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