35 Years and finally...ALASKA!

When I first began dating Bob, I remember a party at his frat house where we were talking about dreams and he mentioned that he would one day love to live in Alaska. At the time, I thought that was such a romantic notion, solidifying in my mind that this was "the guy for me"! Well, we never made it to Alaska through all those years, but we did experience "cold" weather climates for four years in South Dakota and 15 years in Iowa. All in all I am very happy that Alaska became a place we wanted to visit and not a place to call home. That said, we finally made that visit and although we only saw the Inside Passage, what we did see of AK was pretty amazing. It is a state with extraordinary beauty and we were treated to one beautiful view after another on our cruise. The cruise was such fun and two great blessings really stood out...having the Garvey's as our traveling companions and being lucky with wonderful weather.

Another thing that made this special is that the cruise fell around our 35th wedding anniversary (which actually is today, June 7th). My idea of Bob being "the one" has turned out to be right on target and I wouldn't trade a day of my life with him. We are incredibly lucky to have two great sons and now, three sweet grandchildren. Life has naturally had it's challenges, but we've only grown closer over our time together. For this, I will always be very grateful.

I can't tell you how many times during the cruise that Geri and I said how happy we were that we decided to go on this cruise. We were all impressed with Holland America...never a want for food, a very clean ship, fantastic entertainment, very little waiting in lines, and a sense that the boat had plenty of room for all the passengers. In fact, we enjoyed it so much, we began kicking around new potential adventures for the future. The older you get, the more sense the saying "no time like the present" seems to make.

Between us and the Garvey's we have over 500 pictures of the trip. It was fun yesterday with Geri to look through them and laugh at some and be reminded by others of the beauty we had witnessed all week. Next blog I will post some of our favorites. There were lots of wine toasts between us intrepid travelers over the 10 days we spent together...how lucky to have experienced this special trip together!