a piece of one. Our guide was a young man who had just graduated from the local high school and was looking forward to attending the University of Alaska. The glacier we were admiring had dropped chunks of ice into the lake we at and someone had talked him into retrieving one of the ice chunks as it floated by. Which he was able to do without getting too wet, so we took turns getting our picture taken with a piece of ice. The brewery was for the Alaskan beer we had at the Seattle airport comi...

The time line for the cruise is already getting blurred in my mind. I remember Glacier Bay National Park. Did you know we have a national park that is a huge bay surrounded by glaciers? It even has park rangers who were nice enough to join the cruise (they tool around in their own boat) while we were in the park. Most nights we dressed for dinner and had our picture taken. Part of the entertainment is to get your picture taken by the ship’s photographers and then try to find your picture among hundreds of others the next day when they were posted on these big boards. There were also live bands, comedians, gambling (when the ship is at sea, and you can gamble with your ship credit card) and just hanging around the ship ke pt us entertained. We were having a great time, but still welcomed the chance to get back on land when the ship docked for the first time at Skagway. Skagway, as you might expect for a cruise ship port, has a lot of tourist shops, restaurants and bars. I understand the...

Dining on a cruise ship is one of the main events, so I guess it’s not surprising that there were lots of options on how and when you wanted to eat. With traditional dining, you dress up and eat at the same time and with the same people each night. We selected the “anytime dining” option when we booked the cruise. This means you still have to dress up (mostly), but you sele ct what restaurant you want to eat at each night, and go when you want. Usually you’re seated with other “anytime” diners who just happened to arrive at the same time you did. That was the case for our first dinner on the ship. We looked good. I couldn’t even remember the last time I wore a suit coat and tie to dinner, but it still fit. We were seated with three other couples, introduced ourselves and ordered drinks. Conversation was easy and we were both enjoying ourselves. Just like it was supposed to be. Then Janie had to sneeze. Of course, she knows the current best way to sneeze: you sneeze into your arm so you...

There was plenty to do and eat while we waited for everyone to get on the ship. We found the work-out center. It was very well equipped with machines and free weights. It was the last time we would see it. There must’ve been a dozen bars and almost as many restaurants and cafeteria’s. We would eventually experience them all. Plus room service. Twice. There were multiple pools and several hot tubs, but it never really got warm enough for that to seem like a good idea. The one time we jumped in to one of the rearward pools (that would be the stern) we had it to ourselves. Could’ve been because it was midnight. This boat is big enough that it came as a surprise when I realized we had actually pulled away from the dock. I was watching the shore guys cast off our anchor lines but then got distracted (had to find another beer). No tugboats. This ship can go sideways and backwards by itself. Probably steer it with a joystick. First chance I got, I would talk my way onto the bridge and see how...