Portland, OR

My friend Kristen and I had been wanting to go to Portland since we got out to Seattle. I discovered one of my college friends lives here so we met up with her and spent the weekend exploring Portland which I loved. Why did I love it? Maybe even more so than Seattle? Because it was sunny, there was great eclectic and unique shopping at the Saturday market and along NW 23rd street, waterfalls with hiking 30 miles away, no uber crowded streets. How about all the green space, including the Chinese gardens, Japanese gardens and rose gardens, Forest Park, and Washington park. And where else in the US or world can you stand and see 4 mountains--Mt. Hood, Mt. Adams, Mt. St. Helens, and Mt. Rainier? Thanks to Sarah for showing us around!

Juneau, Day 3--Approaching the Glacier on foot and water

Since approaching the Mendenhall glacier by air wasn't enough, we HAD to approach it by foot and by self propelled boat. It was my first time in a kayak and I didn't get us stuck going in circles and we didn't flip over! We started out day out by hiking to the glacier via the West Glacier Trail. As we got closer to the glacier our trail took us deeper into the woods with bright red and orange yarn tied to trees as our markers. The view once we left the woods was amazing. I felt like I was the last person on earth. You are faced with mounds and mounds of rocks that are milllions of years old. We hiked down to the ice caves and enjoyed a snack while taking it all in. It's surreal to think that I touched ice that again is millions of years old. We made our way back to forest and after several tries we found our orange and red ribbons again. Our guided kayak trip got canceled so we rented a kayak and went on the lake on our own. Thank goodness Beth has been in kayaks before. I probably would have tipped over and run into an iceberg. We got lots of awesome pics as you can see below.

Technical Difficulties

I apologize to all those who have had difficulties viewing my site. I don't know what to tell you since I'm not very tech savvy. I don't want to mess anything up. Just try and try again. It worked for my brother :)

Glass Art and Glass Blowing

I decided to take something very unique home with me from the Pacific northwest which is known for it's glass art community. I took a 2 day, 6 hour course at the Tacoma Glassblowing Studio(www.tacomaglassblowing.com) and learned how to gather, blow, and shape glass. There were only 3 students and 2 instructors so I got a lot of one on one instruction and thus made 8 items including paperweights, globes, ornaments, drinking glass, dish, and a vase. It was really fun and challenging.

Day 2 in Alaska

So, you think that nothing can outdo a helicopter ride to a glacier with a hike on the glacier? Well, think again . . . on Saturday we discovered something that is certainly on par with the helicopter trip. We took an all day "cruise" up the Tracy Arm Fjord to view the Sawyer glaciers. We got to see one "calve" which is really awesome. Still not sure if that's short for another word, but it refers to the action when pieces (massive and not so massive) break off and fall into the water.