Pictures!! Alaska Vacation pictures!!

[aalmiss]

For those on the other pilot wives websites, you may have already seen this... like Barbara. I'm slowly getting around to sharing.

We had a wonderful vacation. We took our time driving to San Francisco, leaving on April 30 - arriving May 3. We stopped in Amarillo TX, Flagstaff AZ, and Bakersfield CA on the way.

We met Jim's dad and his wife at the airport May 4 and boarded the cruise ship, Celebrity's Mercury, in the morning on the 5th. Some dear friends of ours drove in from Orange County to join us on the cruise.

Cruise Ports of Call:
San Francisco
At sea
Vancouver, B.C., Canada
Inside Passage (cruising)
Ketchikan
Skagway
Sitka
Hubbard Glacier
Juneau
Inside Passage (cruising)
Victoria, B.C., Canada
At sea
San Francisco

It was overcast in Ketchikan and we had a bit of fog early one morning while cruising the Inside Passage. Other than that the weather could not have been better. It was sunny and sometimes reached the mid 60s during the day. We took a few tours (in Skagway & Sitka) and went to a salmon bake/cook-out in Juneau where they told us to just ignore any bears that might wander in. :shock:

The 6 of us had early dinner seating at 6:00pm and had a table for 8 that we shared with a couple from Utah. We "adopted" the other couple on the first night for the duration of the cruise.

On one of the formal nights we were informed that one of the ship's officers would be joining us at our table for dinner. It turned out to be the ship's doctor and he sat beside Jim. It was kind of funny because the doctor was used to being questioned by the passengers when he joins them for dinner. But not long after he sat down at our table he found out that Jim was a captain with American on the 777. His eyes got wide and he spent the rest of the dinner asking [i:a5bf74e01a]Jim[/i:a5bf74e01a] questions. Occasionally he would be polite and have a quick conversation with others, but then would turn his full attention back to Jim.

We had an AWESOME time on the cruise and didn't want to get off the ship when we got back to San Francisco on May 17. We said our goodbyes to everyone and headed back east toward home.

This time we stayed 3 nights in Flagstaff. The first day we headed to Sedona AZ to spend the day and took a 3 hour four wheel drive off-road open air Jeep Wrangler tour. Oh, did I mention that the Jeep was pink?! We went places that we could have been thrown out of the Jeep if we hadn't had our seatbelts on tight. WONDERFUL! Weather was clear and in the 80s.

We spent the next day at the Grand Canyon. People say that you can't really appreciate the Grand Canyon from pictures or even on TV. Those people are right! It's awe-inspiring. Again we had perfect weather... clear and high 60s - low 70s.

After leaving Flagstaff and about 50 miles from Amarillo Jim noticed problems with the transmission. This was on a Friday night and we found out that the dealership service department in Amarillo wasn't open on Saturdays. Jim didn't want to take the chance of driving it all the way home - Sooooo, we spent the night in AMA, then we left the car at the dealership so they could look at it first thing on Monday, rented a car, and drove home. The dealership called Monday and said that it was fixed. We non-reved to AMA on American Eagle Tuesday morning, picked the car up, and had another leisurely drive home.

Now I'm having vacation withdrawals.

Jim took his PC Tablet with him so he could download the pictures he took everyday... And take pictures he did! Toward the end of the cruise he had already taken 1,800 photos!! Whoa! I've been working on the computer with photos since we've been home. I have been sifting, sorting, separating, and saving. I've been staring at the monitor for so long that I think my eyes now have a permanent deer in the headlights look. And the mouse is my new best friend.

So now I'm ready to share a few of those photos with all of you. Just use the link below to see about 35 photos.

http://f2.pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/ibj...97&.src=ph

Dianne

P.S. I seem to always have trouble with my pictures not showing up. Can you see them?