Our Alaskan Getaway

Apparently, Brant and I had so much fun cruising on our honeymoon we decided to go on another cruise two months later! It is kind of a tradition for all the Jones to get together every other year and just take one big vacation as the family reunion. Then again, everyone invites their friends and it just becomes one big party. This year we all decided that a cruise to Alaska was the way to go. So I packed up my warmest clothes and jumped on board in June of 2007. The cruise we took only had four stops on the lower end of Alaska. Our ship was called the Sun Princess. Believe it or not, I was surprised how much snow there was in the middle of the summer. One of our first nights there we were out playing all day, constantly going somewhere and I just started getting so tired. I couldn't figure out why. The sun was still high in the sky and I was just out of energy. A few more hours had gone by and finally I found a clock. It was after midnight and the sun was still up! It was one of the weirdest things that I just couldn't get used to.

We made our first stop in Ketchikan. This was probably one of my favorite places we stopped. It is just a small island of Alaska. We walked all around the cute little town. Later that day all the boys went on a fishing trip and caught TONS of salmon! Meanwhile, all the girls went and took a walk through the wild! We walked straight through bear country...that was a little nerve racking. I saw some fresh bear droppings and I also saw an owl at arms reach and a bald eagle. My favorite thing of all was when I got to pet the reindeer. I came home and told my nieces and nephews that I was petting Santa's reindeer. They thought I was the bomb!

We made our second stop at the capital of Alaska, Juneau. We took a tour of the city and then we took a hike and checked out one of Alaska's oldest glaciers. It was huge! The crazy part about it...It's summertime for the Alaska folks and they had their beach towels and their kids were playing in the water coming off the glacier. I just about flipped. They were swimming around the icebergs floating in the water and here I am all bundled up freezing! I couldn't believe it.

Okay, so crazy story. We were on our way to the next stop and about six a.m. that morning we woke up to this huge Bang! I felt the whole ship just move underneath me and I got so scared. I thought for sure it was going to be Titanic all over again. Brant and I both got dressed and ran outside to see what was going on. We walked outside to the balcony in front of the ship and there were icebergs everywhere. Come to find out that the ship in front of us got stuck. We ended up turning our ship around and went a different way. Everything was okay and we made it safely to our third stop, Skagway. It was a cute little town. All of the buildings were rebuilt to look like they did in the olden days. We took a train up the mountain and we did a lot of shopping there.

Victoria, Canada was our last stop. We took a little tour of the city on this little carriage driven by a cyclist. It was fun but I sure did feel bad for that poor guy! We did some more shopping and did a lot of walking. We checked out china town and we saw some really cool castles.

Lastly, our final stop was back at port in Seattle, Washington. We stayed a few days there and we went to the top of the Space Needle tower. That was a lot of fun! I got a little scared on the ride up. It is a 360 degree view through a glass elevator and boy did it go fast! It was only about a couple seconds before we hit the top, and I didn't think we were going to be able to stop in time. I thought for sure we were going straight to the moon! Haha! We had so much fun! Alaska is somewhere I would love to go back to someday and hopefully we will be able to. It was so beautiful there.