I'm Back In The Saddle Again

Yes, it is true.  After our long technology blackout aboard the ship, I'm back.  I have been giving my process of catching you up a lot of thought, so here is my plan:  I will tell you about the current day on that day and when I get home and things are boring again, I'll post Alaska pictures and tell you about our adventure.  How does that sound?

WARNING:  This post is a ramble, but...what can I say. Oh, here are some teaser pictures.

Lovin' every minute of it

Well, I just want to tell you before I get started, this trip was the best thing for us.  Steve has enjoyed life up here and you should see him glowing.  He is just like a little kid.  Now granted, he is getting worn out just like the rest of us, but he has not been sick at all.  Watching him enjoy himself so much is a great relief to me and makes my heart smile.  The girls and I are loving it too.  We are really blessed.

Waiting to board the Golden Princess

Yesterday, we were in Seattle.  We stayed at Martha and Cork's house in the city.  All day Saturday we got an #1 city tour.  Our tour guides were Tom and Diane.  The only thing missing was the microphone for Tom's narrative.  I loved the tour.  We saw so many wonderful things that we would not have seen on or own.  First, there is no way I can navigate through that traffic.   The campus of WU is beautiful.  I have to keep reminding myself that we had excellent weather and it is usually cold and rainy.  We saw several points of interest:  Pike's Market, the locks, the fish ladder...   After the tour, we headed down to Martha and Cork's houseboat.  What a blast.  Their kids all came and it was a mini reunion.  We had burgers and brats...John, excellent job with the burger mix.  Cork and John excellent job with the grilling.  You two are masters.  We had such a nice time visiting.  There was laughter throughout the boat.  I don't believe that a passerby would guess that we had not seen each other for 2 years.  Yes, that is how long ago the Lampe reunion was.  Good times.  After all the fun, we went back to their house and crashed.

Steve on the prowl for the next "perfect" shot.  

Oh, Corky, we are proud of your 1/2 marathon run Saturday morning.  How are the legs today?  :)

When I get the girls' pictures and Steve's on disk, I will show you some of the highlights.  My camera is having issues.  I can't seem to download the pictures from the last three days.  I purchased a new card so hopefully I can have a butt load of Yellowstone to show you.  Steve has already taken 14 rolls of 24 pictures each.  It is going to cost us more than the cruise to have them all developed.  :)

This morning we got up really early to leave Seattle and head for Bozeman, MT.  I wanted to beat the rush hour traffic because if I had to drive in that, I would be the one with issues.  Well, there was absolutely no traffic.  Silly, it is Sunday.  HAHAHAHAHA.  We saw maybe 25 cars total while we were "in town".  I loved it.  We drove through basically mountains today.  S, J, and B I am sorry to say but these mountains were just as wonderful as Colorado.  You should check out the mountains in the upper panhandle of Idaho.  One really cool thing I saw was a bike trail that ran along a huge stream.  I could see the trail running by us for over 20 miles.  Now, that would be a super duper fun ride.  As you know, when I leave the mountains, a large piece of my heart is left behind.  We drove through WA, ID, MT today.  It was about a 12 hour on the road day, but we went through a time zone change.  We are exhausted.

Our plans for tomorrow are to get up early and then head to Yellowstone.  We will be back at Bozeman tomorrow night  and then return to Yellowstone on Tues.  After that, we are headed home.  We have revamped our original plans because I'm not sure we have Custer's Last Stand and Rushmore in us.  Oh, this hotel we are staying at is wonderful.  It is like a huge log cabin and each room has a deck into an indoor under-roof courtyard with hot tubs, pools and loungers.  The best part is....it is decorated with all dead animals...well stuffed, but I am sure you know what I mean.  Steve is in heaven.  It is about 1 1/2 hours from Yellowstone, but basically it was as close to the park as I could get.  Amazing.