North to Alaska, via Seattle (Thu-Fri, Aug 16-17)

A cruise to Alaska just sort of fell into my lap this year. I had not planned a travel vacation for the year (too busy with living room furniture replacement and political projects), but I saw on a mailing list that someone had booked a cruise they weren’t going to be able to take. This one was with The Nation magazine and it was going to Alaska.

Since Alaska is on my bucket list and I knew The Nation would have some good speakers/events, I was interested. My one other cruise (Caribbean) convinced me that big-ship cruising is not my favorite way to travel, unless there are activites other than what the cruise line offers. In this case there were!

Short story is that it all worked out for me to go and I signed up. Since the ship was leaving from Seattle, I contacted my friend Gwenn to see if she was up for a visit (nothing like me inviting myself to visit, huh?). Thankfully she was, so I made arrangements to head out a couple of days early.

The DFW-SEA flight was interesting. I got there early (thanks to neighbors Lisa & Paul for ensuring I had a ride) and the plane loaded on time. But once we were all on board, they said there was going to be a delay because of weather in Seattle. The estimates at various times were from 30 minutes to four hours. At one point, both my seatmates decided take the option to get off the plane to wait in the terminal. I didn’t want to haul my heavy backpack–with all my electronic gear–off the plane, so I stayed put and was able to stretch out across three seats. What a deal!

Actual takeoff ended up being delayed by 90 minutes, so not too bad. The flight was uneventful and Gwenn was there to greet me. She actually lives in Anacortes, which is about 90 minutes north. We had a lot of time to visit as the traffic was pretty slow, plus we stopped at Red Robin for lunch. Yum!

Gwenn gave me the royal treatment during this visit and was tour guide extrordinaire the next day. The weather was warm (for Anacortes), so it was great for both driving and walking around. After a yummy blueberry pancake breakfast, we were off for Deception Pass (deceptive because the currents are really strong) and the surrouding beach and forest, and then another beach.

It was kind of hazy early, so I didn’t take many pictures. There’s a cool piece of driftwood and a picture of the bridge from below. The red tree is a Madrona (did I get that right, Gwenn?), which stands out because of the red color of its bark. As we got out to walk along a long beach, a seagull gave us the eye, so he rated a picture. As we were walking the beach, the sun came out and it was really perfect!

We spent that afternoon driving through and walking around Anacortes, ending up at a point overlooking the town.

The last picture is the view from Gwenn’s and Dennis’s house on Saturday morning, before we left for the pier in Seattle. They like to sit on the porch and look out over the water, and I can see why. I could look at that view all day!

Kudos to Gwenn for being willing to drive the distance to pick me up at the airport and then again to take me back to the pier where the cruise ship was departing from. It was a really lovely visit.