About thirty years ago there was a movie with Billy Crystal and Debra Winger called Forget Paris.    The plot of the movie was two people meet in Paris, fall in love and get married.  Then they move back to the US and nothing compares to Paris.  They struggle to make a marriage until the wife says – Forget Paris.   They missed all the moments in their life by measuring them against Paris.  That’s pretty much how I feel about Alaska.   If I compared every trip to Alaska, I would miss the moments worth remembering about our other travel.

I love Alaska.  It was my 4^th time there, the first time being 2000.  The second 2009 and the third 2015.  Each time I have been there the glaciers have been noticeably smaller.  It was sad to see how the massive Marjorie Glacier is about half the size it was in 2000.   Calving is the detachment of blocks of ice from the glacier.  It makes a huge noise and puts lots of chunks of ice in the bay.  It happened once on this trip and I was sad it happened at all.   While it is amazing to see, it means more of the glacier is separating and causing it to shrink more.  Jerry’s cousins went to Mendenhall Glacier in Juneau, I did not want to go because when I went in 2015 it was so much smaller, I could not imagine what it would look like now. 

The first time I was in Alaska in Anchorage I experienced an earthquake.   While we were there this time, there was an earthquake in Anchorage.  We were in Sitka at the time and really didn’t feel much except the sea was a bit rockier.   Talking about rocky seas, Jerry had a couple of bouts of sea sickness.  The worst was on the smaller boat we went on to sight whales.  It was a great trip, but think of Jaws, when they run the boat full speed chasing the shark, it was a bit like that up and down. 

We started in Seattle with two perfect days.  We went to the Public Market and I meet one of my international knitting friends, even though she lives in Seattle other members live in the UK and New Zealand.  Helen and I went to a yarn shop.   No rain in Seattle while we were there or on any of our stops in Alaska.  That is unheard of! 

Our first stop was Glacier Bay and there was a National Parks Ranger on board as well as a National Parks Shop so I could get a magnet!  

From there we went to Juneau.  I ate for the third time at Stacey’s Crab Shack and it was as good as I remembered and there are two locations now.   The original tarped tables are now in a three-sided shack and all the cooking takes place inside.  Jerry and I walked to the original one and they too had a roof over the tables and improvements in the cooking spaces.  It is such a fun place to go even if it is expensive.  Think crab legs as long as my arm and a hundred dollars a person.  But oh, so worth it.

Then we went to Icy Point and had our whale watching cruise.

From there it was Sitka and the Raptor Center where they rehabbed rescued birds of prey.  Their goal is to release all the birds back to the wild. They explained reasons why that is not always possible. They have a very specific and detailed way of care. I learned a lot. There we also the National Forest, the only Rainforest in America.  The town had belonged to Russia and had Russian architecture.   It was the site of the signing of the treaty of handing over Alaska in the 1800’s.   It was my favorite stop of the cruise.  Also I had never been there and it seemed less commercial than the other ports.

Then on to Ketchikan where I had found a local guy to drive us around.  Because of no shows it was just the four of us in his van and we had a great time.  He took us to a place where the eagles gathered outside of a fish hatchery.   One of the smaller eagles scooped out a salmon that I think had just spawned and was dead.  The eagle hierarchy was in place and even though he found the salmon, by time it came to his turn to eat, a bear had come by and stolen it.  It was interesting to watch how they came in to eat and how they knew it was their turn.  I could have stayed there much longer than we did.  We also went to a water fall.  When we got back to town, we grabbed a cup of coffee and some internet before getting back on the ship.

Our next stop was to be Vancouver, British Columbia.  However, while we were eating dinner on our way there the ship had a problem with the propellers.  They shipped in a technician to fix it and we did not make it to port.  The next day the ship was scheduled to leave again and refunding us $30 a person at the end of the trip was probably better than starting a trip with a problem.  I was not very disappointed since we were only to be there past my bedtime and I was not planning to go ashore. 

It was a perfect trip, perfect weather, beautiful sunsets, great views from the balcony of our room, good food and nature all around us.   But the topping was being with Jerry’s cousins Brenda and Mike and having a nice time sharing the trip with them.

As the wife says in the movie, Forget Paris, I would add and remember every moment of every day of your life.