North To Alaska

For those of you that have followed my blog for some time...you know how I love for Veronica and I to go up to Canada for our annual fishing trip. Unfortunately, this year we will be unable to do this. Due to the economy and our recent need to purchase a new vehicle, we had to make some changes to our usual vacation plans. Please do not think that I am complaining about the changes that we had to make. With the way things are nowadays, any vacation no matter what it might be, would be a welcome break from the daily grind and we are thankful that we can go. As I had mention a while back in this blog, Veronica and I will be going on our first cruise ever and it will be to Alaska. The price of cruises have really dropped drastically due to today's economy. I was really surprised to see 12-14 day transatlantic cruises going for $1200-$1400 per person. I have also seen Alaska cruises for $399.00 per person for an inside stateroom. Our cruise will be round trip from Seattle and we will have ports of call in Skagway, Ketchikan, Juneau and Victoria, BC. As I did with our last Canada vacation, see September 2008 blog entries, I will be taking you along on our vacation. This time I will be doing things a little differently. Do to the outrageous cost of internet access on the ship (and slow access at that), I will not be taking our laptop. Internet access on the ships are $100 for 240 minutes... 40 cents per minute at the cheapest rate or 75 cents per minute on the pay as you go highest rate. I will be writing a daily journal entry in a composition notebook that we bought, so that when I get back, I can do daily blog entries telling and showing you everything about the ship, ports of call and excursions that we take. I will cover everything from food to whale sightings.....hopefully!!! This vacation will be one of many firsts for me. Usually when Veronica and I go somewhere, at least one of us has already been there in prior lives. Veronica has been to Seattle but I have not been there or anywhere on the West coast. Neither of us have been on a cruise or to Alaska, so both of those will be firsts for us. The plane flight will be the longest that I have ever been on. we leave Norfolk on Saturday, May 9th at 5:40AM, arrive in Houston at 8:00AM. We then leave Houston at 9:20AM and arrive in Seattle at approximately 12:00PM. You have to figure in the time zone changes too. It will be a very long morning. Once we get to our hotel, we will have them secure our luggage and we will head out to do some sightseeing. We will definitely be going to Pikes Place Market. I am sure that we will end up going to bed early that night. Last thing we would want to happen is having our ship leave without us. I also forgot to mention that we upgraded our camera and also got ourselves a new camcorder during this last Christmas season. So this vacation we will be able to get better photos and videos to share with you and share I will.