You Just Had to Be There!

Is pink Zip's color or what?

Zip was unwittingly part of the entertainment during one of the nightly shows!

You just had to be there! :}

Still Cruisin'

Sharon's parents--Chuck and Rita. Are they not cute?

Gettin' some sun while the gettin' is gud.

John and Sharon smoooooooochin'

Tina and Mackey!

Sandy--bye bye Seattle!

On the way to Alaska!

More photos of us playing around on board the Rhapsody of the Seas!

Cruise to Alaska!

Oh my gosh, I can't believe I just made my first collage photo for my blog! Yahoooooo!!!!!! I am doing the happy dance right now! So much quicker than the usual way of searching for photos and uploading them!

During our 55-day roadtrip, we drove to Seattle, WA, to take a 7-day cruise to the Inside Passage of Alaska on the Royal Caribbean, Rhapsody of the Seas. This trip was planned last year in July, and we had invited some friends to go with us!

As time went on, more and more were added to our group! As I get their photos up on my blog, I'll introduce them to you!

You should already know us, right? That's us in the first photo on the left. We just got on the ship, found our room (a junior suite), ate lunch (yum yum eat 'em up!), and got on the upper most deck to say "bye bye" to Seattle.
To the right of us are Rita K. and Sandy A. at the dinner table.
Then there's John and Marlene, John's mother.
Seattle skyline as we were sailing away.
Me, Sandy, and Rita.
Then the rest are of Zip and me!

This is not the best collage of our first day because it's a bit out of sequence but it's okay. I'm just happy it worked. I'll do better next time (maybe!).

Hope you enjoyed this photo collage! Stay tuned because you'll see more of them.

Our Walk-About

Is this reindeer super duper kewl or what?

During our "walk-about" in Baker City, we stumbled upon this most beautiful reindeer. At least I think it's a reindeer! :}

Maybe it's a zebragiraffedinosaur reindeer on skateboards!

Oh, and we also stumbled upon a scrapbook store!!!!! And who said I bought anything? Not me!

We NEED Adult Supervision!

We never pass up the chance to have some fun so. . . here we are in a store. . . and, of course, we are playing around!

Here's a test question for you:
Can you tell which one is Zip???? Stare at it for about an hour and you will start to see faint images of the real Zip.
Okay. . . do I really need to say anything about this photo?
Like I said. . . we NEED adult supervision!!!

Sumpter Valley Railroad

Wouldn't Zip make a wonderful engineer? He looks right at home, doesn't he? Okay, so this isn't Seattle; it's Baker City, OR and we are at the Sumpter Valley Railroad.

Here we are with the "conductor of the day"! All crew positions for the train are volunteer, including the engineers. It takes over 5 years of dedicated work to become qualified as an engineer. They love what they do and it shows.


The Zipster having a ball exploring his way through this caboose.

If you are ever in Oregon, be sure to ride this train! There is just something about riding an old train that is very relaxing and exciting at the same time!

Seattle at Night

Well, these are a bit out of order but I think you'll get the idea. I took these photos at Kerry Park, which is in the Queen Anne Hill area of Seattle. From here, you can get an unsurpassed view of two icons--the Space Needle and (on a clear day) Mount Rainier!
We had to drive up some very very very (did I say very yet) steep roads to get up here. I was scared. I didn't want to look! I was thinking that the car wouldn't be able to make it up the hill and that we would roll backwards and crash and burn! I just didn't want to see it if that happened! Ignorance is bliss sometimes!

Here it's just getting a bit dark. This was another place that Tina suggested! Hooray for Tina!

It was wonderful (except for the steep roads). The view was awesome as you can see but I was really wishin' somebody would trim some of the trees in front of the Seattle skyline! :}

There was a whole bunch of us up there--Zip and me, Tina and Mackey, and the ladies from Ohio--Rita, Sandy, and Lois, who arrived in Seattle on Wednesday.

We stayed here for hours, taking photos from dusk to nightfall. Of course, I didn't have a tripod with me so it wasn't easy getting a "night" shot with no blurring. And for those of you with "point and shoot" cameras, be aware that that's what I used to take these photos (really all my photos). My super duper totally kewl neato bandito and RED (new) Canon PowerShot SD780 IS. I took a BUNCH of photos but these are probably some of my best shots! Isn't that always the case when taking photos? You take a whole mess of photos but only get a few favorites! Well, I hope you like 'em!

Yepper, that's us! How did you guess?! The ride back down the hills wasn't any better. I volunteered to sit NOT IN THE FRONT SEAT so I wouldn't have to see anything. Ahhh, mucho better! Yes call me a cluck cluck that's okay! I is what I is!

Let's Do Greek!

Here we are in front of Georgia's Greek Deli in Seattle. Yummilious Greek food!

Here is Mackey and Tina Morgan, who arrived in Seattle on Thursday! Tina was raving about this restaurant--that it was featured on the Food Network Show Diners, Drive-in, and Dives where the owner of the restaurant, Laki Kazakos and Guy Fiery cooked up some Greek food! So we decided to check it out!

It was a fun place with great food and yum yum desserts! Thanks Tina for suggesting it!

A Mesh Mash of Seattle

LOVE all the scroll work! What a kewl place to live huh?

Yes yes yes, that's our stuff. This time it took TWO carts to get our stuff up to the room!

I love how I caught this seagull with its mouth open!

Saw this T-shirt in a shop window!!! I can so related, can't you?

The Zipper and some gold miners! Good thing Zip already struck gold because there's not much left in the gold mines!

Very Interesting!

Seattle has some very interesting cookies, signs and statues!

Are You Tired of Seattle Yet?

Hope not because here's more!

Can you tell which is the fake duck? I bet not!!!! I'm inside the gift -- oops I mean the duck is inside the gift shop for the DUCKS Tour.
Are these fountains something else? It's located right by the Seattle Aquarium!
See what the sign says? "Mt St Helens Ash"!!! I bought some turtles made out of the ash.

I'm standing in front of one of the many fish markets in Pike Place.

Oh yes!!!!! My favorite place--a nice air-conditioned mall with a HUGE selection of food. This is where the monorail drops you off! Zip and I shared some pineapple and chicken fried rice. Oh my gosh, it was so good. Wish I had some now!

Seattle in Bloom

LOVE LOVE LOVE all the flowers! They are everywhere in Seattle. The flowers above are found in Pike Place Market. Not expensive either!

Just walking around, we saw HUGE hanging baskets of flowers everywhere! Love 'em!

These sunflowers are from the market! Oh, to grow these back home! I love sunflowers!

Are these roses just too beautiful for words? Again, found them in Pike Place Market!

Love love love 'em all.

Nights in Seattle

Is this beautiful or what?
We were up in the Seattle Space Needle!

Great American Roadtrip Route

Okay, so. . . if you want to know our roadtrip route, here it is. We started in San Antonio, TX, of course and went to San Angelo, then went up up up! Where you see the dashes--we've changed the original route to something else.
Up in the Yellowstone area, we decided to drive to Cody, WY, to get to Custer, SD--what a beautiful drive that was (more later). I'm so glad we did this.
And then, we've decided to NOT go to Branson but go to Arkansas to do some panning for diamonds! How fun will that be? We owe this route change to Cynthia and Tony!!! They live in Missoula, MT, and sapphires from the ground are still there for the picking!
They took us to an place in the Sapphire Mountains called Gem Mountain, and we bought 12 buckets of gravel. And, yes, they do weigh a lot. I almost had to leave Zip there because our poor little mini van was huffing and puffing with each bucket we added.
And yes, it's all in the car with us! I'm guessing the 12 buckets of gravel might weigh about 200 - 250 pounds but who's counting. Not me that's for sure!
If we had had more time, we could have "panned" through our buckets for sapphires right there and then but we didn't. We had to "make like a side and walk, make like a tree and leaf, make like a baby and head out."

They also turned us on to "searching for diamonds in Arkansas"! Diamonds? Did somebody say, "diamonds"? I am so there! I love diamonds.
So I did a search and found the place in Arkansas. We wanna go there and see wazzzzzup! Yes, even Zip is excited about going there too!!!!! So thank you Cynthia and Tony!

Right now, we are in Custer, SD, visiting Mount Rushmore, Crazy Horse and more!
You won't read about our adventures in this area just yet because I want to give you glimpse into our Alaska cruise first! I'm trying to go in order and not skip around too much! :0
So keep checking back, okay?

More Seattle!

None of us in our group had ever ridden a duck so this is a "first" for all of us! In case you don't know--this land vehicle (aka "duck" but I'm sure there's a technical name for it but it's probably not cute at all so let's just ignore that name okay?) becomes a boat as it goes into the water! Makes my brain hurt just thinking about HOW in the heck can it do that?!

Tina and Mackey joined us on Thursday! Don't look now but there is some weird "duck" lurking behind them!

Is this a hoot or what? This is Lois, me, and Sandy--all sipping on our drinks at the foodcourt in the mall where the monorail drops you off.

Background information: Rita, Lois and Sandy arrived in Seattle on Wednesday; we arrived on Monday; and Tina and Mackey arrived on Thursday! If you don't know who these people are, that's okay because they don't know you either!