Alaska--- the conclusion

Day 4 Glacier Bay:

The reason we picked this particular cruise was that it was the only one for Carnival going to Glacier Bay. Other cruises would go to Tracy Fjord which I'm sure is nice. Glacier Bay just happens to have more glaciers and is a national park so we figured if this could be our only visit we might as well see it.

It was nice and sunny (glacier melting weather.) Had a great time watching for whales and looking at the glaciers. Whale watching was probably one of the things I enjoyed most about the trip. If I had it to do again I might have tried to book a whale watching excursion from one of the ports.

Day 5 Ketchikan:

Ketchikan seemed to be the most familiar of the stops to me. Sure it was the same tourist trap shops, but they also had a shuttle to Wal-Mart and the convenience store sections had a lot more normal stuff (I'll be it very expensive.) I guess it made me feel I like I was on the edge of civilization again.

My mom and sister took the shuttle to Wal-Mart so while they did I took the time to find a multi cache.

Rene's B-day Totem Pole Multi

This one took you to several totem poles. I would have preferred a cache each, but I took what I could get. Took a walk down to Creek Street which was the old Red Light district. Found this cache

Fish-On

Once the family was back we walked around a little more. Took a tour of Dolly's Brothel.

Then we said goodbye to Alaska as we boarded the ship.

Day 6 Victoria:

After most of a day at see we arrived in Victoria rather late in the day. We took one of the buses downtown and too picture and looked for caches till it was dark

Whats Cooking?
Sunken Garden
You Rock, Victoria!

We didn't have very long. Got back to the ship and we were back in Seattle in the morning. We just got up and got moving.

The End

Alaska... continued

I left off at...

Day 3 Skagway:

Skagway was our port with the longest stay. We decided to rent a car and drive into Canada. The ship was in port when we woke up and after a bit of breakfast we made our way off the ship. We picked up the rental car and started our trip.

Just after crossing the border we took some picture at the crossing and then I found this cache

International Falls & Border - Alaska/BC

It was my first cache in Canada, yet we hadn't yet stopped at the border crossing.

We continued up the road stopping at the Yukon Suspension Bridge and these two caches

Just South of 60 - South Klondike Highway

Lean on Me

We got to our destination of Carcros where we had lunch and I found one more cache

Tutshi Memorial

We continued up to Emerald Lake and just as we went to turn around we spotted a bear at the side of the road. We took a few pictures of him. Even got out of the car at what seemed like a safe distance. Didn't really notice he was a grizzley until examining the pictures later.

The trip back was fairly uneventful. We looked around at the old grave yard and a lot of the shops. Back at the ship I found one more virtual

Skagway cliffs

To be concluded...

Alaska

Its been a couple of months, but I felt I should come back and finish my posting on Alaska.

I'd never been on a cruise before so I tried to pick up all the advice I could. All I can say is that you should go how you'd like to go. We got this cruise for my Mom's 70th birthday because we've talked about Alaska so much.

I booked Carnival despite a lot of warnings not to. Warnings from people that had never cruised with them. Carnival has kind of a reputation for being the cheap party cruise line. The first part is true, Carnival was by far the cheapest, we got a balcony for about the price of an obstructed sea view on other cruise lines. As for the partying and wild children there was little to none as this was a late May cruise to Alaska.

Now one thing about Carnival I will say is I was not impressed with the food. Maybe other cruise lines are better because I'm always hearing about the food. Carnival's buffets were OK, but certainly not great. And they weren't open long. The dining room was much better. I'd probably stick to that exclusively if not for formal night and such. I have no desire to dress up on vacation.

Started the trip in Seattle. It was an interesting day of getting on the ship. It is a big undertaking to get the ship loaded and ready for a week

Day 1: A fun day at sea. I can't think of much I did. Eat, look at the ocean, wonder around the ship

Day 2 Juneau: We got into Juneau a bit late and then had to tender off the ship. This was our first cruise and first port so it was a bit confusing. Once we were off the ship we went right to the Mount Roberts Tramway. This took us up the mountain were we looked for our first cache

Alpine Loop

We ran into some other geocachers and had a good search before finding it well hidden.

Back in town we didn't really have time to go to the Mendenhall Glacier like we wanted to. Instead we looked around at shops, the Capital Building (under renovation) and found one more cache

Museum Trading Post

 

 

 

 

 

To be continued...

sogeo.org is gone

I decided last month not to renew sogeo.org and the hosting company finally deleted it. It was one of the last local geocaching sites.

Portland
Central Oregon
Corvallis
Eugene
Southern Oregon

All once represented by their own websites and all are now gone.

www.georegon.com does still exist. I'm not sure when it started, but it was after all of these.

I decided to keep the domain name and just have it point to this blog. As for this blog I decided to change the name back and maybe even post a little. I'll be in Alaska and Canada later this month and should have some adventures to share.

Last Day of 2015

Another year has gone by. This was my second full year of living in Portland. Again I ate at a lot of food carts and took in lots of blazer games. Geocaching wise it was a disappointing year, but there is potential for 2016. Highlights of the year include:

• Booked a cruise to Alaska for 2016
• Ate at numerous food carts in the #1 food city
• 3rd season with Trail Blazers Season Tickets 
• Timbers win MLS Cup
• Star Wars!

Of the 10 caches I found I decided that I could list the best:

• The U.S. Coast Guard through history  
• Picea Sitchensis Octopoda 
• The Atomic Penguin   

The first two are more for their locations then their micro caches. The last was just unique. Overall it was a good year. Here is to hoping that 2016 brings me to some more interesting places and maybe a few more geocaches. Thank you for those who hid the caches found this year. I hope to see you all on the trail in 2016.

A Christmas Tradition

In keeping with tradition I found a cache on Christmas day.

Party Cache #1

Nothing exciting or special. It makes 10 total for the year.

In a couple of days if I don't forget I'll do my recap of the year. With just 10 finds I don't think I'll bother with a list of the best caches.

Am I done geocaching?

A few weeks ago I was sitting at lunch and looked on my phone app to see if there were any caches close. Sure enough there was one within feet. After lunch I stopped and found it quickly, but did not have a pen on me to log it. Now fast forward to earlier this week. Same place for lunch, pen in hand, cache was signed, went to log it and....

Stick Me!

This might be the cache. I let my premium membership lapse and this is a premium only. I can't see it on the map or log it.

There seem to be a lot of premium only caches in Portland. Actually the cache map looks pretty nice without so many of those puzzles and challenge caches. I never made any of my caches premium only. I guess I always wanted my caches to be found by all. I know some people thought it might help with caches being muggled and trade items being pilfered. In this age were anyone with a cell phone can find a cache it might make more sense to have caches for the more devoted geocacher.

Anyway my membership was canceled when paypal couldn't pull money from an old closed account. I'm not sure why paypal couldn't figure out that I have a new account and credit card active with them. It doesn't matter I suppose. I saw that it wasn't going to renew and I chose not to renew it. I didn't really pay attention to how many Portland caches it would wipe off the map.

With just 9 finds for the year (10 if you include this one) this might just be the final nail in the coffin

Happy 4th of July

237 years ago yesterday my 7th Great Grandfather Capt. Samuel Ransom died in the Revolutionary War. He left the Continental Army to go defend his home from British and Iroquois in the Wyoming Valley of what is today Pennsylvania. This battle was latter commemorated by a poem Gertrude of Wyoming. This poem was a favorite of Rep J.M. Ashley who introduced a bill in congress to create the Territory of Wyoming which latter became the State of Wyoming.

Just to remember that war is hell... the next year, George Washington, who was still pissed off over the whole thing sent an expedition to destroy Iroquois villages and winter supplies. This expedition included my 6th Great Grandfather Capt. Ira Stephens the son-in-law of Capt. Ransom.

I hope you enjoyed your history lesson.

In more current times I found a geocache today

The Atomic Penguin

Geocaches?

I had a meeting to attend in Salem and on the way back I stopped at a rest area. It was a nice day and I wasn't in a hurry to get back so I looked at my phone and there were four caches in the area. I found 3 pretty easy the 4th had muggles with dogs so I skipped it.

TWIGMEISTER's I-5 Northbound TB Reststop
Pentacache
Road Rage #9

Vacation Days 6-7

Vacation day 6 was a rehash of other days. Driving back up the cost to Lincoln City and then out to McMinnville. We stopped a few times including an extended stop at Spirit Mountain Casino. The extended stop was for the buffet. We took our time to McMinnville, but everyone was tired and we didn't end up doing much.

Day 7 we had planned to go to the air museum, but the price combined with a lack of interest by some parties led us just to go on back to Portland. We used the extra time to drive to the gorge and see Multnomah Falls and the Vista House. Later in the day we went downtown Portland and took the tram up toward the hospital. Nice views from up there.

No geocaches were found on either day and that ends the vacation trip

Vacation Day 5

Day 5's travel was from Newport down to Lakeside and back up to Florence. One of the stops was at Sea Lion Caves. I have been in the gift shop many times but I have never been down in the cave. So this time I made the trip. Only one sea lion in there, but it was still cool to see.

I found one geocache when we stopped for pizza.

Up, Up and Away

Vacation Day 4 (more delayed)

Day 4 we traveled from Tillamook to Newport taking in some of the sites along the way. I stopped at a store in Lincoln City called Prehistoric which was full of cool fossils. I splurged a bit and bought a nice polished slice of a mammoth tooth (see bottom picture)
 
I didn't find any geocaches on the day

Vacation Day 3 (a bit delayed)

I was having trouble with the phone app and making blog posts. More or less the app sucks at adding pics and links. So I'll post the remaining days one at a time.

Day 3 we continued down the coast to Tillamook. While there we sampled some cheese and made a few stops along the coast such as to see the light house at Cape Meares.

Found 2 caches on the day when my phone had signal. I took my GPS but didn't load it with caches. Just too many of them and how do I pick what to load?

Say Cheese!
Picea Sitchensis Octopoda

Vacation Day 2

Started the day with a geocache. 

US Coast Guard Through History

Spent the whole day in Astoria mainly exploring the batteries at Fort Stevens State Park. Ate some fried tuna at the Bowpicker. Then briefly explored the Astoria Sunday Market before returning to Fort Stevens to check out the rest of the park. Including the wreck of the Peter Iredale.