Four Lumberjacks, One Pond, and a Cruise Ship Watching the Whole Thing
My hunt for lumberjacks in Alaska. A performance of the Great Alaskan Lumberjack Show in Ketchikan.
14 Days of Living on a Boat in Alaska
Before you assume I'm some kind of bougie cruiser booking a back-to-back Alaska cruise from Vancouver to Whittier, my decision to spend fourteen days on a boat was mostly financial.
Norwegian Cruise Line dropped a lot of great agent sail deals this past spring, and in that mix were interior rooms on the Jade doing a seven-night, one-way route between Vancouver and Whittier. Pricing out one-way flights from Anchorage to Cleveland or Detroit put me way over budget. A Vancouver-to-Cleveland round trip, helped along by some Delta credits, did not.
I was just curious about the North Side of the Lake.
I will spare everyone the long and boring story of how I ended up swapping Banff National Park for Point Pelee National Park as an end of summer vacation destination. I will say that I have no regrets in life making some unexpected turns. The sleepy little town of Leamington was a tranquil home base and my cottage came with a park pass. I was hoping to see some monarch clusters but the warmer weather is keeping the milkweed (their main food and nesting source) blooming longer. They follow the food.
The one where she got on the ship.
It all begins with aLet me start with a confession: I wasn’t sure I was a cruise person. Floating buffet? Vegas-at-sea vibes? A week with strangers doing the Cupid Shuffle on the Lido deck? I had doubts. But when your 69-year-old, casino-loving, photography-obsessed Aunt Sheryl invites you on a Mexican Riviera cruise aboard the Carnival Panorama, you say yes—and pack stretchy pants. (And backup stretchy pants.)
Calle de la Sol: A Hidden Gem in Old San Juan’s Layers of History
It’s funny how a place can be both peaceful and alive at the same time. That’s exactly how I’d describe my colonial apartment on Calle de la Sol. The street itself feels like stepping into history—colorful walls that have seen centuries of stories, from Spanish colonists to modern-day woman crying after getting pulled over for some kind of traffic infraction five feet from my front door.
