A Time to Travel -- Update on Maxie and Judy

It has taken quite a while for Maxie and Judy Stubbs Terry to recover from their fabulous cruise to Alaska. I finally got a photo to share. (Yes, they traveled at the same time as the Pittman's but not on same cruise as I thought .) I asked Judy for a brief description and when she returned from her annual mission trip to Kentucky, she sent this note.

We are on the Yukon side of the sign welcoming us to Alaska. That bus ride was part of a tour from Skagway, another Gold Rush town. The whole trip was wonderful - a trip of a lifetime - and it will take the rest of our lifetime to pay for it! We cruised the Inside Passage and toured the interior on the train going from Anchorage to Fairbanks. Along the way we toured Denali National Park, and actually saw the peak of Mt. McKinley with no clouds in the way! We also saw the Alaska Pipeline. We saw all of the advertised wildlife except for Orca Whales - you had to go on a special expedition to see those. The glaciers were awesome - in Glacier Bay and also College Fjord.

As a Master Gardener, I was really interested in the plants and trees - they were HUGE in the rain forest, as expected, but also in Fairbanks. I guess it's because of the shortened growing season there. Fairbanks experiences the extremes in weather conditions - high summer temps around 80*, and winter ones as low a -60*. But I found a river I could really live on - during the summer season only! Most of the houses are very modest, but everybody has toys - 4 wheelers, airplanes, boats, etc. And the neatest thing in Fairbanks is the outlets in each parking space - to warm up all the systems in your car in the winter. It was our best vacation ever, and no other destination I can think of would even could close.

One of the lovely things about getting closer to our 50th class reunion is that we have more time to travel, to indulge in our personal interests and to enjoy the day. We do get squeezed in between grandchildren and older parents, but somehow, there is still time.

Let me hear from YOU . . . and send pictures!