Leaving Cool Oregon and a New Favorites List

At Durango RV Resort, Red Bluff, California...

 

(Yes, I'm behind with posts; I'm going to try to catch up.)

As we saw the temperatures televised in triple digits back home in Texas, Sandy and I looked at each other and said, "Now tell me again why we're leaving here?"

 

The 70-degree weather we've been enjoying in Winchester Bay and other Oregon coast locales seems surreal. Were it not for the influence of the cold Pacific ocean air flowing inland for several miles, the Oregon beaches would likely assume the "real" temperature of perhaps 90 degrees. So, we've been smug, thinking we're getting away with something God hadn't intended.

 

So knowing all good things must come to an end, we pulled in the slides and pointed Phannie away from the cool air and toward the furnace to which we'll be returning in a couple of weeks. Why? Well, the best reasons we can come up with is more medical and dental appointments with our own medical professionals and a nagging need to check on the house--who knows what may have broken there? (I think it is times like these when I really envy fulltimers.) I console myself somewhat with the knowledge that, on this trip, we escaped to cooler climes for a couple of months during most of the hottest part of the year. That was a first, and it was so appreciated.

 

Our first stop after leaving Winchester Bay was the Seven Feathers Casino and RV Park near Canyonville, Oregon. This is another "best of the best" RV parks in my book or rather, now in my blog. As mentioned before, I'm beginning a new page today, "Best of the Best RV Parks," for which I've placed a link above, near the "Favorite Restaurants" link. So why do this? Well, it's really for my own use, more than anything else. We seem to find ourselves gravitating toward the higher-rated parks and their more reliable amenities than those for which a low price is the only consideration. Some of the cheap overnight spots we've found from time to time have been sort of scary, and we think paying a little extra is okay to increase our comfort level. I needed a way to consolidate these better parks for easy reference, so I thought I would offer it to others, as well. I've looked at some websites that claim to list the best parks, but I've found they are not immune to being manipulated to include parks that shouldn't be listed. Bear in mind that this list is not nearly finished, and I'm hoping that readers will help with their own recommendations, as well as to help me catch those that don't belong.

 

So, how does a park make the list? Well, these are the criteria, as they appear in the actual page when you click on the link. A best of the best park must:

• Be reasonably secure and safe, not in proximity to troubled areas
• Be very well kept, with good landscaping and tidy throughout
• Not accept mobile homes or permanent residents
• Have all paved roads and hard surface pads that are reasonably level
• Accommodate big rigs, preferably with pull-thru sites
• Not accommodate very unsightly rigs
• Have 50 amp electrical service, cell service, free wi-fi and cable
• Have parking spots that are not crowded
• Not be too near sources of excessive noise 

 If I've stayed at one of these myself, it's pretty easy to make judgment on it. (I've placed an asterisk by the names.) If not, I do some research, looking at photos and checking out their ratings among the various directories. I also look at forums and solicit recommendations from readers. I'll also reveal a little secret: We have a rather serious dislike for parking places that are muddy. Most unpaved parking places have this potential, and we steer away from them whenever possible. I'm afraid we will never be boondockers, and we don't apologize for it; we're pretty well in touch with what we like and don't like. 

 

We found Seven Feathers RV Resort obviously worthy of inclusion, but we had a pretty good idea about that from some forums we happened to read. The photos below show what we think a best of the best park should look like:

 

 Now, I know what you're thinking: Mike, you have gone all hoity-toity on us, haven't you? Well, no. Remember that we live in a relatively modest house, and we don't buy new RVs or cars (any longer). For goodness' sake; Phannie is nine years old! It's just that we can stay in a lot of nice RV parks, eat out a lot of meals and buy lots of diesel fuel with the two hundred grand we've saved by buying Phannie and our cars used. She may not be the fanciest rig on the road, but she has all the comforts we could want, she is well cared for and she has repaid us by performing nearly flawlessly for years of fairly heavy use.

But, with all this in mind, we're not such prima donnas that we don't love discounts! We belong to several discount RV clubs and use their cards often.

So, I don't know if this new list will be useful to anyone, but it's helpful to me and, like the favorite restaurants list, it's just my opinion and worth only what it costs you. Now, remember, it's not nearly complete yet, so if you know of a best of the best park that meets all the criteria above, please let me know, and I may include it. I'll even give you an attribution.

One more thing: There are some really fine parks out there that may be among your favorites, but they don't have all the criteria listed like, for example, paved roads and sites (Goulding's in Monument Valley comes to mind--a great park, but no paved sites). That doesn't mean these aren't fine and desirable places, it's just that I have to draw the line somewhere, and the list can't be so long as to lose usefulness.

Next post: Crater Lake and Almost Off the Grid

Thank you, Lord, for this wonderful life; please forgive me if I don't appreciate it enough each day.

Kicking Back at Winchester Bay and a Visit With Friends

At Winchester Bay RV Resort, Reedsport, Oregon...

We enjoyed the smooth but winding highway 99 from I-5 over to Winchester Bay. Passing through Elkton, we stopped at Arlene's Café for a burger (pretty good), and while walking back to where Phannie was parked alongside the highway, we noticed a large rambling house on a small hill nearby and, for some reason, I zeroed in on a porch swing attached to the house that appeared to be inaccessible by its occupants. If you've read this blog for a good while, you know that I like to include photos of odd things, and I decided this was enough of an imponderable that I should memorialize it with my camera. Perhaps some of you can figure it out:

Arriving in Reedsport/Winchester Bay, we were delighted with our accommodation at the Winchester Bay RV Resort. I'm thinking about starting a new page on the blog that I'll call Best of the Best RV Parks, and this one would surely belong there. It is a premium park (with a premium price, I'm afraid), well manicured and spotless, and our parking spot was overlooking the marina on Winchester Bay. It just doesn't get any better:

Naturally, we had to try out some of the local cuisine, so we stopped at the Harbor Light Restaurant in Reedsport for a late supper:

 

 

We shared a seafood combo platter that was outstanding, so yes, this place goes on the list.

 

The next day, we decided to drive Mae down to Port Orford to drop in on Gordon and Juanita, longtime blogger friends who have visited us in Texas. They were more than cordial and showed us around their quaint little fishing village. Taking us to a great viewing area in town, they also arranged for good weather, and we were finally able to get a good long look at the iconic Oregon coast and, at the same time, we watched several gray whales that were frolicking and spouting not far from the hill upon which we were standing. Gordon loaned us a pair of binoculars and we had an even better view of the whales than we had on the cruise. What a treat!

 

Gordon and Juanita with Luna and Abbey. What a view!



After spending quite a while enjoying the view and watching the whales, our friends took us to The Crazy Norwegian for a fine dinner of fish and chips and fish tacos. The place was packed, and for good reason. The food was fresh and home cooked with lots of care. And yes, it goes on the list!

 

 

We spent a fun time laughing, talking and catching up, and we eventually had to say so long to this lively couple who are obviously loving their life and each other. Thank you, friends, for a nice visit!

 

Thank you, Lord, for this wonderful life; please forgive me if I do not appreciate it enough every day.

 

 

 

 



Goodbye, Portland

At Winchester Bay RV Resort, Reedsport, Oregon...

It is with some reluctance that we leave the far Pacific Northwest, as God has blessed the area with much beauty and a mild climate. I think especially about the climate part because, as we head south and east toward Texas, the climate will become increasingly, well, un-mild. I think we're going to have to find a place in the mountains to spend summers now that we're both retired. We seem to be getting less and less tolerant of the blazing Texas heat as we get older.

The Seattle-Portland area, with all its attractiveness, has some liberal quirkiness that tweaks a staunch conservative like me, but I try not to bring too much of that into this blog. I've found that most people's minds are made up about such things, and that's not what this rag is about, anyway. But, there are some things we became aware of here that we just don't see in Texas, like Prius taxicabs or billboards that read, "Tax the Rich."  (In Texas, we like the rich, because it's a good place to get rich.) We also don't see the point in paying inflated gas prices so someone can perform the unneeded task of pumping our gas. (Why stop there? Let's bring back elevator operators and put firemen back in the locomotives.) And lastly, we think the only pot smoking we should see is when someone burns the chili!

Okay, I digressed; let's move on.

As a last meal in Portland, we selected Seasons and Regions, a neighborhood place with an eclectic menu, where we ordered halibut amandine and a shrimp salad. They were wonderful, and not excessively priced, so they go on the favorites list!

Seasons and Regions Restaurant

Halibut Amandine at Seasons and Regions

As we moseyed toward the Oregon coast, we stopped at Tillamook to check out the Tillamook Cheese factory. We like their cheese and buy it in Texas, but we didn't know they make other dairy products like ice cream and yogurt. Their large plant complex is built adjacent to Highway 101, but we were surprised to find that the place was mobbed with tourists--a virtual madhouse!

Now we really don't like crowds, so what were we to do? We wanted to take a look, never having been to a cheese factory before, but was it worth it to brave the throngs of people who were spilling out of every door and waiting in long lines to buy cheese and ice cream? We decided to give it a shot, knowing that we may never go this way again. We made our way inside and up to a viewing area where, on a self-guided tour, we saw big blocks of cheese being cut and packaged in a part of the factory floor. That's it...not what you would call riveting, by any means. 

On the same level was a long counter where they were selling Tillamook ice cream, and they were doing a landslide business. We had to get some, of course, and I counted about 30 people ahead of us in line. There were even more people downstairs waiting in line to buy stuff in the dairy store, café and gift shop.

As I observed the mob of people crammed into the visitor area, I had to tip my hat to the Tillamook organization. By offering a rather rudimentary tour of their factory with no employees dedicated to conducting it and selling them mass quantities of their products while they're captured there, they rake in a pile of money with little overhead. Genius!

The ice cream? Well, it was good, but it wasn't Blue Bell (sorry).

The ice cream was a nice appetizer, but it was lunchtime, and there was no place to sit in the Tillamook headquarters café, so we crossed Highway 101 to a dumpy little restaurant called the Old Oregon Smokehouse. It appeared to be a prefab metal building, housing a seafood market and a small open kitchen behind the refrigerated case. The name was a complete misnomer, as there was no smoker that we could see and nothing smoked offered on the menu. My guess is that it may have been a barbeque joint that was turned into a seafood market. Since the fish looked very fresh (they said it was caught that morning), we ordered two servings of (what else?) halibut fish and chips. They were amazingly fresh and tasty, but I can't include the restaurant on my list of favorites because they didn't serve iced tea or glasses of ice, which was the kiss of death by Miss Sandy, for whom iced tea is as essential as water and air. She threatened to report them to the authorities, but I finally convinced her that their failure to offer iced tea was not illegal, to which she replied, "Well, it would be in Texas." (She's probably right.)


Thank you, Lord, for this wonderful life; please forgive me if I do not appreciate it enough every day.

The Surprising Evergreen Aviation Museum

At Pheasant Ridge RV Resort, Wilsonville, Oregon...

I know I may be pushing the limits of readers' tolerance for airplane-themed posts, but this part of the country is ground zero for certain events long ago that were highly contributory to my career as a pilot. So, you'll just have to grant me a little leeway, hopefully, as I get this out of my system.

We drove out to McMinnville, Oregon to the Evergreen Aviation Museum, located near the McMinnville Airport and across the street from the office building that housed Evergreen International Airlines, for which I flew as a pilot some 35 years ago. The airline, now out of business, was owned by Delford Smith, a successful aviation entrepreneur who, along with his late son, Richard King Smith, envisioned and built the museum. The star attraction, of course, is the "Spruce Goose," giant wooden airplane designed and built by Howard Hughes at the end of World War II.

I won't go into the long and dramatic story of the historic fabled airplane and its eventual move to Oregon from San Diego, but it is a fascinating one that is easily Googled.

I wasn't quite prepared for the very elaborate and modern campus that houses the winged flight museum, the space museum, an Imax theater and an airplane-themed water park. Here's a look at the buildings:

The Evergreen Aviation Museum (Where the Spruce Goose is Housed)

The Space Museum

The Imax Theater shows aviation and science-related films. They even serve popcorn!



The Indoor Water Park (Note the water slides exiting from the rear fuselage of the 747.)



The Spruce Goose is so large that it won't fit into the camera's field of view.

A replica of the Spirit of St. Louis offers a stunning comparison.



Bow line and anchor of the Spruce Goose

Here are the specs of the Spruce Goose (Its wingspan is greater than the length of a football field.)

Here are the specs for the eight Wright R-4360 Wasp engines.

Unfortunately, not on hand was the aircraft I flew for Evergreen, a DC-8-73 freighter, the first large jet transport aircraft I was trained to fly. It was a favorite of mine, and I really wish one had been on display. Here is a photo from the Internet:

I am including some more photos of airplanes below, but you can ignore them, as I am posting them for my grandsons. These are some of the airplanes that I have flown during my flying career, and Mason is already becoming very interested in airplanes and what his granddad's flying career was like. I have a feeling that Pryce will, too, when he gets older.



I know I've posted this before, but this is an Aeronca 7AC, the kind of airplane in which I took my first solo flight at the age of 16.



A Piper J-3 Cub. I flew one like this a good bit when I was a student pilot.

A Beechcraft Bonanza - A Cadillac of an airplane, in which I flew some charter flights.

A Beech 18, like one in which I flew a nightly mail run for five years. (Posted previously)



A Cessna 310 B - The very model in which I took my multiengine flight test (before I graduated from high school).

A Learjet like one I flew part-time for a timber company in Texas.

 

Douglas DC-3. I only flew this once, but it was enough to say that I flew it. I wish I had gotten a type rating in it.
 

Lockheed Super Constellation that I flew part time. I posted this before, but I wanted to get it in this collection. (Another interesting, but disturbing, note: The airplane I flew eventually crashed years later, having been mistakenly fueled with jet fuel instead of aviation gasoline.)

 

At a later time, I'll add photos of a number of other airplanes I flew, including the DC-9 and Boeing 727, the last two airliners in which I served as captain before retiring. I'll have to dig around in my records to find them, I'm afraid.

 

I was amazed how many of the types of airplanes I have flown were encountered on this trip. The visit to Evergreen was especially interesting to Sandy, as she had to remain home in Texas during my training in Oregon and had not seen this area that was such a significant part of my career.

 

Another positive note: The Evergreen museum was not crowded at all, which added much to the enjoyment of the experience. It seems to be a hidden gem of a place and, in my view, it is well worth the drive to visit.

 

Thank you, Lord, for this wonderful life; please forgive me if I don't appreciate it enough every day.

 



Goodbye Seattle, Hello Portland (Again)

At Pheasant Ridge RV Resort, Wilsonville, Oregon...

A few final thoughts about Seattle: First, we've found that it is impossible to see even a respectable portion of a place like this in less than 30 days, so the short time we were here doesn't give much heft to my remarks. However, that doesn't stop me from giving you a few impressions.

Seattle is certainly located in a beautiful setting between mountain and ocean, and it is home to economic and technology powerhouses that cause it to be a very desirable place to live and work. This is obviously not a secret, as the area draws new residents like moths to a flame. There is a downside, however; the place is full! There are perhaps locales in the country that are equally crowded, but somehow they seem eventually to accommodate everyone with new and bigger roads or an efficient rapid transit system. Seattle cannot build new roads, because it would displace too many people, and the light rail system is still in its infancy.

As a result, the freeways are packed almost all the time, regardless of the time of day. Downtown is crowded with people, and Pike Street Market is almost impossible to navigate. Popular restaurants often have wait times of over an hour. I'm sure this will be alleviated somewhat in the off season, but we found it a real chore to get around.

It's also very expensive. Here's a sample of some jaw-dropping prices we paid for the items listed:

Lunch: Two BBQ sandwiches (a mistake outside of Texas, Memphis, Kansas City, etc.), a shared order of fries, an iced tea and a soda - $35.00, including tip.

Dinner: One order of fish and chips, two fish tacos and two soft drinks - $43.00, including tip.

Dry cleaning: Five pairs of slacks - $39.00

Bear in mind that these purchases were made from mom and pop-style establishments that were anything but upscale. I'm guessing the recent minimum wage hike to $15.00 per hour in Seattle had something to do with this, but I don't know many people for whom these prices wouldn't be a problem.

Anyway, we finally got the message and were more much more careful, checking prices before we bought things and doing more eating in. We just wanted you to be aware, in case you come this way.

We arrived at our current location near Portland after a traffic-choked drive southward on I-5 and, after setting up, went for a familiarization drive around Wilsonville, Tualatin and Tigard. This area is very pretty and well kept, with things definitely slower paced than we found in Seattle. We stopped at a little mom-and-pop Asian storefront restaurant and had a great meal for a great price--almost dirt cheap after Seattle! Can you imagine shrimp and vegetable tempura for only $8.95?

Kung Pao Chicken

Shrimp and Vegetable Tempura

You're probably seeing a pattern here. We like to eat out, and oriental food and seafood are among our favorites (there could be worse things, healthwise, I guess). We are always trying new local spots like this, and we almost never patronize a big chain restaurant. Sometimes it's a real find, like this one, and sometimes it isn't. Rice Time makes it onto our list of favorite restaurants.

The next post will review our visit to the Evergreen Aviation Museum in McMinnville.

Thank you, Lord, for this wonderful life; please forgive me if I don't appreciate it enough each day.

A Look at Aviation Then and Now

At Pheasant Ridge RV Resort, Wilsonville, Oregon...

Yesterday was almost an overload of information and nostalgia as we toured the Museum of Flight at Boeing Field and the giant Boeing assembly plant in Everett.

The Museum of Flight is a large first class facility where you can view almost any kind of airplane from a Piper Cub to the SR-71 spy plane. Here are a few photos and a brief commentary:

I was surprised to see the SR-71 spy plane (the long sleek one on the floor in the above photo). Flown by the USAF from 1964 to 1994 on countless spy missions over hostile territory, not one of these stealthy airplanes was ever touched by a missile or enemy fire. Why? Flying at 80,000 feet and 2,000 mph, nothing--including a missile--could catch it! An engineering marvel, for sure.

An exact replica of the Lockheed 10 in which Amelia Earhart and her navigator disappeared over the Pacific Ocean in 1937.

A Lockheed Super Constellation sat outside the museum. An airplane like this was the first large transport airplane that I flew. It was 1968, and the airplane belonged to a travel club, having been retired from airline service years before. It was antique technology back then, even though it was a queen of the skies in its day. I loved the airplane; it was fun to fly, and I thought it was a beautiful and graceful design. The big R-3350 radial engines were pretty temperamental, though. The flight engineer was always busy tweaking them, as I recall.

The original Air Force One of the jet age was interesting to see and walk through.

More amazing was a tour through the huge Boeing assembly plant in Everett, Washington, where we viewed the B-777 and 787 production lines. It seems odd that I spent quite a few years flying Boeing airplanes, yet didn't get to see the factory until after I retired from flying. Oh, well; better late than never.

We were not permitted to take any photos in the plant, but it was an experience hard to forget. The advancements in aviation technology just in the time since I last flew big airplanes is breathtaking. For perhaps the first time, I felt like a dinosaur; today's airliners seem to be more like video games than the ones I flew. I take some consolation in believing that we old pilots actually flew the airplanes rather than watching them fly themselves. The tour is very well done, and if you ever get the chance to go, you should.

This photo doesn't begin to capture the vastness of the Boeing complex; there is actually more of the facility outside of the camera's view than inside it. The building on the left encloses the B-777 and B-787 production lines as well as others. The buildings on the right are the paint shops.

Thank you, Lord, for this wonderful life; please forgive me if I do not appreciate it enough every day.

A Senior Moment, a Sunday Drive and Chinese Food

At Lake Pleasant RV Park, Seattle, Washington...

In putting together the previous post, I had a senior moment--I obviously didn't know where I was. Bill, one of the regular readers, commented (jokingly, I found out later), that he didn't know where Paradise Lake RV Resort is, although he is familiar with this area. I didn't pick up on the fact that he was needling me, good naturedly, about having absent-mindedly misnamed the RV park in which we are currently staying in Seattle!

For quite a long time, I have had the habit of listing our location in a small header at the top of each post. This is because I have read so many RV blogs whose authors fail to do this and, if I see something interesting I would like to know more about, I may have to go back several posts to find out where they are, and sometimes even that isn't successful. For reasons I can't explain, I listed in the header on that post that our location was Paradise Lake RV Resort instead of Lake Pleasant RV Park, its actual name. When Bill gently explained that he was toying with me a bit, the light bulb illuminated. Paradise Lake?! Where did that come from? I corrected it quickly, but thinking all along that I must have dementia...or Alzheimer's or something. Then I settled down, realizing this was probably just a senior moment. Nevertheless, I've started checking the mirror every morning now to see if I know the person whose reflection I see there. 

Since it was a beautiful morning, we decided to drive around the city and get more familiar with it. It wasn't long, of course, until we were hungry, so we took inventory of favorite foods we hadn't been able to have since being on the cruise and came up with Chinese and Mexican. We really didn't feel right about having Mexican food (in this case, Tex-Mex) outside of Texas, as we had never had much success with that. So the choice became Chinese. Since Seattle has a lively Chinatown district, there couldn't be any other choice for a place to look. A quick check of Yelp for Chinatown Restaurants revealed Hue Ky Mi Gia as being a favorite. No, I can't pronounce it, but Sandy hit the "start directions" button and we were led to this nondescript building east of downtown:

When we entered, the room fell almost silent, as we were the only non-Asians there; and soon it became obvious that we were the only patrons who spoke English. These were good signs, I thought. (True foodies are never deterred by such things.)

My instincts were right: We ordered butter garlic fried chicken wings as an appetizer, and these were possibly the best wings ever. Served with a sweet chili sauce on the side, these alone would have been worth the visit:

Next came wonton soup and stir fried vegetables with chicken, pork, shrimp and beef. These were just as good as they look:

Yes, we ate everything (we hadn't had breakfast), and took great satisfaction when the bill arrived:  It was dirt cheap! This restaurant will definitely be added to our favorites list.

After touring the city a bit longer, we decided to stop in at Bakery Nouveau, again highly recommended on Yelp. They specialize in croissants, and we chose a large almond one that had just come out of the oven. I split it with Sandy, and we agreed that it might be the best pastry we ever ate. I don't even have a photo; the croissant was gone before the shutter clicked. This place will also go on the favorites list.

After this, we did a little shopping. The keyboard on my new Dell computer never really suited me, so I picked up a new wireless Logitech keyboard with backlighted keys. I must say, I love this feature. I prefer to write blog posts in reduced light, and the backlight has proved to be very handy; I don't know how I got along without it:

Sandy picked up a pair of shoes at a nearby department store, so we both were happy when we returned to Phannie, except she let it be known that her shoes were on sale while the keyboard wasn't. (I don't stand a chance in such a comparison; she is a professional.)

Thank you, Lord, for this wonderful life; please forgive me if I don't appreciate it enough every day.

Sitka, Ketchikan and Victoria

At Lake Pleasant RV Park, Seattle, Washington...

Because of the difficulty in attempting to post from the iPad and the weak Internet available on the ship, I finally gave up until we returned to Seattle. So this is a synopsis of our stops at Sitka and Ketchikan, Alaska and Victoria, B. C., Canada. I also might mention that I have also added photos to the previous three posts, beginning with "At Sea."

Sitka has the distinction of being the location of the signing of the Alaska purchase from Russia by the United States in 1867, perhaps  eclipsed only by the Louisiana purchase in terms of bargains. The cost? A little over seven million dollars.

The Westerdam is seen in the bay beyond the sign. Passengers had to be shuttled back and forth via tendering boats.

Perhaps its most prominent piece of architecture is a Russian Orthodox Cathedral, St. Michael's, built in 1848 and rebuilt in 1966 after a fire:

Cathedral of St. Michael

Altar Inside St. Michael's

Sitka occupies the largest land area of any U. S. city--2870 square miles--in which only about 9,000 residents roam.

The scheduled stops at Sitka, Ketchikan and Victoria were fairly brief, so we weren't afforded a great deal of time to look around, but we thought Sitka a quaint town and steeped in history.

Ketchikan is the southernmost city in Alaska and dubs itself the Salmon capital of the world. Like all of our Alaskan stops, the weather was terrible for sightseeing:

Harbor at Ketchikan

It is known for its totem poles that can been seen throughout the city.

Totem Pole in the U. S. Forest Service Visitor Center

One of the most interesting places in town is the visitor center for the Tongass National Forest. This is one of the largest and most expensive visitor centers I have ever seen, complete with a huge multilevel walk-through history exhibit and a big screen theater to show films depicting the area. One of the documentaries we saw was a scenic flight over Misty Fiord National Monument, surely one of the most beautiful wild areas in the U. S. This visitor center, over-the-top as it is, is a testament, probably, to the ability of former U. S. Senator Ted Stevens to bring federal funds home to his state. (It was dedicated to him when built.) Nevertheless, it should not be missed by visitors. This stop convinced me that I must return some day to take a sightseeing flight over Misty Fiord.

Since we have visited Victoria, B. C. before and took in its best attraction, Butchart Gardens, we decided just to walk around downtown and take a few photos at the Empress Hotel, the iconic class destination for travelers:

The luscious landscaping in Victoria seems to be inspired by Butchart Gardens, one of the more beautiful ones we've seen, and certainly worth a visit if you haven't been there. 

Back in Seattle, our driver drops us back at Phannie and Mae, who sat quietly and forlornly in the park's storage area until our return. We were as glad to see them as they were to see us:

Some final thoughts on this cruise: While we enjoyed immensely the favorite gospel groups who performed throughout the voyage, we confirmed for ourselves that our traveling style may be somewhat too impulsive for cruising. We were a bit put off by the regimentation--dining at specific times, being assigned to specific tables, being issued specific times to go onshore and to return to the ship, etc. We also couldn't help but feel at little confined by not being able to just stop somewhere on a whim to check out something interesting we happened to see. On the other hand, we're probably among the least desirable customers for cruise lines, who undoubtedly would prefer those who spend time in the bars and casinos.

As far as the Alaska portion goes, we were very gratified to be able to see three Alaskan cities we had always heard about, but we got to see very little of the topography due to the awful weather at every stop. This had the effect of giving us a frustratingly tiny look at this vast and beautiful land. So the next time we go--and we will--it will not be via a cruise ship. On the other hand, It was because of the cruise ship that we were able to see the glacier and the calving of an iceberg up close--something we never dreamed we would see. And then we were able to see a number of whales--again, a first for us.

So, do we consider it a success and worth the money? Of course. But perhaps the most satisfying part was our needing to don jackets for all of our time in Alaska while our friends in Texas were baking in 100-degree heat. I hope they are still our friends when we get back.

Thank you, Lord, for this wonderful life; please forgive me if I do not appreciate it enough every day.