~ My Cruise Vacation to Alaska ~
or,
How I Gained a Pound a Day,
The Princess Way...
by Mama_Bear
Jkphoto and I decided for our vacation this year we would escape the 110 degree heat of Central California and sail roundtrip from San Francisco to Alaska on a ten day Princess cruise. Our Inside Passage itinerary aboard the cruise ship "Regal Princess" included Victoria, British Columbia, and Ketchikan, Juneau and Skagway, Alaska. To our delight, the average daytime temperatures were in the 60's and mostly cloudy, just exactly what we were hoping for after the long hot summer of non-stop sunshine and sizzling heat back home.
More photos of
Humpback Whales HERE.
There is a saying among those of us who like to spend our vacations cruising the high seas...."You board as "passengers", you leave as "cargo". And that's the truth! The cuisine is five star and available 'round the clock.
I highly recommend a cruise vacation to Alaska or anywhere you've been wanting to go. If you'd enjoy a little TLC, impeccable service, wonderful food expertly prepared, interesting ports of call and lazy days sailing the seas, a cruise has all of this and more. In the evening there is gaming in the ship's casino, a different floor show in the showroom each night, and dancing until the wee hours. After dinner, you can relax and unwind in a cozy piano bar or spend the evening sipping champagne cocktails on the Promenade Deck. The great thing about a cruise is, you can be as active or as lazy as you like. (No, really......I DON'T work for the cruise lines....but I probably should!)
Bon Voyage!
Travel Broadens
Travel broadens. I concur.
My backside will too aver.
As the miles to you bequeath,
A very broadened underneath.
You can beat this. Get a bike!
There may be aspects you won't like.
The downhills are a wonderment;
The price for them will leave you spent.
And so we ride, through chemistry,
We seek to find diversity,
Our journey of a thousand mile,
Ends at a distant mall for a while.
For when you get there, you will see,
It's like the place you used to be.
If you want travel, take a look,
Inside the pages of a book.
NicknamedBob . . . . . August 20, 2006
After several trips on Amtrak, it was with great anticipation that we planned this year's vacation.
We would take Amtrak from Fresno to Eugene, OR, rent a car and visit relatives in Redmond, OR and then Boise, ID before returning the car to a Fresno location.
The trip from Fresno to Martinez was uneventful, but the nightmare began after arriving in Martinez at approx 9:30pm. Scheduled departure was 11:00 with arrival in Eugene at 12:44. It had been a long day and Prissy Missy was tired (as were we all). The train arrived at 12:30. Prissy Missy had been begging for a bed for at least an hour.
We awoke to find that we were not only 1 ½ hours behind schedule but were running about 4 hours late. After calling the car rental agency to alert them to the delay in picking up the car, we sat back to enjoy the scenery.
After many stops for freight trains and track repairs, we realized we would not get into Eugene until 6:30 or later. More phone calls were made. A call to the car rental agency and were told they would be open until midnight. No problem. ;) Then a call to my aunt to let her know we would not see them until the next day. Several more calls looking for a place to spend the night. Sorry, no vacancy, sorry no vacancy; we finally quit calling out of frustration.
We arrived in Eugene at 10:50pm exhausted. The attendant at the Eugene station said there were no rooms available due to a concert being in town. She did find us a hostel with one bed. Needless to say, we passed.
When we arrived at the airport to pick up our car the only SUV available was a Mercury Mariner. We had asked for a full size SUV (gas hog though it might be.) The agents at three car rental agencies gave us several phone numbers to check for available rooms. We even made calls to Albany and Salem, all to no avail.
We drove to three different motel rows and all we saw were no vacancy signs.
Finally about 1:00am we found a super Wal-Mart where we bought four small pillows and four throws. About 1:30am, we made the best of it and slept in the Wal-Mart parking lot.
After exchanging the small SUV for a minivan, the nightmare finally ended. ~JustAmy~ |
Laughter is an instant vacation.
~Milton Berle~
I travel not to go anywhere, but to go.
I travel for travel's sake. The great affair is to move.
~Robert Louis Stevenson~
Thanks to the Interstate Highway System,
it is now possible to travel across the country
from coast to coast without seeing anything.
~Charles Kuralt, On the Road With Charles Kuralt~
Travelers never think that they are the foreigners.
~Mason Cooley~
Gracie1's 1000+ Miles
on the Back of a Harley
FReeper Gracie1 and her husband had been to a few motorcycle runs at Hollister, CA. Early in the year, they decided this was the year to make the pilgrimage to Sturgis, South Dakota for the "granddaddy" of all bike rallies.
Never being on a car vacation of more than 12 hours, Gracie1 was concerned about the 18 to 24 hour drive to Bozeman, MT and then 8 hours on a bike to Sturgis. They took turns driving to Bozeman and made several stops for stretching and picture taking to make that part of their vacation enjoyable.
After driving through the starkness of northern Nevada and the vast salt flats of Utah, they were pleasantly surprised with Salt Lake City. “I’m used to big cities being dirty, mean and nasty, not clean, tidy, with nice polite people”. They found the SLC area very pretty.
They rented a Harley in Montana and rode about 450 miles to Sturgis. They rode through Indian reservations, past the Little Big Horn battlefield and saw herds of antelope. By the time they found the campground, they had missed the Gretchen Wilson concert, but did see Lynyrd Skynyrd.
They stayed at the Buffalo Chip Campground. The first morning Gracie1 poked her head out of the tent and thought, dang, this looks just like Woodstock! According to Gracie1, it was definitely an R rated campground. Her husband had heard about this and bought a digital camera with a zoom “so I can zoom in on the nekkid women”. Since Gracie1 was in possession of the camera, he only took one picture of a half nekkid woman. :)
They spent three nights at the campground but spent the days sightseeing. They went to Deadwood, saw Wild Bill Hickock’s and Calamity Jane’s graves and the saloon where he was killed. They saw Mt Rushmore and the Crazy Horse memorial and drove all through the Black Hills.
When they got back to Fresno they heard that the Outlaws had a shootout with the Hells Angels at Custer State park. There were a lot of Outlaws in Deadwood. Lots of colors from the Nomads, Banditos, and other clubs they hadn't heard of.
After the three days at the Bike Rally, they took an extra day and went to Yellowstone. They saw Old Faithful, elk, buffalo, Yellowstone Falls and canyon, and the lodge. The lodge was old and absolutely beautiful!
Click HERE for photos
and the unabridged version.... |
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