We just got back from a cruise through Southeast Alaska. It was a mix of good and not so good. I used to live there, and the boys had never been, so we decided to make the trip. I had enough leftover airline miles to pay for our flights, and we were going to fly up to Ketchikan and stay for a week, but then found a really good price on a cruise and decided to cruise instead, arranging to disembark in Ketchikan (the last port call of the cruise), and stay for a few days, and then fly home from there. Perfect vacaction (at least on paper). We did have a very nice cruise. The weather was a little iffy, but not terrible, and we had fun stops in Juneau and Skagway, but a freak pacific storm caught us on the way to Ketchikan Wednesday morning. The weather was so bad that the captain couldn't dock the ship and we had to bypass the port! No stop in Ketchikan! I was really disappointed not to see all of my old friends, and Introduce Rick and Isaac to them. Ketchikan had been the main reason for our entire trip, and I had been excited about showing Rick what a beautiful place it is. Instead, we ended up having to scramble to make arrangements to get home from Vancouver, since our flights had been booked from Ketchikan. Fortunately, the ship's staff were very helpful about letting us call the airline from the ship to make arrangements (normally costs $10 per minute, and they put the calls through for free. This saved us about $400 dollars). All flights were booked out of Vancouver until Sunday evening, and our ship was scheduled to dock on Friday morning, so we ended up busing down to Seattle, flying from there to Sun Valley, then Idaho Falls and then back to Boise -- but at least we got home! Other than the unfortunate ending, we had a great time! We met some really great people, and Isaac proved to everyone just how cute a kid can be. Check out our photos!
