Alaska and Moose Hats

Our cruise was fantastic. :-) The only stressful bits for me were the dinners, because we had to keep Elizabeth happy in a fancy environment for over two hours each night. However, we did get to pawn her off a few times and walk around on the top deck, watching the late sunset from a warm sauna. I only got away to write twice, but I got almost 2,000 words written and I'm proud of that. The hard part was getting back into the story because it had been a week since I'd worked on it.

Elizabeth finally found a hat she'll wear! Behind one of the antlers is a glacier. Notice the floating ice? We hit one with the ship, and it shuddered. (Made me shudder, too!)

Here we are pulling into port at Skagway. I think of the towns we visited, Skagway was my favorite. We went on a nice little hike there, too, and checked out a secluded lake. Elizabeth napped on me on the way up, then pointed out leaves and rocks when Jim carried her down.

A beautiful valley. I would love to have a home there - as long as we had a runway to get in and out. A valley like this one is what I think of when I need to escape pain mentally (like when I was in labor).

Here we are at the Mendenhall Glacier. If we'd had more time there, we would have hiked to the waterfall. While we drove there on a bus, my sister Hazel got to take a helicopter ride and land on a few glaciers and do a walkabout.

And Elizabeth finally got to get in the water. One of the days was a bit warmer (in the 60s), and the pool was heated and the sun was out, so we put her BumGenius diaper on and let her crawl around. She kept going for the deep end, and it was pretty funny watching Jim chasing after her. I, claiming a painful back, sat in the hot tub and watched.

Our flight home yesterday was longer than it should have been, but we made it. Jiji, our cat, was thrilled to see we'd returned. Although the trip was awesome, I'm glad to be home and comfortable again. Cruising with a baby is hard work.