Getting close...

Two weeks from today we will be sailing under the Golden Gate Bridge and heading north to Alaska!! Since booking this cruise 11 months ago, I have been constantly reading and researching all things Alaska but yet I still feel like I'm not totally prepared!

For the last week I have been double checking and confirming all of our plans and printing page after page of reservation details for my MASTER PLAN folder. I also have a massive spreadsheet where I have estimated our costs. I do this for all of our travels and have perfected the process to the point that I often come within a few dollars of the actual costs! Yes...I am an obsessive planner!

Our guest room has become a staging area for our packing. Piles of clothes, coats, rain gear, cameras, binoculars, etc, etc, etc. I am exploring the whole new world of packing cubes on this trip although I have not yet converted to the "roll your clothes" philosophy. I'm sure (as always) my luggage will be creeping up on that maximum weight of 50 pounds.

On a positive note...we are looking forward to WARMER temps in Alaska than what we are currently experiencing here in Minnesota! 😨 Here is what the first day of May looked like around here...

As much as I love and admire bloggers who post live reports while they travel, it will not happen here. I want to enjoy every minute of the cruise so any blogging will have to wait until we are home. Stay tuned!!

The Next Adventure!

Yes...I am in the planning stages for our next adventure! Our last trip took us to Hawaii in March of 2016 and here it is a year later...far too much time between travels!l 

In just a couple of months we will be returning to Alaska. Not a totally new destination, but our 14-day cruise will be stopping at some first-time ports for us. It was just three years ago that we first visited the 49th state on a northbound cruise on the Coral Princess. (To read more about our Alaska cruise, click HERE.) That cruise was considered a "once in a lifetime trip" for us. However, once we saw the natural beauty of Alaska we knew we would return "someday"...we just didn't realize that it would be this soon!

If you read the posts from our Hawaiian cruise on the Pride of America, you know that due to a delay and unfinished projects following a dry dock, we were given a credit equal to 50% of what we had spent on the cruise. This credit could be put towards a future cruise on a Norwegian ship. Initially we considered a Caribbean cruise since the amount of the credit would pretty much cover the cost of an inside cabin for a 7-day cruise. Our traveling buddies, Kent & Laurel, also had the same credit but were not excited about going to the Caribbean.

Then...in June I discovered a unique two week cruise on the Norwegian Sun going to Alaska. All it took was one phone call to Laurel and by the next day they had made up their minds that they wanted to go with us. 

With our 50% credit, booking an inside room would have been a great deal, but we decided a balcony was a MUST when visiting Alaska. The credit helped bring the cost down, but as we learned the last time...visiting Alaska is not cheap.

By mid-June the cruise was booked and the planning began!

Here is a map and itinerary of our cruise. The ports of Ketchikan, Juneau and Skagway will be repeats for us...the rest will be new. And as an added bonus, we are planning to spend a couple of days in San Francisco prior to boarding the ship. 

Merry Christmas!

Sending you all holiday greetings on a frosty and foggy Christmas Eve morning in southwest Minnesota. Best wishes for a new year filled with good health, happiness and many new adventures!

November Super Moon

If you have checked out even a few of my posts, you may have noticed that I have an affinity for photographing the sky. The heavens are constantly changing but always a subject of beauty...a canvas for God's greatest art.

However somehow I almost forgot that this past Sunday, November 13, was the date for another supermoon. But not just any supermoon...this one was THE supermoon that was to be larger than any since 1948! Luckily Bob reminded me. When I went online to check the moon rise time I was shocked to learn that the moon was scheduled to rise at 4:52 pm...the exact current time!

I grabbed my coat and camera and drove to the western side of the lake where I could get an unobstructed view. The timing was perfect. The enormous, orange ball was just rising over the tree tops on the opposite side of the lake.

The fall day was unseasonably warm and I sat at the edge of the water snapping continuously as the moon climbed higher in the sky. Here are a few of the images I captured that evening. Enjoy! The next time the moon will come this close to earth is the year 2034!!

 

Autumn on the Prairie

It is a long time until our next official adventure (over 200 days in case you were wondering) and I find myself so preoccupied with planning for the future that I sometimes forget to enjoy the present. To remedy that problem, I thought I would include a post today with some of the images I've captured lately. The last few weeks have been absolutely stellar here in the upper Midwest...sort of Mother Nature's last hurrah before our world turns to ice and snow. I love to get out with my camera and search out the bright colors and signs of fall that are only here for such a short time.

On a crisp Saturday morning a couple of weeks ago, Bob and I drove to Kilen Woods State Park and spent some time walking the trails along the Des Moines River. Being a little early in the season, the park was still very green, but some pops of color were there if you just looked!

On the recommendation of several people, we stopped in at Kat's Hog Heaven restaurant in Jackson, MN for lunch after leaving the park. Not a BBQ place, but a clean, little eatery that has a <mostly> all pork menu. I had a delicious breaded pork tenderloin sandwich served with shoestring potatoes. Bob's Cuban sandwich was also yummy but we decided most of the flavor came from the spicy sweet pickles. For a side, he ordered the cole slaw which...surprise...had bacon as one of the ingredients! 

Yesterday...another beautiful day, another state park. This time we drove to Blue Mounds State Park near Luverne, MN. The weather was unseasonably warm and it was one of those rare days on the prairie when there was no wind!

The most notable feature of Blue Mounds is the Sioux quartzite cliff that rises about 100 feet above the plains. The rock, although pinkish in color, is said to have appeared blue to the early settlers in this area. The cliffs are a popular place for rock climbers...including Bob who goes several times a year. Here is a photo of the cliffs from last month when he was there:

There are outcroppings of the quartzite all through the park.

Rather than staying on a trail like most people, Bob thought it would be a good idea to bushwhack our way over to these cliffs. Getting across the stream made me realize that I'm getting old. Jumping from rock to rock, I was SURE I would fall in...but I made it!!

After getting across, we climbed the hill and sat on the edge of this cliff enjoying the beauty of the day. BUT...then I realized that somewhere during the stream crossing, hill climbing, cliff sitting activity my cell phone had gone missing from my back pocket. Luckily Eagle-Eye Bobby backtracked a ways and found it in the tall grass. Crisis averted...back to enjoying the day.

A duck swimming VERY close to the edge of the spillway.

Lots of prairie grass.

From the interpretive center you can see many miles across the prairie.

This tree almost looked like it was glowing in the sun.

At the Mound's southern end is a 1,250 foot long line of rocks aligned in a east-west direction. Who built it and why is unknown. It is known that on the first day of spring and fall, the sunrise and sunset are lined up on this stone alignment.

Blue Mound State Park is home to a large herd of buffalo, but none were hanging around the areas we visited. To find them would have required a long walk through the prairie grass and was not something I was inclined to do...especially since I was getting so warm. (Imagine that on a late October day in Minnesota!!) Instead, we stopped along a country road and "tried" to photograph some bison that were grazing on a farm nearby. No longer a protected species...these guys are destined to become buffalo burgers some day.

Finally...I will end this post with a few more photos taken in and around my own neighborhood. I am lucky to live next to one of Minnesota's 10,000 lakes and the sunsets this time of year are spectacular! My kitchen window faces west over the lake and I often will stop right in the middle of preparing dinner and run outside with my camera just to capture the beauty! The following photos have all been taken in the last few weeks.

The full October moon...a super moon