Alaska and Mysteries

 Glacier Bay 2011

July 3rd the four friends boarded the Oosterdam en route to Alaska:  After spending the night and the next day at sea being rocked and rolled in a storm we came into Glacier Bay.  The weather was cool but dry and views were astonishing.  This visit is tied for first place in my mind with our later visit to Juneau and a whale watching venture.  The mountains are huge but the crisp air seems to magnify them and they aren't even the biggest ones around.  They opened access to the foredeck (where the crew gets to gather without us passengers) and gave us a park ranger to talk about the glaciers and point out what we were seeing.  It turns out the picked her up during the night to do this and then on our way back out they returned her in a skiff.  How many of us have had a job where we are whisked away by an ocean liner in the wee hours.  Kind of cool.  And she was good, informative and fun to listen too.  I am in love with SE Alaska.

I am also a devotee of murder mysteries of many kinds.  I started out on Agatha Christie when I was around 10 and found "Death on The Nile" in my grandmother's books.  This year after I came home from Alaska a good friend of mine asked me if I'd ever read any of Dana Stabenow's Kate Shugak mysteries.  They are set in and around a fictional area resembling the Chugach National Park north and out of the SE panhandle of  Alaska where our trip occurred.  She suggested I start with the oldest and read in chronological order so as not to miss the developing relationships and personal story of the protagonist.  Our little rural library didn't have the first one so I got it used from Amazon for about a dollar + shipping.  Now I'm hooked on Kate Shugak and Amazon's dollar or less books.  Being also a hoarder of maps, I have some of Alaska so I can follow the path of our heroine, as well as the path of my vacation trip.  Feels like the best of everything.

Yesterday evening I sat on my back porch, read, and watched the thunder and lightning that blew through here.  A smattering of rain fell and I went inside.  Today the sky is blue and there is a light breeze and it probably won't break 85 in my yard.  I am a blessed old girl.