My summer vacation in 2024/Carlos Pueblo

 My summer vacation in 2024/Carlos Pueblo

Cruising in Alaska has become my summer vacation nowadays to avoid the Texas heatway, of course, it's my life after all. I am on vacation almost everyday and everyday is like summer in Houston. The cruise ship is like a small township in Texas being carried into an ice box in Alaska for a week or two as a back to back trip. Just the same day when I returned from my lovely Alma Mater Summit in Los Angeles, my Miami cruise agent sent me a promotional notice to be back to Alaska and I responded. I am on my way back to my summer vacation even though I haven't finished my previous journals 5 times in the last 12 months.

Usually there are two ports for the ship to embark, either in Seattle, Washington or Vancouver, British Columbia, both are lovely cities in the West of North America. If it is from Vancouver, I would arrange a back to back trip for 14 days; or repeat a seven days itinerary all around Alaska panhandle to Seward, Alaska and through many glaciers.

It's nice to dress warm, i.e. a leather jacket and a wool sweater to meet the need. Alaska is one of the most beautiful scenery in the whole world, the white cap glacier on the mountain tops and late fall foliage before the season ends. It keeps me very busy for hiking on every port, Ketchikan Creek to the fish hatchery; marching to the Mendenhall Glacier in Juneau; the Lower Dewey Lake at Skagway or taking a shuttle bus to Canadian Boulder; visiting the lovely town of Seward just outside of Anchorage in honor of the famous Secretary of State to make the purchase of Alaska from Russia. Of course, we are going to visit Sitka, the ancient Russian Alaska Capital, Icy Straight or Hunah to visit two American bald eagles. There are several breathtaking glaciers which the ship will slowly sail through each day. Of course, we shall see visiting whales migrating along the inner path.

Other than in the summer, Alaska is severely cold; therefore, uninhabitable for human beings. Alaska can maintain the original not like my old hometown Puli, Taiwan, a mountain township in central Taiwan, also a nice place for the summer vacation and regretfully not any more. I learned the word summer vacation when I was a kid to see my cousin who came to visit his aunt, my mother, during his summer vacation. He would ride a bicycle to the rural area to feel something very much different from Taipei. His kid brother is my dentist who installed my new denture.