Escape to Alaska

What do you do when the weather forecast looks like this?

You leave town for someplace cooler.  Like, Alaska cool.  

We've known that we wanted to go on another cruise with our kids and I've always wanted to see Alaska that way ... so it made for a fun trip opportunity.  We asked our parents, who all immediately agreed to go along, and begged my sister to allow her 12 year old daughter to come, too.  That made a happy party of 10.

Some of us drove to Seattle ...  (Haley, happy with her road trip junk food.)

These girls are road trip troopers.  Between watching movies and playing Name That Tune on my iPod, we were happily entertained for the 13+ hours each way.

We met up with the rest of the party who flew in, had a lovely lunch overlooking the water near Pike Place Market...


... and then we headed to the dock and loaded the ship.   Grandpa & Grandma Mayfield's 1st ever cruise and Grandma Farley's 1st in the last 45 years.

Paige has been so excited for this cruise that she would watch countless video clips on Princess Cruises' website.  She full-on memorized their 3 minute video commercial.  

She knew every inch of the ship before we even stepped foot aboard it.  We'd always ask her which floor things were located on.  It was pretty funny.  She couldn't contain her excitement when we actually boarded the ship that she had dreamed about for months. :)

Leaving Seattle ...

Once we were on our way, it was a mixture of all that cruises entail .... swimming, checking the ship schedule for various activities (comedians, dancers, big musical shows, speakers about various Alaska stuff....), the kids checked themselves in & out of the kids/teen clubs, ice cream 24/7, scenery and wildlife watching on deck (we saw lots of Shamus and bald eagles), shopping on-board, etc., etc.  I love cruising. :)

Couldn't quite make it through the evening shows.  All of that rocking lulled her to sleep.

The girls had the fun chance to bake in the galley with the real chefs of the ship.  Pretty cool.

One night on the ship, the teen club had a talent show ... and my 3 oldest kids performed (Sydney was one of our 5 children on the trip :)...)

We had 4 stops ... Ketchikan was warm & sunny, which is rare since it's a rainforest.  

We took a van tour of the town and discovered 'salmon berries.'  They grow wild and the girls picked them whenever they could.

Ketchikan also has a totem pole village.  Christian enjoyed making up histories about each totem pole, telling the girls about how "This eagle sprouted out of the head of this ancient tribal chief..." etc. Cracked us up.

  A human totem pole.

Juneau was rainy, but a fun little town.  Christian & Grandpa went ziplining through the forest.  So beautiful!

Hello, tiny Russian nesting dolls! This one was $900, so I only bought 2. (haha)  Why so much Russian stuff in Alaska?  Because Sarah Palin can see Russia from her house. 

The rest of us explored shopped around town, and then the girls & I rode the tram to the mountain top and down several times.  

Skagway, Alaska on the 4th of July.  It's a tiny, quaint little town and a fun place to be on the 4th.  They had a cute little parade that actually went down the Main Street twice, since it didn't have that far to go anyway. :)  Lots of people, festivities, foot races for the kids, and 3 cruise boats that probably quadrupled the size of their town for a few hours.

Mike & Grandpa competed in the town's "egg toss."  They hold the world record for the most people competing in an egg toss at one time.  Yay Skagway. :)  They filled up all of Main Street and tossed raw eggs at each other.

They made it several rounds, taking a step back each time.  Then Paige took a raw egg to the head and that ended our family fun.

Last stop was Victoria, British Columbia.  I've never been to Canada so it was a 1st for me and for the kids.

This kid always seems to find girls wherever he goes.  Good thing this one was only cardboard.

The joke for most of the cruise was that we only ever saw Christian at dinner or at ports.  He met a group of friends in the teen club on the very first day of the cruise and spent every moment on-board with them.  I'm sure the major draw for him was the cute blonde from Australia :) but I digress ... He had a great time, even if we saw very little of him most days.

And that's the whole cruise....  Very fun, happy to be with the people we were with, loved the whole experience. :)

Mike & his parents drove quickly home the minute we docked.  The kids, my mom & I all went to visit  my 94 yr old Grandma Hixon in Seattle before mom flew back out.  We don't get to see her very often at all, so I'm happy we had a chance to re-introduce her to these more-grown-up kids since last she saw them.

Knowing we wouldn't make it all the way to back to Utah in one day at that point, we decided to take the scenic route down through Portland, Oregon.  I'd never been there and we were only a couple of hours away.  I couldn't get over how beautiful it was!  Totally sunny, which I realize is a rarity there, and greenery, water and bridges everywhere.  Loved it.  We went to see the Portland LDS Temple....

We walked into the Visitor's Center and ran into Carly from our neighborhood, there on her mission.  Totally forgot that's where she was!  So fun to see her as a missionary.  I took a picture and immediately sent it off to her mom. :)

And that was the trip!  Loved it and can't wait for the next one.  :)