Cruise Time Again

For anyone who follows my blog they know how much we love to go on cruises!  This year we'd booked an Alaskan cruise.  This will be our fifth cruise to Alaska plus we drove to Alaska one year with the truck and trailer.  We chose to do the cruise again because friends who had never cruised before wanted to go with us and the Alaska run is usually really calm and not too long a cruise...perfect for a first cruise...also it's been about 18 years since we've been up there.  We usually book an inside cabin but this time we got a deal on a verandah cabin...soooo glad we did!!!  We saw so much of the beauty of our coastline as we sailed through the inside passage.  We set sail from Canada Place and sailed under the Lion's Gate bridge.

Digging up our Road

One end of our road had been patched and re-patched so many times it was getting really rough and this winter the weather and traffic did nothing to improve it so they dug it up and re-paved it.  Now it's nice and we're just waiting for them to paint the white lines.  It was neat watching this machine remove the old black top and blow it into the dump truck.  Churned up quite a bit of dust but the wind blew it away and we stayed indoors and watched from our front window.

Last of 4

We finally finished the last of the 4 free-form jigsaw puzzles we bought last fall.  Glad this was the last one and not the first one because it was much more challenging than the other 3.  Guess I'll now have to keep an eye out for another sale on free-form puzzles!  They certainly are unique and fun to do.

Odd Looking Fruit

We were shopping and saw this odd looking fruit, so I just had to take a picture of it.  Apparently it is a Jack Fruit and can grow to 90cm (35") in length, 50cm (20") in diameter and weight 35km (77lbs).  This one was only about 30cm (12") in diameter, so even though it looked big, it was just a small one!

 

Easter Camping

We went to Cultus Lake with the trailer.  Our son-in-law and one grandson were up there in their trailer during the week then our daughter and the other grandson came up on the weekend.  We managed to have a couple campfires and there was a gorgeous full moon, and of course we spent some time in the clubhouse doing puzzles!  First trip in the trailer this season ... it was sure nice to get away!

Another Puzzle

For Christmas this year my husband bought me a new puzzle.  We finished the Christmas Decoration puzzle our daughter gave us for Christmas then started on this one....it proved to be quite the challenge, but not as big a challenge as the one our daughter bought us for Christmas last year.  Last year it took us 3 months to get it together.  It was a picture of a stone church in a snow storm.  This one only took us 2 months to put together! It doesn't show in the photo, but there are numerous sparkly highlights throughout the picture.  Quite pretty when it's done!

A friend lent us a small puzzle that looked pretty easy so we decided to do it before we start another one.  It was a bit of a challenge but only took us three days to do it. It was about 350 pieces and the pieces were quite large, but it was still a bit of  a challenge!  I like it when puzzles are a challenge....as long as it isn't too much of a challenge.                                                   

Gettaway Time

We've still got our trailer under wraps for the winter but we decided we needed to get away for awhile.  Swinomish Casino has been sending us emails saying they have rooms for $99 CAN per night Sunday to Thursday.  We went down a couple times last winter but haven't be able to put it together for this winter.  The other day we decided to go for it.

Left Monday morning, made a couple of quick stops then got to Skagit Casino where we met our friends from Everett for lunch.  We wanted a place with a buffet and when Swinomish renovated they took our their buffet.  The buffet here was good and we had a wonderful time visiting with our friends before heading to the other casino and our hotel room.

Got settled into our room and went down to the casino to see how the renovations are going.  They've been at it for over a year and now they're really changing everything inside.                                                                                                                                                                                                               A couple of years ago we were in San Francisco  and our room had a round mirror with a built in round light.  When you looked into the mirror you saw a white circle in the black part of your eye.  Found the newly renovated bathroom and when I looked in the mirror there was a white rectangle in the black part of my eye! Looks weird!                                                                                                                                                                                                            

Tuesday is their "senior's day" so we got a few perks such as $5 free play, 5 free keno tickets if you buy 5, $5 off a meal and hot seat drawings.  The little coffee shop also had a special on...a sandwich and a cookie for $5.  We'd had our lunch but that evening we stopped at the coffee shop and I got a turkey sandwich and hubby hot a ham sandwich, with all the trimmings...sorry we ate half the sandwich before I thought of taking a picture!  For the cookie he got a lemon slice and I got "Russian Wedding Cookies".   It was all sooooo good!