Enjoying Our Dash

After Juneau, it was off to the compact city of Skagway in southeast Alaska, which is set on the Inside Passage a popular cruise route. It’s home to gold-rush-era buildings, now preserved as part of the Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park. https://www.nps.gov/klgo/planyourvisit/visitorcenters.htm . The White Pass & Yukon Route Railroad runs vintage locomotives past the famously steep Chilkoot trail and offers sweeping mountain views during its climb toward Canada. In town, you get to step back in time and relive the Gold Rush. Streets lined with wooden “buckboard” sidewalks and restored buildings, whisk visitors 100 years into the past to a time when gold-crazed stampeders clamored to the Klondike to strike it rich. Back then, 20,000 miners filled this compact town, a stark comparison to the less than 1000 who call it home today. Skagway is a pure gem ensconced in between soaring mountains and located at the northernmost part of the Inside Passage. It i...

After Ketchikan, we headed to Juneau, which is Alaska’s capital, and is also the state’s second largest city. It is a unique destination for a myriad of reasons.  Juneau sits nestled up next to the Gastineau Channel in the Alaskan panhandle with no connecting roads to other cities – making it only accessible by water and air, including via Juneau cruise port. In Juneau, we had a chance to go on a whale watching tour, which was an absolutely amazing experience. When we boarded our ship, the Chilcoat, our Captain asked each of us to tell him our expectations for the adventure. One of the passengers said that he wanted to see Orca whales. The Captain visibly groaned and said ‘well you may be disappointed because only about 15% of the tours get to see them’. Despite that bit of information, we set out to see what nature had to offer us. The entire boat ride was so exciting. At our first stop we saw several humpback whales, unfortunately, none of them wanted to ‘show us some tail...

This summer we will be heading up the East Coast as far north as Bar Harbor, Maine, then going across the top of the US to places like Vermont, Niagara Falls, Toledo, and Mackinaw Island. As we continue our quest to sleep at least one night in every state in the nation and to see as many national parks as possible, this trip will get us very far down that road. As far as national parks go we intend to see Acadia, Indiana Dunes, Cuyahoga Falls and Hot Springs. This year we will visit quite a few places that we have never been. We will also hit a few location where we have previously lived. This will give us a chance to spend time with some family members in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Ohio. We have 104 nights planned, so our adventures this year will be slightly longer than last summer. Here’s a look at our path. We had a fantastic time on last summer’s trip and we are really looking forward to this summer. What are your plans for the summer? We’d love to hear th...

Before we head out on our Summer Trip, we managed to sneak in a cruise to Alaska on the Celebrity Solstice out of Vancouver.  We spent the night before the cruise a few blocks from the cruise terminal. Check out the beautiful view we had from our hotel room. We awoke to the cool sight of our ship pulling into the dock.  The ship was absolutely beautiful. We saw our first eagle as we were sitting at the Sunset Bar before we left the dock.  During our cruise we visited several locations in what is called the Alaska panhandle.  Our first stop was Ketchikan. Ketchikan, near the southern most tip of Alaska’s panhandle is a sleepy little town with a very dramatic title. Squeezed between mountain and sea, it is hard to imagine how the town got the Tlingit Indian name, Ketchikan, which means, “Thundering Wings of an Eagle”. For the rugged soul that climbs the 3,000 foot Deer Mountain that overlooks the town, the mystery is quickly solved. From that vantage, th...