Kelleys Island Trip

 I love to travel, but I don't very often take 2 trips back to back. This summer I did. Richard & I came home from Alaska on a Sunday, and Wednesday I was heading out again. 😉 On a much-anticipated girls trip. 

Side Note: I'm a bit behind on blogging right now because I've not been well. I started out feeling freezing cold -which feels odd in the 90° summer heat- with some minor aching. (It was 95° outside one day and I -for real- was wearing a jacket and wrapped in a fuzzy blanket.) Because we live in a hotspot for Lyme, I was originally treated for Lyme even though I am not aware of any tick bites. The Lyme test came back negative. At first we suspected it to be a false negative. Currently I'm going with the theory that I have West Nile Virus or some similar mosquito-borne disease because I know for a fact that I was bitten in both Alaska and Kelleys Island. The aching really ramped up to where I hurt so much that I simply laid on the recliner and napped a lot. You know it's bad when I don't even crochet, right?! If it is WNV, it simply has to run its course and then I will -thankfully- be immune and not have to worry about getting re-infected. 

So Girls Trip started with a road trip and a ferry ride to Kelleys Island, Ohio. It's been a long time since I've been on a drive-on ferry so that was interesting again. A pleasant 4 mile ride on Lake Erie from mainland over to the island. 

We rented a nice apartment- upstairs left side of this condo. And the golf cart (front & center) since one of us is scheduled for a hip replacement. 

The first evening we ate at West Bay; it was a good choice.

This is a Pork Sundae. Creative name for mashed potatoes topped with pulled pork and coleslaw. It was delicious. 

We went across the street to enjoy the sunset...

Gorgeous! 😍

In light of some hard situations in church life recently, I really connected with this little plant on the pier... growing through the hard.

We 3 couldn't be more kindred spirits when it comes to schedules- we all stay up late and sleep in, which is super convenient when we hang out. There's not that 1 morning person banging around at the crack of dawn. We made our own breakfast inhouse. I doubt we could've bought anything this good from a restaurant! Arianna baked the coffee cake as my contribution.  

Off to explore Kelleys Island... a first time for Rosi & I. 

It's always fun when your worlds collide. My bestie from Hillcrest and my bestie from church, who happen to be cousins. Judith and I grew up only an hour apart, we never met prior to her family coming to visit Rosi at Hillcrest. Even then, Judith didn't make much of an impression- I wouldn't have guessed we'd end up in the same church some day. But here we are, and I'm better for my friendship with these ladies!

The next day we golf-carted around the island, seeing the sights. The Glacial Grooves were interesting. 

A little hard to imagine on a hot day this being created by ice!

The glacial grooves are 400 feet long, 35 feet wide, and up to 15 feet deep. They were created by the slow movement of the massive glacier that created the Great Lakes and Lake Erie Islands. When glaciers move across the earth, they pick up rocks, soil, and other debris, and drag them along. As the ice crept over the soft limestone bedrock of Kelleys Island, these harder bits of rock gouged the grooves that we see today. Originally, the grooves were filled with soil, debris, and quarry waste. In 1972, excavation to uncover the full extent of the grooves began, and they have been a popular tourist attraction ever since. 

View from the top

We hung out at this German Reformed church for a bit... 

We golf-carted around the perimeter of the island, stopping off to explore the shore...

...and the airport on the east end of the island 

(near where some phones will welcome you to Canada!😲)

We saw quite a few Amish on the island. From the fishing gear in their golf carts, we assume they came to fish Lake Erie. 

All day we were intending to treat ourselves to smoothies on the town square in the afternoon. We got to the coffee shop at 2:55pm and saw employees closing up the outdoor seating. Oh dear, they close at 3! They were gracious enough to let us in and made smoothies for us. I "always" get mango, so I tried peach this time for something different. Enjoyed it!  

In the evening we decided on Captain's Corner for dinner. Judith got a Greek platter (background) and let us sample the grape leaves, which were really good! I got the walleye platter -just for the novelty of eating local catch. 

As soon as we finished eating, we rushed to the west side of the island for sunset. It was cloudy and not near as pretty as the previous evening. 

We still had 15 minutes left on the golf cart rental so Judith pushed me to take it on a spin before we turned it in. Now I know how. 🤷 Next I walked down the street to see Inscription Rock. 

I'm sure at one time it was cool, but it is so weathered now that I couldn't see any inscriptions on it. The petroglyphs are believed to have been created sometime between A.D. 1200 and 1600. 

It was discovered partly buried in the shoreline in 1833, the rock is now entirely exposed and covered by a roof and viewing platform. Too little, too late to preserve the history.

It was getting dark and looking like it could start raining any minute so I walked briskly back to the condo. Too bad I didn't have enough time left to check out Kelleys Mansion across the street from the rock. 

The next morning, Friday, we made our own breakfast and packed up so we could check out by 10am. We drove around a bit, stopping off at a beach to relax by the shore.  

We caught the 11:30 ferry back to mainland. I was blown away seeing 2 fully-loaded cement trucks driving off the ferry! Wow! 

We went to Marblehead lighthouse, since we were so close anyway.

It was looking a little stormy so they paused tours going up in the lighthouse. It wasn't a big deal because Judith & I had both been up it before; we just browsed through the lightkeepers house and museums on the grounds. The rescue station was fascinating! They had a system that was basically ziplining in a buoy with pants attached. What a way to be rescued from a shipwreck!! 

Rosi had evening plans so she headed home, but Judith & I took time to browse through some cute shops on Main St of Marblehead yet. A short & sweet little getaway! 

To answer the question we get asked all the time, NO, we do not have any other trips planned for the rest of the year. Our Israel trip got postponed again due to continued unrest, so our 3rd international trip of 2025 is a no-go. I'm actually ready for a break from cruising... rolling around the idea of taking a train trip to try something new... not sure yet. 

Our Alaskan Cruise -Part 4

 Thurs, July 17- Richard woke up at 2am and peeked outside, out of curiosity. Alaska is the land of the midnight sun so he wanted to see this phenomenon; sure enough, it was only dusk-ish, not dark. We arrived in Ketchikan at 6am. 

Too late we realized we should have ordered room service for breakfast. But the buffet wasn't full that early so we were able to get a table by the window. By 7:30 we were disembarking. We walked over to Creek Street, and up Married Mans Trail along Ketchikan Creek. Beautiful! 

Ketchikan is the salmon capital of the world. I was looking for the salmon ladder. Found it! 

Unfortunately there were no salmon jumping up the ladder. There were a few salmon swimming placidly farther downstream, but it was a couple days early -the salmon run starts mid-July here.

Lack of salmon didn't stop the eagles from perching above the creek. We saw so many eagles in Alaska!

Salmon Facts: *Only 1 out of 100 salmon that reach the ocean make it back to spawn. *Salmon at the mouth of this creek are the healthiest they will ever be. They stop eating and put all their energy into getting upstream to lay or fertilize eggs. *Ketchikan was founded in the 1880s on salmon; by the 1930s it produced 1.5 million cases annually. The salmon industry nearly collapsed in the 1970s due to overfishing.  

We walked back down Creek Street by the infamous Dolly's House. Creek St was a red-light district in the early 1900s, referred to as the place where fish and fishermen went to spawn. 🙈 Madam Dolly's house is kept as it was when prostitution was outlawed in 1953. The street's disreputable history also involves bootlegging whiskey, with houses -built on stilts over the water- utilizing trap doors in the floor and the creek's high tide to smuggle alcohol in during Prohibition. 

Interestingly enough, next door to Dolly's is the Preacher's House. There were Christians trying to clean up the town, back in the day. Now it's rented out as a vacation rental. 

Most of the houses are now respectable shops, restaurants & lodging for tourists.

We were running out of time because we had tickets for the Great American Lumberjack Show at 9am. According to the reviews we were either about to waste our money on a silly show or experience the best lumberjack show ever. 😅 We were seated in the American section, Spruce Mill Camp, competing against the Canadian, Dawson Creek camp. Yo-ho! This was the site of the Ketchikan Spruce Mill built in 1903. Spruce was used to make wooden boxes for shipping canned salmon. Spruce was also in high demand during World War II, for planes & ship decks. The mill sponsored a Timber Carnival every July 4th to determine the "Bull of the Woods", reenacted in these daily competitions.   

This was the standing block chop...

Hatchet throwing...

Crosscutting... (the saw known colloquially as a "misery whip")

Springboard Chop...

Speed Climb...

Boom Run... 

Log Roll. We Americans were ahead until this event- then the Canadians won. 

Next we went searching for the famous Liquid Sunshine Gauge. Ketchikan is the 4th wettest place on earth. It receives over 200 inches of rain each year. I fully expected it to rain while we were there because it almost always is, but we had another beautiful sunny day. The tour that Marions were on talked about their electricity is generated by rain; if they go 5 days without rain, it's considered a drought and they have to start generators to power their town. Wow!  

Next to it was "The Rock" statue. "The Rock" shows a vision of early Alaskan pioneers and the beginning of Ketchikan. Six of the seven sculptures represent people who helped to form Alaska's First City- a fisherman, a miner, a logger, a bush pilot, a frontierswoman, and a Native drummer. These figures illustrate the initial pull factors that drew people to Ketchikan: the salmon, the gold rushes, the bountiful forests, and the wildlife. The seventh sculpture represents an actual historic figure: Chief Johnson, a Tlingit chief, symbolizing how his people were the first to make Southeast Alaska their home. I wish I would've got a picture from the other side -with the bush pilot visible- but it was so crowded in that area at the time that we moved on. 

We only had an hour left to zip around the promenade, shopping for souvenirs. We each bought a hoodie, picked up a jar of salmonberry jelly, and a few things for our kids & grands. I would have wanted to spend quite a bit more time here! However, someone had told us to always leave something unchecked on our bucket list. That way we have an excuse to come back. 😊

We had to be back on board by 12:15pm. Right after we got back to our cabin, Arianna called Richard. She had taken our newest vehicle to a concert in the city, but it died on her -on the interstate. Talk about a dad feeling helpless from 2200 miles away! We have AAA for her but they turned out to be worthless- couldn't even send help for an hour! Seriously?! Some really nice folks in tow trucks showed up to help. After we sailed away, we had cell service long enough to be able to call Jeremy and find out he was on his way to swap vehicles with her and limp our Highlander home. We sailed out into Canadian waters without knowing if everyone made it home safely. 

I ran up to the Art room at 1pm for Holland America's Needlecraft Meetup, but no one was there. Bummer. I didn't see anyone else crocheting or knitting on this ship. 

At 2pm we popped into the David Jeremiah book sale briefly, but we didn't purchase anything and opted out of taking a photo with him. By this point we were nonplussed at the "hero worship" going on. Other guests seemed shocked that we wouldn't want his books. We actually heard someone say the only reason they were on this cruise was because of David Jeremiah. Really? We were on the cruise for Alaska, not a person! 

We had seen Marions' formal portraits in the photo gallery (Holland America still physically prints photos) and I got inspired to do a couple sittings. So we dressed up and went around to several of the ship's photographers. We got talked into doing a professional sitting in the studio, too, but we never went to the appointment to see those because I'm sure they were not in our price range. The regular photos are pricy but we split a package with Marions. 

After that, we went to message #3 by David Jeremiah "What About the Children?" We can be confident that babies who die are safe with Jesus because of God's character and compassion. The age of accountability isn't an age, it's a spiritual awareness. 

Dinner at 7:30 in the main dining room... 

My four mushroom soup came out as mushrooms in a bowl, the broth was poured over them tableside. 

Richard had the apple, pear, cucumber salad.

Ricotta spinach tortellini

Tangerine glazed duck breast with wild rice-potato pancake

It just so happened that we ordered the same desserts that evening- tiramisu and coconut tart.

Chef's parade! Holland America had a classier, less rowdy, version which we liked. One of the waiters sang a song that translated into 'until we meet again'.  

 

We got a dog towel art and chocolates with our turndown service that evening. 

Good-bye, Alaska! British Columbia bound

Friday, July 18- Every morning mercies new... this view doesn't get old!

At 9am, we went to the Farewell Message with David Jeremiah "The Celestial City". For those of us who prefer our rural life, heaven is a city -but the good news is we will love it there. He spoke about the dimensions and description of the city from Revelation 21, ending with reasons one could be denied entrance into the city.  

So, I am NOT a fan of saxaphone music. At all. Originally when we booked this cruise, I anticipated getting up and walking out when this man, Uriel Vega, was on the agenda. It would be a stretch to say he won me over, but I did not walk out. I will [grudgingly] concede he did an amazing job with praise & worship music. To Turning Point Ministries' credit, they did not put any one artist on stage for a long time- sax music in tiny doses was tolerable.  

Afterwards we went in the main dining room with Marions for the Alaskan Brunch. This is goat cheese with fresh fruit. Marlene could taste goat in it, but my palette isn't as discerning- it tasted similar to cream cheese to me. Richard had the beet & apple smoothie, with a crystalized ginger stick.

Monte Cristo sandwich was underwhelming, but the steak & eggs skillet with reindeer sausage was good.

Wild berry crisp with ice cream & triple berry tart were also good. 

We didn't get out of brunch in time to participate in the watercolors class in Art Studio, but at 1pm we went to A City on the Sea ship tour on the World Stage. That was really interesting. Here one of the chefs is giving statistics on the amount of food it takes for a week-long cruise, including 90 pallets of fresh produce. 

An officer talking about mechanical systems of the ship

A small portion of the crew who did an amazing job spoiling us for a week!

We started packing to go home that afternoon. We went to Harris III's 2nd magic show; the captain had promised not to upstage him with whale sightings this time, LOL. 

He put a piece of paper that he tore into a snowflake into a glass of liquid... then made it appear to "snow" onto the stage -way more pieces than he started with. I'm pretty sure the fan was full of paper and the soggy paper was still in his hand or something.

At some point in the afternoon, the captain made an announcement that our port in Victoria, British Columbia is cancelled due to propulsion issues with the ship. That was disappointing! I'm especially disappointed in not being able to get the beaver tail (Canadian pastry) I was looking forward to. By law, cruises are required to make at least one international stop each sailing; to meet that requirement, we were going to briefly stop in British Columbia for a couple hours that evening. While we were dining that evening, we slowed way down -almost came to a stop- and we could hear the crew banging away below us trying to fix the problem. The brothers may or not have been tempted to message their mother with news that we're stranded on the ocean. 😉 

Because the dining room was slow, our waiters brought us extra food. Tomato soup, jicama & mango salad, brisket, leg o' lamb, salmon, shrimp...

And every dessert on the menu except the cheese plate. We went away stuffed! 

We went up to the game room to play games after supper. After a few false starts with games & puzzles that were annoyingly mixed together, we played Apples to Apples. 

Till we finished packing, juggled our things to be under 50 lbs. per suitcase, weighed them and set them outside our door for pick-up, it was 11pm. We did get a small refund for not being able to stop in BC.

Saturday, July 19- It would've been nice to sleep in because we had such a long day ahead of us, but we never fully adjusted to the time change- we were awake by 5:30am. We docked back in Seattle at 6:30. 

We met Marions at 8am for one last meal on Eurodam. I had purposely booked an evening flight out of Seattle so we'd have the whole day to explore the city first. There was some discussion over breakfast what to do with our day; renting a car and driving down to Mt Rainier was an option, but in the end Marions tagged along with us to downtown. 

I lost track of time, so we got in line to disembark -too late I realized it was only 8:30; we were scheduled for 9. It was chilly enough that I was wishing for my coat, which I had packed in our checked luggage. (We packed as much as possible to avoid carrying it around all day.) It was easy to grab a taxi at the port; $30 got the 4 of us into downtown near Pike Place Market, where Marions were able to check their luggage into a storage unit for several hours. They went off on their own, but we spent several hours browsing through the market.

In spite of this teeshirt's claim, we had yet another beautiful sunny day.

I can't exclaim enough about the beautiful fresh flowers!! If only we hadn't been flying...

Peonies & dahlias by the bucket full! It smelled ah-mazing! 😍😍

I could've purchased by the stem or a bouquet... they were selling big bunches for just $20.

And the seafood!!!

Yikes, look at the price of King Crab Legs!🤯

This is the stall with the famous "flying fish". 

When a customer places an order for an item displayed on ice, the employee working in front of the counter picks up the fish & throws it to one of the guys behind the counter to wrap for the customer. Large crowds gather waiting for the action, but -in our experience- there are not near as many fish flying through the air as the advertisements made it sound. 

We were given some samples of fresh fruit. What are the chances of smuggling produce past TSA in a backpack?? Oh, if only we were not flying... 

Never heard of sea beans... Google says it is a salt tolerant plant that grows in coastal marshlands near the shore. They are a flowering succulent with branching stalks and can look like a thick and rotund grass.  In no way related to true beans, sea beans stalks have a similar crunch and snap to green beans or asparagus from the garden. Naturally salty, they are best served lightly sautéed with butter and herbs.

Love the colors 😍😍

Doughnuts that are the size of a pie?! Alaska loves to rub it in that they are quite a bit larger than Texas, so these were advertised as Alaska-sized doughnuts. 

I was browsing through one of the book shops and came across this book- The Joys of Getting Older. It piqued my interest, so I picked it up and paged through it. I was momentarily taken aback by the contents, then I laughed out loud. Get it? 

I was not tempted by the meat prices... although Richard did buy some jerky from this stall. 

Adjacent to the market is The Gum Wall. I drug Richard down the stairs and outside to see it, just for a few minutes. He was grossed out. Only in Seattle would this be considered art! 😝

The Gum Wall started in the 1990s when local patrons and performers stuck their used gum on the wall. Since those days, the wall has grown piece by piece to cover an enormous expanse of brick and continues to expand down Post Alley.

The wall was first cleaned in 2015 after 20 years of gum had accumulated. Since then it is scraped off every couple years, most recently in November. All this gum in 8 months?! 

Next we walked over to the Seattle Great Wheel because I wanted to ride on it. I think we went around 5 times. 

Cool views of Seattle from up there!

We checked out the Alaskan Sourdough Bakery

Those are some massive loaves

We went back to the market because I was still trying to catch a photo of a flying fish. This is the closest I got- the guy behind the counter is catching it in a piece of butcher paper.

This is the original Starbucks, which is across the street from the market. 

We bought a cookie & brownie from a bakery, then sat in the park to enjoy the beautiful weather. We had an "interesting" experience there. We were sitting on a park bench behind a Catholic fella holding up a sign about abortion being sin and Jesus is the way to forgiveness. All of a sudden there was a lot of yelling and we got an unexpected shower! Apparently his sign triggered a girl walking past; she started screaming at him and emptied her water bottle in his face. Or at least that was her intention, but we were behind him- in the line of fire. He remained very calm while her friend convinced her to walk away. She was too angry to realize she dowsed us. We all dried quickly in the sunshine.  

Marlene's knee was bothering her so Marion ordered a taxi for 3pm. I was planning to ride the train again, and not head down to the airport quite that early, but it was ok. Sort of. We got to the airport 6 hours before our flight, so we could not go through security that long before our flight. Can you believe SeaTac does not have anywhere to sit pre-security?? No benches outside, no chairs inside the terminal, nothing! We've flew from Orlando several times post-cruise; they have a beautiful courtyard with palm trees where you can hang out until your flight. Washington needs to take some lessons from Florida! Richard finally got permission from a lady to sit in the back of a small handicap seating area -her co-worker said we can't, but she argued that we can and won. My phone was completely dead and there were no receptacles around, but Marion loaned me his battery pack to charge it. 

At 5:30 we were able to go through security. Marions were flying a different airline from us, so we went to opposite ends of the airport and didn't see them again after that. They had a direct flight, we did not. 

We were hungry by then so we went to the food court and ordered a pizza. We thought we were getting a whole pizza for $20. Silly us, we should've known in Seattle that would only be a personal size. 😞 

Finally at 10pm, we boarded our flight. United dimmed the lights and kept announcements to a minimum so people could sleep. Richard had a window seat, so he could lean against the side of the plane and get some sleep; I was in the middle seat and tend to be a Goldilocks- I need conditions to be 'just right' to sleep, hence I did not doze off. We were in an exit row so at least we had a nice amount of leg room.

Sunday, July 20- Flying across 3 time zones, it was 5:30am when we landed in Dulles (Washington DC). I just wanted to crash but it was not dark or quiet enough to sleep at the gate. Our flight got delayed so we didn't board until 9:30. I rarely pay extra to choose our seats, so we're frequently assigned the cheap seats in the nosebleed section aka the very tail of the plane. We were pleasantly surprised to be in row 5 this flight. Quick little hop back to the midwest, and one go-around later, we had our luggage by 11:30. (We were hoping the pilot would explain the go-around but he did not.) Seattle's Port Valet program came through for us- our luggage arrived with us safe & sound -even though we hadn't seen it for 36 hours. Jeremy picked us up; he brought my pillow & blanket along so I could try to sleep on the drive home. Operative word being try; I didn't actually sleep, but I rested. 

When we were like 2 miles from home, I sat up so I don't get carsick on our curvy back roads. I had just sat up when a pickup came towards us left of center. Instead of swerving back onto their side of the road, the person came even farther over towards us! What?? Jeremy swerved onto the berm and narrowly avoided a head-on collision. I kept waiting for the car to roll into the ditch -and me to get thrown out because I wasn't wearing a seatbelt due to laying down, but Jeremy kept it under control. A couple inches farther would've been a whole different story. Thank you, Jesus! (For my Hillcrest friends, all I could think about was Laura!) The pickup never stopped and it wasn't a vehicle we recognized. We lost plastic pieces from the underside of the car between there & home, accompanied with flopping & scraping sounds, but we made it home safely. The irony is family worrying about us over an earthquake we never felt; we were safer in Alaska than we were in our own backyard!! 

Arianna had lunch ready & waiting for us. We napped several hours before we had the energy to start unpacking. I absolutely adore the notes our granddaughter made for us! We DID have a grat time and came bake. 😇

Take-Aways: My original thought was that Alaska would be a one-and-done state for us. But now I realize we barely scratched the surface of all there is to see & do. I don't know, maybe we'll go again some day... I would rather do a land tour next time so we're not limited to the coast though. 

   We are down to 3 states in the USA that we have not been to- North Dakota, Louisiana and Hawaii. Which is next?      

   We really enjoyed cruising with family for the first time ever. Hopefully not a last. Here's to more sibling trips! 

   We would cruise with Holland America again; it was probably 50/50 what we liked better, over Royal Caribbean. 
    Alaska sure was beautiful and we don't regret the money spent. Richard says pictures don't do justice- you need to see it for yourself.