Category: Photography

We went to Vail for Labor Day Weekend. Owing to moving and camping and LIFE, we had not been there since ski season, and since I actually like it better in the summer, I was happy when my sister proposed we go.

After a long fight with traffic, we got there and crashed.

The next morning, we tried to go to Hanging Lake to hike, but there weren’t any parking spots!!! At 9 am!! yeesh.

So we found another hiking spot in nearby Glenwood. It really wasn’t our favorite and didn’t have much to recommend it besides some pretty wildflowers ….

And a nice view of Glenwood. Not much tree cover, near a water treatment plant, pretty meh. But that’s OK.

We had a nice lunch at The Pullman, a charmingly casual but very nice restaurant in Glenwood Springs. Dad and I split a peach bourbon BBQ pork sandwich. Yum.

Afterward, we drove on to Paonia (just 1.5 hours away!) and went peach picking at this cool little farm.

The peaches were GORGEOUS! We bought 35 lbs of them.

The kids had a wonderful time running around outside …

And playing on the cart …

And hanging with Daddy

And checking out the grapes.

They make wine there too and the grapes were looking good!

They also grow flowers, more fruit, a ton of veggies and apples! Wish it were just around the corner instead of 4 hours away (from Denver).

They definitely had the “cute farm” thing down, complete with vintage truck for Ben to drive.

We saw this beautiful little water fall on the side of the road on the way back to Vail and had to stop and check it out. It was a very cool hidden gem. We got back to Vail late after having dinner at Moe’s Original BBQ in Eagle and played games and chilled.

The next day, we had a leisurely morning and picked up Matt’s brother who was in a nearby town for a wedding. Then we had the birthday lunch at Mountain Standard in Vail. This is a sister restaurant to one of our other local favorites, Sweet Basil. We had super super yummy food an exchanged gifts and had dessert. We all agreed we didn’t have to eat for a long time to come.

After lunch, we took a walk to Betty Ford Garden which is crazy beautiful no matter the season.

We got some family shots of the four of us, none of which turned out, despite the fact that my sister snapped 20!! Seriously, they’re all either out of focus or I someone is looking off to the side or something. Grr.

But I snapped this one of everyone else and it’s pretty nice, despite Ben’s goofiness.

A little more chilling and it was time to head home and back to our regularly scheduled lives. Ah well.

So the cruise wasn’t just about being on a cruise. It was about seeing ALASKA! And we did.

Note: before I go on, I must give props to the post-processing my talented husband did in Photoshop. He brought out the colors beautifully and removed some of the haze you get in the area – STUNNING!

Anyhoo, one of our days at sea was basically dedicated to checking out the Tracy Arm glacier/area. It is incredible. They do narration on the televisions so you can sit on your balcony and listen to what you’re seeing as you float by, but mostly we spent our time on deck 10 with the masses, enjoying panoramic views. They make it special and have plenty of blankets and hot chocolate available.

The glacier itself is kind of beautiful, but the scenery around it is spectactular. We didn’t see any “calving” where hunks of ice fall off the glacier into the water and make huge waves, but we did see seals and bald eagles. That was neat (photos were way too far away to be any good!).

Our first day in port was at Skagway where we mad the excellent choice to ride the railway into BC. This was our favorite shore excursion and though it was LONG (and ended with a fairly cheesy gold-panning deal), it was worth it. The views were amazing.

This is the very aptly named “inspiration point.”

At the top, where it sort of levels out, there are the most amazing streams with either absolutely crystal clear water (from rainfall) or this beautiful blue water from glacial melt.

Our second port of call was Juneau where we went to see the Mendenhall Glacier … see cheesy tourist shot above ….

and whale watching. We got far too little time on the glacier unfortunately and probably a little too much time on the whale watching boat. We did see a whoooole bunch of whales though!! This photo is of them doing “bubble feeding” in a group of nine.

We also got to see sea lions which I thought were possibly cooler than the whales, though they don’t do much. These guys are the jumbo-sized cousins of the California variety you see at zoos. These are “juveniles” that will grow to be about 4x the size of the CA ones.

Our last port was Ketchikan. It was mostly tourist-trap type shopping (we shipped ourselves home a ton of smoked salmon). We took a Duck tour there which was pretty meh. A duck is an amphibious vehicle. The original ones were used in the D-Day invasion in WW2. This is a modern duck. I’ve been a few duck tours before and they were always fun but this one either because of our narrator or because of the “sights” of Ketchikan was not too great – but at least it was short!

Shore excursions were OK, but there are a lot better options when your kids get older – cycling, hiking, etc. I would also pick with a more careful eye next time. I think some of the ones that included food (freshly caught salmon or crab!) would be great. Everything we went on, even the 6 hour ones really didn’t have much available and we were starving when we got back to the boat. Makes for cranky kids and parents.

I’m planning another post on our time in Vancouver and then a general post about my experiences cruising with Disney (hopefully before the week is out) and that will finish up my More Than You Probably Wanted to Know About Our Vacation series.