Alaska: The Last Frontier (part 1)

Stan and KK Ellis have a wonderful tradition of making memories with their children by taking them all on family trips each summer. One summer everyone comes, including the grandkids. The next summer the grandkids are shipped off to whoever will take them for a week so their parents (all of the Ellis children/spouses) can have a week of vacation without having all of the responsibilities of being parents also. This summer was a non-grandkid vacation and we all got to go on a week-long Alaskan cruise!

The adventure started with a plane ride from Houston to Anchorage. The flight was supposed to be about 7 1/2 hours but ended up taking 12. First they had to fix the broken air-conditioning (and when you're sitting on the tarmac in Houston it can get pretty sweaty). Then, after we took off we found out we didn't have enough fuel to actually make it to Anchorage (a minor detail), so we made a pitstop in Calgary. Luckily, Stan and KK brought their travel-sized Settlers of Catan board game to keep us entertained. After we landed in Anchorage we went over to Uncle Jess's house for a King Crab feast. I don't know how well you can see them in the picture below, but each crab leg is at least a foot long. I think they bought about 40 lbs of king crab for all of us.
Even though it was after 10 pm by the time we finally arrived (and still totally light out...you've got to love Alaska in the summer), I'm pretty sure we managed to make a good-sized dent in Anchorage's crab supply.
The next morning as we were getting ready to leave for the cruise the Ellis boys suprised Papa Stan by coming down in classic Travelling-Stan-Ellis gear--the khaki cargo vest. It has a pocket for everything; I don't know how he keeps track of it all, but he seems to keep it stocked with pretty much anything we could possibly need.
So Mama KK didn't feel left out, all of the girls came down sporting very chic fanny packs. She is also a modern traveling miracle; it should not be physically possible to fit as much as she does in her fanny-pack, but when one of us needs something random and the fanny supplies it, we are all very grateful.
In order to get to our cruise boat we took a 4 hour train ride through some of the most beautiful, lush country I have ever seen. The top half of the train was entirely made of windows so we had spectacular views.

So after four hours of this

and this...

we came to....our all-suite cruise boat.

Don't worry, after this I'm just going to post a few of my favorite pictures and call it good, because the week was just too jam-packed with beautiful, fun experiences to blog them all...and I'm pretty sure nobody else wants a minute-by-minute recap of the entire trip. :)