Today we reached the westernmost point of our summer travels. Lincoln City, Oregon is a beach resort community on the Pacific coast. We will be here for three days before heading to a reunion with the Nolens in Salt Lake City. This past weekend we were at our nephew's home in LaCenter, Washington. Much fun, music, albecore tuna and dungenous crabs. Yum, yum! The photos that follow are from our Seattle stay but simply did not fit in to past posts.

The world famous Pike's Fish Market in Seattle where fish fly.











Penny and her sister, Jean. Jean moved into her new place today.

Sunset leaving the Strait of Juan de Fuca.

Setting camp at our nephew's place in La Center, Washington.

Nephew John working the strings for us.

Our Alaskan cruise included stops in Juneau, Sitka and Ketchican. In Ketchican, we saw the location of the proposed billion dollar "bridge to nowhere". It was accurately described. None of these cities (or villages) are accessible by car. The only way to get to these exciting places is by air or water. Juneau is the state capitol and has a population of 30,000, half being state employees. Although most inhabitants live in a fairly compact area, Juneau is the size of three Rhode Islands.
With this visit to Alaska, Penny and I can now say that we have been in all 50 states. We have seen about .001% of Alaska but it was enough for us to conclude that Alaska has the best scenery in the country and we will surely return to see more.

Proud and spectacular! We saw hundreds of eagles.

This is a fish ladder at a salmon fish hatchery. Thosands of salmon are returning home for spawning. Notice the disturbance in the water to the left as salmon crowd to enter the ladder.

This is a Catholic chapel on the shoreline and is also the summer home to the Juneau Symphony and Opera Reporatory. The gentleman was our tour guide, a third generation resident of Juneau. We rarely take shore excursions offered by the cruise line. Rather we look for a local to take us wherever tour busses don't go. It's better and cheaper.

A portion of the fishing fleet at anchor after transferring the day's catch to the mother ship and now resting up for tomorrow

Totem pole under construction

Its been a while since our last entry. We enjoyed an amazing week cruising the inside passage of Alaska. More about that later. The other main event of our Seattle stay was to visit with Penny's 85 year old sister, Jean. We had not seen her in two years. Jean is very special to Penny and I because we would not have met had it not been for Jean. Jean joined us on the Alaska cruise. She had aged a great deal in two years and her living arrangenents were not suitable. So, we rerranged our plans to help Jean to a better place. She now has new hearing aids that made a huge difference (she was deaf as a bat) and Monday she will move into her new quarters at a nicely upscaled assisted living facility. This has been a good time for us and for Jean.
As we were traveling to Seattle two weeks ago, we learned that our nephew was very seriously injured in a motorcycle accident in Maine. Fortunately he is recovering ahead of anyone's fondest expectations, thanks in large part to his close and very supportive family.
We will be visiting with another nephew this coming weekend near Portland Oregon and look forward to that. Then in Mid July, we will visit with yet another nephew in southern Utah. This nephew is the brother of the one in the accident so we will hopefully be able to celebrate Dave's full recovery.
Now to Alaska. We can now say that we have both been in all 50 states. Our brief tour enabled us to see perhaps .001% of Alaska but it was enough for us to conclude that Alaska is probably the most beaautiful and scenic place on earth populated by rugged but kind people all of whom are proud of their state.
Today, our photos will focus on a fiord called Tracy's Arm. Snow capped mountains rise along both shorelines. Melting snow produced hundreds of dramatic waterfalls. Ice bergs create a challenge to the ship's navigator who try to finesse them while remaining clear of hazards along the rocky shorelines. There were several blind ninety degree turns and s-turns which caused this old salt to marvel how brilliantly this 935' vessel made its way to the huge calving glacier at river's end. Enjoy the photos.

One of the icebergs. An iceberg is defined as a floating chunk of ice 14' long or larger. Even at a slow 3 or 4 knot headway a berg this size can put quite a dent in the hull of a cruise ship. There is one dent on the Oosterdam (our ship).

A harborseal hangin' out on a berg. He just turned his head , looked up at us and went back to his nap as all of our 935' passed by.










Yea, well... ther is a ninety degree turn to port down there followed quickly by a 90 degree turn to starboard. Did I mention that our ship has a 110' beam? On our return trip we passed another cruise ship going the opposite way. Whoa!






Hundreds of beautiful waterfalls












                                                                                  End of the line... the North Sawyer Glacier.
                                                                                 The photo does not do justice. This baby is huge

Arrived in Seattle today. For the statisticians in the crowd, we left Punta Gorda 3,928 miles ago. Our modus operandi is to park the RV and explore areas by car. Our dingy, (tow car) has had 3,170 miles added to its odometer. We purchased 500 gallons of diesel fuel and averaged 7.85 miles per gallon. The average price of fuel was $3.83 a gallon. When one considers that our old Magic Penny power boat averaged 3/4 of a mile per gallon, things are looking good.
On Sunday we will board the Osterdam of Holland America in Seattle for a seven day round trip cruise through the inside channel to Alaska. After that trip, Penny and I can say that over our 51 years of marriage we have been in every state of the union. Pictures will follow when available.

What a joyful place this is, Coeur d'Alene, Idaho. The village is situated on a 30 mile long scenic lake and is somewhat like Lake Placid, only much larger. The 4th of July week is the busiest week of the year and we have had a ball. We have circled the lake by car and seaplane, toured a silver mine, ridden a gondola to a mountain top and viewed fireworks from a tour boat. There must have been a thousand boats waching the festivities out in the lake. And this is just for starters.

I've had another hair cut since this picture was taken.

This is the very $wish and impressive Coeur d' Alene Resort on the lake shore right downtown



The reort has this famous floating green and hole on its golf course. They move it every day..as if that would help.
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It seems like Colorado, Wyoming, Utah and Idaho are all experiencing record forest fires. Indeed they are. My nephew has a beautiful country home in Utah which is very much at risk.
We, again, have been remarkably fortunate. We have experienced none of it; not even the smoke. Our route has been north of the fires. In a couple of instances fires have started two or three days after we have left the area. We have enjoyed other good fortunes on our travels.  We have had only 2 days of rain plus about one hour of scattered showers in our first month since leaving Florida. The roads have been excellent and road construction delays have been less than an hour in total to this point.
Coeur d' Alene is delightful. Our plan is to board an excursion boat for 4th of July fireworks and then attend a live concert, Ring of Fire, the life and music of Johnny Cash.
The photos that follow include sights along the way that not been in our blog.

A grey wolf...no, not seen in the wild but in a reserve.

An old western bar dating back to and essentially unchanged from the 1890's. This bar is in the famous Occidental Hotel in Buffalo, Wyoming. A sign in the hotel window says, "Wireless in 1890... still wireless".

Elk

Pronghorn antelope

Ancient indian carving

So much has happened since our last entry. This picture was taken from an excursion boat on Lake Poulson. Before leaving Polson, we toured a huge buffalo preserve and attended another rodeo. What a blast.
Yesterday we arrived at our campsite in Coeur d' Alene, Idaho. Coeur d' Alene (CdA) is very much like Lake Placid in the Adirondacks but 20 times the size. We circumvented the lake today. It is spectacular and the homes bordering the lake eliminate any doubt that there is a lot of wealth in thse Idaho hills.

Deer and elk shed their annually. All of these were picked up in the buffalo preserve.
















Montana's Big Sky. It is impossible to capture the magnificence and magnitude of this viewpoint. The distant mountains to the right of the picture are in Canada, about 35 miles to the north.

This is about half of a group of bass boats who had just completed a weekend competition on Lake CdA. The catch of bass are kept in live wells. Here for the measuring, they are placed alive in large bags filled with water from the lake. They are taken out of the bags and the catch is weighed. The fish are then returned to the same area in the lake where they were caught.
If they are as stupid as one might expect they will probably suffer the same fate next weekend. Go figure, but it was fun to watch.