Cruising through Beautiful Skies

After leaving Ketchikan, it rained for a while and then the sun came shining out through the clouds before it set (which was right around 10:00). As the light came back into the sky, the most ginormous and beautiful rainbow I've ever seen appeared in the sky. It was so huge even my wide angle lense couldn't capture it, so the pictures below only show one side of it at a time.

What was amazing to me is that the sky was simultaneously blue, gray, rainbowed, golden, or blood red depending on where you looked. It was like every direction you turned you were on a different planet!

These pictures were taken literally within minutes (some of them seconds) of each other. Every time I turned around the sky had changed again. (That's why I took so many pictures... it kept getting more and more beautiful.)

I love that last shot because it is totally candid of the guys. I was actually in the middle of cleaning the lens and was holding my camera at about waist-high and just randomly snapped this picture that I love.

Ketchikan Dry Goods

This is my new favorite store. I discovered it while I was wandering around town in Ketchikan, and I couldn't get enough of it!

I wanted to buy everything in the store because there were so many unique, quirky and funny things. I found some great thank you cards, discovered Pangea Organics, and had fun chatting with the shop's owner for a little while. I also WISH I would have spent the money on one of the darling bags you can see on their website. So cute!

Alaskan Cruise - Ketchikan!!

Our first port was Ketchikan... a charming town on an island that is largely set aside as a National Forest. As a matter of fact, I was told that no development is allowed any further than a mile away from the shoreline. You can see in this picture that the rooftops don't go too far up the side of the mountain (and you can still see the tops of the ships in the water on the shoreline).

I spent an hour or so wandering around the town taking pictures and shopping. There were so many random treasures to capture!

This area pictured below is called Creek Street (no street, really, just a boardwalk-type sidewalk running along one side of the creek), and this is the part of town that used to be the red light district... scandalous! But really cute and charming now, I think.


After wandering around the town for a while, I went ziplining through the tops of the trees on the other side of the island. Ketchikan is part of the second-largest rainforest in the world (but obviously in Alaska it's a temperate rainforest, not tropical). They actually measure their rainfall in FEET, not inches. They typically receive 13 feet of rain a year, and the record is something like 19 feet.

Seriously... ziplining through the canopy of a rainforest??? It was SO FUN!!! I had a blast, the guides who took us through were hilarious, and I would absolutely do it again.

This is the Unimog that took us up the mountain to the top of the ziplines.

This is me on one of three rope bridges we crossed between the seven ziplines.

This is one of the platforms surrounding the trees. This is where we landed at the end of each zipline. We were 130 feet in the air! The longest zipline was 750 feet and we got going as fast as 35 miles an hour.

These are some of the things I saw from the platforms up in the canopy. The first is a hemlock growing off a branch of another tree (a spruce??) with its roots splaying down below. The second is a view out to the bay.

Me with my crazy guides. They were totally spastic and tons of fun.

After I was done with my zipline adventure I wandered back in to town, met up with the crew and spent another hour or so shopping. Then it was back to the ship for dinner and more gorgeous scenery!

Alaskan Cruise - Installment Two

The first day we cruised past incredible scenery. This was probably still the coast of British Columbia, not Alaska, but I really don't care -- it was breathtaking!




We also played a couple of rounds of miniature golf, which was pretty interesting with the wind blowing and the ship rocking back and forth. I still managed to get a hole in one, though. (It's all that natural talent I've got...) Check out my expert stance below.


That night our waiters sang to us at dinner... Frank Sinatra's "My Way." It was totally funny. In the middle of the song they all pulled out lighters and started waving them around. Hilarious.

Alaskan Cruise - Installment One

I finally feel like my life is settling down enough that I can update everyone on my fun Alaskan Cruise!!

Well, on the 17th (after that crazy day at work and the new job offer), Mom drove me up to the airport and I flew to Seattle.

Sometimes when I leave Utah I see dozens of beautiful plants that couldn't "blossom in the desert" in a million years. This might not be one of them, but it sure reminded me of that fact.

The next morning we (Hap, Jon, Joe and I) drove from Seattle to Vancouver. At the border I snapped a few pictures before we drove through and into Vancouver.

We had a few hours in Vancouver, so we stopped at Stanley Park across the bay from the Port of Vancouver and saw some cool totem poles.

Then it was off to the cruise ship. The embarkation process was amazingly smooth and painless, and our room ended up being much bigger and nicer than what we expected!

New Job

So, the day before I left on my cruise to Alaska, I got a new job. Some of you reading this might be thrown into a state of shock and bewilderment by this news. Probably because you're heard me rave about my current boss and coworkers, and how I love my job because it's never boring, there's always something new going on, etc. And it's all true. I literally couldn't have hand-picked a better boss or more incredible (supportive, cooperative, creative, brilliant, friendly) coworkers if I could pick from a million-person lineup.

"So, why change jobs?" some of you may ask. And it's a great question... one that woke me up in the middle of the night on my cruise (more than once) almost in a cold sweat. I didn't quite seriously consider going back to my boss and telling him I was joking, but I did wonder if I had just started digging my own "professional" grave. What if I hate my job? What if my new boss seemed nice when she offered me the job, but she really isn't? What if I don't get along with my coworkers? These are all questions I pondered when I wasn't busy snapping 1300 pictures of Alaskan panoramas, whales, and glaciers. And, ultimately, I decided that it was just time for a change and this was an opportunity that presented itself at the right time in the right place. I've been training for four years this month, and I have literally loved every second of it. This new position is a great opportunity to interact with the company in a completely different way, learn new skills, and just flat out experience individual growth as a person.

The job offer was completely unexpected, I hadn't applied for it, and I didn't see it coming AT ALL. My new boss even said when she offered me the job that she felt like we were getting into an arranged marriage because she was just going off of other peoples' suggestions!! And it really does kind of feel like that, because we literally hadn't ever met until I walked into her office to meet with her about taking the job. So there is probably a certain level of uncertainty on her end, as well. But with all that being said, I am completely excited and really looking forward to carving out a place for myself somewhere other than the training department.

My new job is to oversee the customer loyalty program for the company and has a lot to do with marketing and promotions, etc., which is completely out of the realm of anything I have ever done (read: I am going to LEARN a ton of new stuff!!). I've been back from my cruise for a couple of weeks and have started to transition over to my new job while tying up all of the projects I need to have done for someone to come into my training position and not want to kill themselves right off the bat. My new boss and coworkers are really awesome, and I have started to brainstorm a lot of good ideas to put my own signature touch on the program. So, here's to new challenges and adventures!
Wish me luck!

Backyard Wedding

My best friend's sister got married yesterday, and they had the reception in the family's backyard. It was absolutely beautiful. I may have to bribe them to let me have my reception there one day.