Cruising though Wells Passage, we met the Alaska State ferry Aurora, which was sailing from Whittier to Valdez. Prince William Sound is spectacular, but that doesn’t really look like summer, does it? Whittier has about the worst weather in Alaska outside the Aleutians. Directly ahead in the darkest part...

Today is the final full day of this voyage – tomorrow we dock at Whittier. It’s now 03:15, 1 hour and 8 minutes before sunrise, but it’s fairly bright outside. We’re just north of Yakutat, sailing on calm seas for Prince William Sound and College Fjord. We had an...

It’s a few minutes after 04:00 am, and we’re about 2½ hours away from picking up the NPS rangers at the mouth of Glacier Bay. It’s looking like a decent day, with a cloud ceiling at about 3,000 feet but no rain. I had a ball yesterday. I think...

As I start writing this, it’s 03:15 am and the Coral Princess is in Stephens Passage, 44 nautical miles south of Juneau at the mouth of Tracy and Endicott Arms. Sunday was so busy that I didn’t have anything to eat until after my second presentation, which ended at...

It’s Day 2 of my first Princess cruise to Alaska, and my first job as ship naturalist. I was up early this morning as always, and the Horizon Court was the source of coffee to get it started and to greet the sun just after 05:00. As I start...

There used to be a little gem of a lake on the outskirts of Whitehorse. Easily accessible, Ear Lake had been a popular destination for almost 100 years – even poet Robert Service used to go there, and in a 1905 poem about the future of Whitehorse, he envisioned...

Today was a funny day, a sign of something no doubt, but I’m not going to try to figure out what, just in case the answer depresses me 🙂 At the edge of the Mary Lake subdivision where we live is an abandoned stock car track. A honest-to-gawd good-ole’-boy...

A couple of days ago, history-hunter Michael Gates called me to ask permission to use a couple of photos I took of a Klondike-era grave in a presentation. That spurred the thought that I should update my photos, as my last visit to the site was in 2003 –...

There’s a very long “to-do” list hanging on the fridge, and only 3 weeks until I head out of town again. The weather is mostly sunny and warm, so I’m not inclined to work on inside projects. The first outside job the take care of was simple – clean...

I had to go to Skagway again yesterday – oh gee darn, one more day avoiding reality 🙂 We actually had a very good reason to go this time – the in-floor heating system I ordered for the kitchen reno was sitting at the Skagway post office. Even though...