Ok, I don’t know if it’s my sad, old netbook that doesn’t like photos or the internet connection… but they will be few and far between at this rate. Thankfully, I will bring my new one on my next trip =) We left Hammonton around 9am for the trek down to Washington/Alexandria. In the process we drove thru Berlin and saw many other German references (Frankfurt Ave., Cologne, Hanover, etc.) Yep, I love that this time next month I’ll be in Europe. Anyway! Drive down was relatively uneventful, yet long. When I google mapped it, I didn’t want to pay tolls, so we had a few scenic detours haha. Got to see some of Delaware and Maryland in the process. We drove along the outskirts of Philly (love all their brick buildings) and right thru Baltimore. ... read more

Alright, quick one today since we basically just drove all day. We left a little later than planned... uhm, noon haha, but that's ok. Border-crossing took two seconds, there were no cars which was nice, and then we went straight down to Watertown for a grocery run - time to hit the road! We drove straight down Watertown to Hammonton - 6h30. Drive down was fun - we took note of all the cities we passed thru, such as Mexico, Moscow, Belfast, Bethlehem and Berlin to name a few. (There are also a crap load of Wawa Markets in NJ) Driving across New Jersey... we now understand the stereotype and the jokes re: the smell of NJ. Yep. It is quite something. Every 10min or so we'd encounter a new smell... and 9 out of 10 ... read more

Well, we managed to fit everything into our bags… that’s quite the impressive feat if you can visualize how much crap both me and Mom bought. (Not to mention 3L of alcohol… not exactly flexible with our packing there). We got off the ship quite early – at 7:30am – to make our transfer from Seward up to Anchorage, Alaska. We had booked the transfer/tour with Alaska Cruise Transfers… yeahhhhhh, our driver was awesome, but the set-up at the cruise terminal was a complete and utter joke. Without being funny. In their instructions, they stress that you cannot leave the terminal area because they will walk around with a sign for where to go. At 8am we had to be in the terminal with our bags, for departure at 8:30am. Funny, at 8:15am there was still ... read more

Sidenote: picking photos for this entry was pretty much an eenie-meanie-mo kind of deal. I have so many photos from today, that this really is just a random sample haha Wow, what a pretty day =) We had a full day-trip planned for Skagway, and it didn’t disappoint! We took a bus tour which brought us up to White Pass summit – stunning drive. Our driver was great; we got to hear all about the Gold Rush and how the train from Skagway to Whitehorse came to be. Mom and I had a good laugh – it took them all of 2 years to build this railway in the late 1890s… and Ottawa can’t even get its act together to build a tunnel thru the downtown-core. How sad. Anyway, we stopped to take photos along ... read more

So, Juneau’s awesome! The weather was a little shitty in the morning – spitting rain and overcast, but by 10am the rain stopped. Good timing because at 10:30 we headed out on our excursion! We took the bus up to Mendenhall Glacier – our driver was fun, full of jokes and stuff. We had 1.5hrs at the Glacier which really wasn’t enough… I easily could’ve spent another couple hours there to hike around the trails. (Even if there was a sign indicating “possibly bear encounters”, I was game) I love glaciers, I really do. The colours are just amazing, and the patterns within the ice are mesmerizing. A got a bunch of photos of the ice flows in the lake at the bottom of the glacier, and then of course a ton more photos of the ... read more