Alaska Itinerary (click for larger view)

You may remember Danita and I were planning the ultimate Alaska vacation. We had quite a few difficulties coming up with our itinerary, but we finally did it. We would take the Alaska Ferries from port to port, seeing everything we wanted to see — all the interesting port towns plus Denali Park. The trip would be longer than we wanted (3 weeks instead of 2), but we would have the opportunity to see it all. The only problem is, it’s an impossible trip. We would end up toting suitcases through towns, looking for a way to keep all our stuff together while we await check-in time, or sometimes waiting for our transport to the next city. We took a close look, and we found the problem was the Alaska Ferry system. Not only would we be in a different hotel almost every night, but the ferries mostly traveled during the day. We would spend most of our time looking at water. The coup de grace was the end of the trip — 4 days on a decidedly non-luxuriant ship with almost nothing to do. We gave up.

Alaska Super Cruise

Casting about for alternatives, I accidentally found a dream cruise. It visits just about every port town we are interested in visiting. It was practically perfect. The cruise ship travels at night, giving us the entire day in town. We get to leave our suitcases on board. The only thing we take into town is our credit cards. The only problem was there is no opportunity to visit Denali. We decided to go with the cruise, with the idea that we can always come back to see Denali. That’s when Danita noticed that these cruises are available in 2014. That leaves us with no plan for vacation in 2013.

We are trying to decide what to do. We could do Denali “on the cheap” this year — a 1-week quickie to visit the interior of Alaska. Or we could do something else — for example, go to London. There are several things we won’t do. We won’t go to Mexico. (It’s too dangerous for Gringos these days.) We won’t go to Italy or Greece. (The economic downturn has hit these countries hard, casting a pall on tourism.) Whatever we do, we have to decide pretty soon.

Other than that, my biggest problem is our deck. The squirrels finally ate all our bird food. I decided it’s close enough to spring time. They are responsible for feeding themselves. As soon as I clean the bird droppings, that should be taken care of that for the year. The other issue with the deck is caused by my own error. We were supposed to get snow last week — 4 to 12 inches of it. As it happened, the temperature was a couple of degrees warmer than expected. That was enough to give us an inch of slush, followed by rain. I decided to push the slush off the deck. It was like pushing the world’s largest slushie off the deck. The error was I used a shovel to do it. That was a bad idea because it scraped the stain. I wasn’t planning to repaint the deck until next year.

Other than the deck, I’m having a better time these days. The clubhouse projects are completed. All my work at Habitat is suspended waiting for some kind of a decision meeting. I made some significant progress at CASA. The weather turned beautiful the last few days and I’ve been on the road. It feels good.

Poor Danita isn’t having quite as good a time of it all. UMBC is interviewing for a new VP of Research. This person will be her new boss, so she has a significant input to the selection. Unfortunately, the interviews are in the late afternoon, precluding her attending exercise classes. She’s experiencing a lot of pressure at work. She’s understandably stressed about helping her Dad sort through all of Leona’s stuff. And, of course, we’re trying to figure out what to do about our vacation.

I’m confident we’ll get through it all. I hope this finds you doing well.