Alaska Vacation
Saturday, July 5 - day 1
Carrie and Kurt
Save the Day
I like a well-planned and executed trip, with all the ducks lined up. Well, it went that way for a while. The airline got us to Seattle on the morning of the cruise embarkation. Surprise, surprise, Carrie and Kurt were there at the SeaTac airport to see us off. Grandma's eyes were wide with surprise when she saw them.

When we went for our bags, mine were there, but Marolynn's and Jonathan's bags were missing. We crowded into the Soutwest baggage office and were told to wait a half hour for another plane that was coming from Albuquerque. Alas, no bags from that one either. So back into the baggage office to fill out paperwork. Southwest provided some balm for our anxieties - they compensated us $100 per cruise day, each for Marolynn and Jonathan and told us to check there for the bags when we got back.

But mom and jon had no spare clothes. Carrie offered to take them to a mall to buy some clothes and then take them to the ship dock - a real life-saver. The rest of us boarded a shuttle and went to the dock. There were a few anxious moments waiting for Marolynn and Jon to appear; they were pretty late, but the embarkation staff looked out for them and we were finally united to board the Norwegian Star which got underway at 4pm.

You can see the Star at dockside, not far from the Space Needle in Seattle (I got this photo as we were flying back home). The captain announced that we would proceed up the landward side of Vancouver island and reach Ketchikan on Monday morning. Jon took a nice photo of the sun setting against the sea and mountains.