I have been fortunate to travel quite a bit due to playing both golf and basketball in college and then being involved in the car business as an adult. However, I have never been to Alaska. My mom had the awesome idea of having our entire family go to Alaska on a cruise. This is a fantastic experience. We started in Vancouver and then we are going to several places in Alaska before returning to Vancouver.
I have never been on a cruise that has cool weather but also has an amazing amount of sunshine. One of my favorite things is to meet people from all over the world. There are no phones — well you could have phones but it would be a huge charge. Thus, it is sometimes a bit of a challenge to “find each other”. You quickly realize how lucky we are to have modern communication.
Sometimes it is awkward to go to breakfast, lunch, or dinner with strangers. At first, I was not real big on doing this; however, I am growing to like it because you can learn so much. If you want to do this, there is one dining room where you can go and they will seat you with whomever just sat there.
I quickly realized that life is a “small world”. The very first morning I somehow managed to get split up from our group so I decided to just have breakfast at this restaurant. At the time, I did not realize that I would be seated with “total strangers”; however, it turned out to be a great experience. It turns out these people were GM Employees that lived and worked in Canada; thus, we immediately had the “car business” in common. They were actually involved with making the Chevrolet Camaro. Furthermore, one of their friends came over to the table, and he was a diver at Indiana University and was coached by Hobie Billingsley, whose divers won more than 100 national diving titles. He was at IU in the early 70s. It is always interesting to be able to travel thousands of miles from home and then meet someone from another country that you actually have something in common.
One of the things that I have always wanted to do is to visit all 50 states. I have been very fortunate and only have a few left; however, Alaska was one of them so this trip is definitely a bucket list item. Today we are headed to Icy Strait Point. When we arrive, we will go on a tour to see whales, different wildlife, and even brown bears. I am really looking forward to having my kids be a part of this adventure. Later in the week we will go on a ride with Alaska sled dogs — that should be super interesting. Our last Alaska adventure is a flight on a sea plane which obviously includes a water landing. These should all be very memorable experiences and I am so happy to be able to do them with my kids. We will end the week with a train ride to Banff in Canada. Banff is where some of the events from the last Winter Olympics took place. I am sure we will have lots of stories for next week’s article.