Today, finally, the missing suitcase arrived. What a relief! As well as all the dirty laundry, it contained essentials such as my address book, phone charger, makeup, curling tongs, costume jewellery and battery charger for the camera. The washing's done and I can get back to concentrating on some crafts.
On our holiday, we flew to Calgary and then a coach took us to Banff where, after an overnight stay, we boarded the Rocky Mountaineer train for a 2 day journey through the Rockies. Spectacular scenery and, on the first morning, we saw elk and, quite close to the tracks, a brown bear. We stayed overnight in Kamloops and then boarded the train again the next morning and said goodbye to Doug English, a travel writer, who we'd met at Calgary airport. That day we saw osprey and lots of bald eagles, and the scenery was magnificent again.
We left the train in Vancouver (a lovely city) and, after an overnight stay and a very quick look round , we boarded our cruise ship bound for Alaska. Our first stop was Ketchican where, apparently, it rains almost every day. The scenery as we sailed up the Inside Passage was beautiful, snow-capped mountains dipping into the sea.
At Icy Strait Point, we went on a guided wildlife walk. We saw a deer and then we saw a lone bear. A little while later another family of bears was spotted, a female with 3 cubs, we watched them through our binoculars for quite a while. After we returned to the port we went whalewatching. Although it was raining and quite cold we stood on deck looking out for the tellltale water spouts and, sure enough, we came upon a female humpback and her calf. It was so exciting. After watching them for a little while we went further afield and there were any number, the sound of their breathing was quite loud and when they breeched and slapped those great tails down everyone cheered.
Our next port of call was Juneau, for a capital city it was tiny. While we were there we visited the most amazing patchwork shop, Changing Tides. I have never seen such a selection of fabrics, some of the batik fabrics were gorgeous. Although very tempted, I didn't buy anything because, literally, I could not have chosen a few, I would have bought the whole shop. While we were there, we also looked in at a gallery and saw some wonderful paper collage landscapes by Sherri McDonald who lives in Juneau - they were really beautiful and very delicate.
Our last stop was in Skagway where we had booked a trip on the White Pass and Yukon Railway to the 3000 ft summit. As on the Rocky Mountaineer, Pete and I spent most of our time on the little observation platform at the rear of the carriage. The railway is an amazing feat of engineering as it climbs through steep snow covered passes and over dizzyingly high trestle bridges. In some places there were 12 ft walls of snow and, when we got to the to, it snowed on us.
Our last day on the ship included a couple of hours watching the Hubbard Glacier. The glacier is huge and, with the sun on it, such wonderful shades of deep blue through to palest turquoise. We could hear it rumbling and creaking as it 'calved' great pieces of ice into the sea.
Finally, we reached Seward, said goodbye to our lovely Assistant Waitress, Vidaylin, and embarked another spectacular train journey to reach Anchorage airport to fly to Seattle for an overnight stay before leaving for Manchester via Washington DC.
Reaching Manchester, we said goodbye to John and Mo with whom we had spent most evenings and met Liz who had come to take us home.
After a week's rest it's back to business - turquoise bag finished, a couple of felt bowls made and the prospect of two Craft Fairs this weekend. I really will post some pictures next time.
