November 9: Today we visited Martinique, “the island of flowers”. This French colony gets few cruise ships, in my opinion because there are few English-language excursions available and Euros are used in trade. US dollars are only grudgingly accepted even in Fort-de-France, at poor exchange rates and with change...

November 8: Today’s port was Bridgetown, Barbados. Deciding what to do here was tough – as much as I wanted to explore some of the country’s history and architecture in particular, Cathy found a catamaran tour that including snorkeling with turtles. Snorkeling with turtles was on the Bucket List,...

St. Lucia was one of the 2 ports that I’d been particularly looking forward to, and I was very much saddened to see the devastation and death brought by Hurricane Tomas just a week before our scheduled arrival. We’d had a very friendly email discussion with the tour guide...

I’m already a day behind, as we’re now sailing from Saint Lucia to Barbados, but here’s what happened before that 🙂 November 5: Winds of 30-35 knots caused the outside decks on the Noordam to be closed for 2 days. Having a nice breakfast delivered to our cabin is...

As I write this at 06:40, 25 minutes past sunrise, we’ve just passed Anguilla and are approaching Sint Maarten. These 2 islands are the first land we’ve seen since leaving Fort Lauderdale, which is now 1167 miles behind us. The weather has been poor, with winds averaging 30-35 knots...

On Monday morning we flew out of Whitehorse, and we’re now on board Holland America’s Noordam at Port Everglades, Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Three flights totalling 9 hours got us to a very different world. Here’s how it went… November 1: We took off at 11:10 am – this is...

People often refer to granite in ways that suggest its solidity, its permanence. In terms of a human life span that may be true but it’s interesting to see how granite reacts to the forces of Nature in the long term. In response to the photo of a balancing...

I was going to entitle this post “Icy Fog Spells the End of Motorcycle Season”, but it’s more about the dam. It was -15°C when I woke up this morning, so when I went into town I took the car. The fog seen in this photo was sitting in...

I had to drive down to Skagway yesterday to pick up some stuff from the post office before we go on vacation next Monday. The weather report for Skagway showed clear skies and the forecast was for sunshine and 42 degrees, so it looked like a great day to...

The roads were in fairly good shape yesterday so I thought that I might get one more ride on the motorcycle before putting it into storage for the winter. The photo below was shot a few minutes ago – it turned out to be not as bike-friendly a day...