Alaska, Day 1, Arrival

I am going to attempt the daunting task of recreating our recent trip to Alaska. So much to mention! Thought I'd break it up into baby steps for myself.

First, Craig & I took Clipsie, the big black dog, to Bethany's house for the week. We ate at Wing Stop and then dropped the boys off at their mother's house. We spent the night at Grandma Dixon's house and woke up at 5am to leave for the airport by 5:30am for a 7:15 flight. Caught the flight without any problems. Got to Seattle where I expected mom and dad to be waiting for us. They were nowhere around. I called them on the cell phone and they were in a completely different terminal. Their tickets showed a departure gate that was not anywheres near where they were supposed to be. Lucky we got together and all was well. We had to shovel food in our mouths because we had less than 30 minutes until the next flight.

Here we all are having loads of fun on the airplane!

We arrived in Anchorage at 1:05pm Alaska time (that's 4:05pm Central Time). We found the Cruise people and stood in line to get our passes to get on the bus to Whittier, 1 1/2 hours away. We waited for about 45 minutes and were called. Mom and dad got on fine, but there were not enough seats for the rest of us. They gave out too many tickets, I guess. So mom and dad made their way to the ship while the rest of us waited another 45 minutes for the next bus.

On the drive to Whittier, we stopped at this near frozen lake for pictures. We had to wait for a few minutes anyway for the tunnel to open in our direction. There was a railroad track that was cut through the mountain a few years ago and recently, they let cars use it as well. This is 2 1/2 miles long and its a one way, and traffic switches every half hour. So traffic was stopped to let the other direction of traffic through.

We came into Whittier about 5pm or so. (Whittier time) The town has a population of 800 in the summer and about 30 in the winter. The first glimpse of the cruise ship was awesome.

By the time we ate at 6pm, I was exhausted! I couldn't stay awake ANY longer. I went to bed at 8:30 but Craig couldn't sleep. He stayed up by himself until midnight. He noted that the sky never did get dark. The sun went down, but it stayed dusk all night. Cool!