My 2005 Summer Vacation!!!

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The first part of my trip was spent with good friends from Chile who were in Seattle. I arrived on July 7th and spent 3 days touring the city with them. We visited the Boeing Factory where we took a quick trip into space, the Space Needle, the Natural History Museum, walked by the strange looking Science Fiction Museum. and did the Harbor Cruise and the Aquarium.


The Red Barn where it all began, Boeing XR-71 Blackbird, what a beauty. Doug in Space. Eugenia in Space. Me in space. Isa nad Cahti on Air Force One. Isa taking pictures. Heading over to the Space Needle and Park. Nice fountain shot. On the way to the Space Needle. Group photo on the observation deck of the Space Needle. Me on the Space Needle. Paul on a bed of nails. Isa's three legs. Under the Space Needle. Great Clouds over Space Needle. Science Fiction Museum exterior. SciFi Museum again, plane appeared right on cue. Seattle from the north hill. Seagull flying downtown. The Norwegian Spirit, huge. Downtown from the Harbor Cruise. Doug in the anemone hat.
After spending a short time with them, I joined the cruise. It was overcast the first day so I'm glad I got all my pictures of Seattle from the Argosy harbor cruise. The Norwegian Spirit was in port the day before the Norwegian Star came in (above) and you can see just how big those ships are compared to the skyscrapers of Seattle (above). I got to the cruise ship about 1pm on Sunday July 10th and got in line to checkin and board.

My pictures from the cruise start with the large fish caught by a couple from Washington state, but they didn't want to keep it since they could catch a dog salmon in WA so they gave it to me. It is a nice 12 lb-er so with my small 2 lb silver, I got about 8 lbs of smoked salmon shipped home. This was sportfishing out of Juneau. A large number of photos after the fish are of the Goldcamp (at Liarsville), Bus and White Pass Railway excursion. At the gold camp, they did a very nice rendition of a classic Robert Service Poem, and entertained us with some music. The gold panning was really lame. We arrived at the small water fall just in time to get the White Pass train on its way up toward the Canadian border. We stopped several times on the road driving up to get some pictures. It was just too beautiful not to take pictures along this trip. The blue water of the small mountainous lake is from the silt in the glacial runoff in this area. The view of town from the train valley was quite nice, you can almost see several cruise ships. I'm sorry that I was not fast enough to get a picture of the small black bear which was ahead of the train on the tracks. I got my best picture of the ship in port at Skagway.
Fish from Juneau Sportfishing. Liarsville, AK, with music and dancing. Liarsville Robert Service Show. White Pass and Yukon train heading for the Canadian border. Bus stop #2, great waterfall. Bus stop #3, great views. Lake from train. On the curve. Train valley, view 1. Flags at train border. The old bridge. Glad we aren't on that bridge. What's ahead? Train valley, view 2. Train valley, view 3. Train valley, view 4. A view of Skagway, from the train valley. Our ship in port at Skagway.

I got a great picture of our group going to dinner on formal night (but somehow I lost 1 roll of exposed film from the Ketchikan sportfishing day and I wonder if it rolled out of my bag on the ship, major bummer cause that had the picture of me with my 18 lb King Salmon as well as some other nice photos from the cocktail). The formal night is followed by a few of my pictures from Glacier Bay National Park. That was fantastic but it would have been nice to see Mt Fairweather once more as we motored in, but the weather as you can see was not great. I love my photo of the one lonely tree on the hill by itself. I left the cruise on the 17th, around 9:30am and rented a car.
Formal night, going to dinner. A lone tree on the hill. Yet another glacier. Same glacier a bit closer.

I went up to Anacortes for a day of fishing, and saw some redtail deer on Orcas Island off which we were fishing. It was a great day of wildlife, not just fishing. Then I drove down to Oregon to see friends and we traveled just N of Florence and saw the light house and went to the small museum at Cape Perpetua. I got some photos of the shoreline there. Also I got one good picture of a small blacktail doe walking up the hill from the wetland in my friend's back yard. On the 22nd I was back in Seattle at the airport.
Large redtail buck on the shore. Lighthouse N of Florence, OR. Shore at Cape Perpetua. Shoreline looking toward Florence, and river mouth. Redtail doe in my friend's backyard. Leaving Florence, I stop again.

I ended my vacation with 4 days in Las Vegas. I went to see Collin Raye perform at the SunCoast Hotel and he put on several great shows that I attended. I did a bit of gambling but only won about $30. It was enough to pay for my birthday dinner which was at the Primo Restaurant at the hotel. I'm working on the summit for my birthday so I decided to celebrate early. If you would like copies of these, you may use your browser to grab any of them you wish.
Collin Raye in concert.

Here is a picture sent to me by Diane Travis from a small group dinner on the cruise. Thanks for the pic Diane!

Created: August 27, 2005. Last updated: August 30, 2005