Another awesome day in Alaska! We docked in Ketchikan this morning. It’s the “Salmon Capitol of the world” – or so they claim. Ketchikan gets lots of rain or snow through out the year. The statistics say that it only doesn’t rain 18 days of the year and we hit one of those days! No rain today!! Great day! Weather was sunny early, overcast later, but the day was incredibly warm. I think we hit 70 degrees. Duffy went on a boat ride to see the beautiful wildlife and scenery of the area.

Bill and I took a float plane to Neets Bay. This is a salmon hatchery and big black bear watching area. The bears are fattening up on the salmon that are swimming up the streams to lay their eggs. It is also an area with lots of Bald Eagles!! We saw them everywhere! We even saw a nest with young eagles ( nests can weigh up to 2,000 pounds) and the nests are used multiple years.

But the BEST part of the day was seeing two black bears come salmon fishing!! Actually, there are SO MANY hundreds of salmon churning the water in this small stream that the bears don’t even have to work! It’s ( excuse the metaphor) “like shooting fish in a barrel”! I shot a video of one of the bears that catches an enormous salmon and carries it to the shore and then leaves it there flopping around. It seems the bears get very particular because there are so many salmon, they only want females that are full of eggs. So the bear abandoned the male salmon on shore when he discovered there were no eggs to be had. So he went fishing again and we assume he scored a female with eggs because he carried the second salmon off into the trees to eat! It was a totally awesome experience! Our float plane trip couldn’t have been nicer.

I’m posting a photo of a tree with bear scratch marks on the trunk. This is the way male bears mark a territory. Another male bear that wanders in will see how high the marks are on the tree. If its a taller, bigger bear than he is, he’ll move on. All in all a fantastic day!! We continue to be blessed with absolutely amazing weather. How blessed we are!! Tomorrow is our last day on the ship! Packing will be the theme of the day! But we still have a few more exciting adventures to come in Vancouver so stay tuned!! We see Il Divo perform in Vancouver!!!

When we went whale watching last evening we had a fantastic time. We had multiple whale sightings–a family of Orcas and about 9 Humpback whales. It was particularly unique that both one of the Orcas and one of the Humpbacks breached (jumped completely out of the water)! The boat crew was very excited to see them breach. I guess that’s an uncommon experience. We had a nice buffet dinner on board our whale watching ship.

This morning we pulled in to the small town of Skagway for our helicopter ride to the Mead Glacier. Duffy came with us later in the day on another helicopter trip I’ll tell you about in a minute. Our morning trip to the glacier was awesome. We landed on a Morain ice field. It was not snow packed. It was an ice field strewn with crumbled rocks of all sizes and shapes! From the air, it looks like there are tire tracks down the middle of the glacier. Those are the rocks that are being ground up as the glacier retreats. The glacier we were on combined with another glacier up the valley and has created these “tire-like stripes” down the middle of the ice field. The tire stripes are the rocks You can even see “walking rocks”. These are rocks/boulders of all sizes that absorb heat from the sun and melt more of the ice around them, but not directly under them. Eventually, the little column of ice they are sitting on collapses and the rocks roll across the ice where the process starts again. It takes 100 feet of compacted snow to make one foot of ice on a glacier. We were given boots that had crampons in them so when you walk they dig into the ice. A guide led us across the Morain and we were within a couple of feet of crevasses that went down 150′ and more than 250′ our guide said. He actually threw a couple of good size rocks down the crevasses and it took forever to hear them hit the other rocks and water below! I actually couldn’t believe they let tourists get that close to these crevasses! We got some amazing photos! Bill was braver than I was walking close to the edge. They did give us walking sticks which were a great help navigating the ice field and the small streams of rocky water!!! I thought that was going to be the highlight of the trip until a little later this morning.

The next adventure was a helicopter ride to the top of a snow packed glacier where we visited a dog sled camp!! Duffy came with is on this one!

The camp is set up with tents for the dog owners and “mushers” who stay at this camp for the summer months. They get to come down by helicopter one day a week into town. Otherwise, they sleep and eat up there. The are about six “dog owners” and about 240 dogs all together. The Environmental Agency gives them a permit to do this but its strictly regulated! The largest area of concern is cleanliness, so they are constantly picking up after 240 dogs! Can you imagine?! The waste is flown back down by helicopter. Some people complain about picking up after one dog!!!

These dogs race in the winter time so this little bit of work for them is just a pleasant little summer time fun! They pull sleds out twice a day and can’t wait for the experience!! In fact, as soon as you walk over to their area they start getting excited thinking they’re going to get to go out! And then the barking and jumping starts!! Very few of the sled dogs look like an Alaskan Husky or a Malmute. They looking like athletic hound dogs! One little girl dog who pulled our sled was only 35 pounds and is nine years old. They say she LOVES to pull the sled and is one of the hardest workers. All the dogs trade places on the team. So there isn’t just one lead dog. Almost all of them get a chance to be a “lead dog” at one time or another. In the winter when they are racing, they work 4-6 hours straight. They can do 100 miles in one day–50 miles and a rest–and then another 50 miles.

There were two litters of new pups-8 dogs in each litter. One group is 6 weeks old and one is 8 weeks old. The puppy Duffy and I are holding is named Axis and at 8 weeks you can tell he’s going to be a big strong dog. They will start his training at around 6 months.

We had fun riding and driving the dog sled team! Well, we weren’t really in control, but it was fun standing on the runners in the back as the dogs pulled the sled! Even Duffy had a go at it and had a ball!! All in all a great day!!! Weather was perfect–crisp, cold but sunny. Today was definitely a highlight of this trip! I was amazed that every glacier we’ve visited (the three glaciers we’ve visited in Alaska, the one in New Zealand and the one in Switzerland all seem so different !! They have similar characteristics, but each one has a definite “personality/flavor”! Our weather continues to hold today. We hope for good weather tomorrow because we’re talking a float plane into the interior to see bears salmon fishing! At least, that’s what we are hoping for!

Oh my gosh! Where do I start? Well, for sure with the weather. It was the best day they’ve had in weeks. Yesterday it poured rain all day! I’m telling you, they need to bottle us! 🙂

We loved our Sea Life Discovery Tour! There were only 12 of us on the boat and we ALL enjoyed the experience. It’s like a mini sub and there is great viewing under the water of beautiful sea kelp and magnificent “dancing of all colors of kelp”! It’s a relaxing, trance like view of amazing sea grasses and sea life. We saw a 7-8 foot dragon eel and lots of HUGE Sea Stars ( aka starfish). They are trying to change the name since they aren’t really fish. Did you know a large sea star pushes its stomach outside and forces it inside a clam where it proceeds to eat the clam and then withdraws its stomach back inside it’s body! Cool huh? They also regenerate if you pull a leg off accidentally, it will grow a new body ! The photos of the sea kelp are gorgeous. We saw Sea Lettuce (looks just like the lettuce we eat) and lots of kelp which has nitrogen pods attached to the stems to help them float! They anchor as much as 200′ below the surface and grow that tall! Wow!

You can see photos of me holding a live Sea Star and a live Sea Cucumber!
But the best was yet to come!!!

After a great lunch (salmon sandwich) in Sitka, we went on our Sea Otter tour and that was amazing!!! We saw a family of Orcas hunting in a pack! They hung around for a long time. We also saw several humpbacked whales– one of which surfaced within thirty yards of our boat!! We also saw several “rafts” of Sea Otters — moms on their tummies with babies laying on them!!! So adorable!! We also saw quite a few sea lions. Oh, and did I forget to mention- a great view of a Bald Eagle majestically sitting on a Post next to our boat! Our Sea Otter crew was so excited that we saw Orcas. The Captain said it was only the second time he has seen Orcas here!!! Wow! How cool is that?! Can you tell I’m excited? We had an awesome day of majestic sights!!!!

Sorry guys! Had a great blog to post with photos of the Orcas and a bald eagle, but the Internet is so slow it won’t upload all the photos and I can’t get back in to try and delete some. So, everyone will have to wait until I get some speedier Internet! We’ve had our first afternoon of not great weather. Clouds ( no rain) came down and the helicopter to take us to our dog sled ride was canceled! Bummer! We are going to try and go out with Duffy on the Whale Watch boat but don’t know if we can get on. Desk opens in an hour. Morning was awesome. Got off ship onto catamaran ( all enclosed with great viewing windows) at 7:00am to go to Tracy Fjord to see two magnificent glaciers!!! They were amazing. We got fairly close and we did see some large calving. We also saw about 100 Harbor Seals resting on the ice. They go into the Fjord to escape the Orcas. It seems the Orca can’t tell the difference between a seal and an iceberg so they don’t go in there to hunt. The seals like it so they can rest up and not worry about being someone’s dinner. But they can’t stay long because there isn’t enough food for them by the glacier. It was cold and sunny early so the weather for viewing was awesome. Hope we get to do a dog sled ride tomorrow. It’s our last chance! Juneau is nice but VERY touristy. We did some successful shopping for a few friends. There was a Princess ship in here earlier and there is a smaller expedition ship still here with us. We don’t sail until 10:00 pm. I will keep trying with the blog but now I fear it may be Vancouver before i’ll get Sitka posted!

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Well, I must say it was a little rough getting into Anchorage due to a brake mechanical failure on our plane in Dallas that took 2 1/2 hours to repair! Our flight was already 6 hours and 50 minutes into Anchorage. So we ended up getting to our hotel around 10:30 pm ( sun just setting there) which was around 2:30am Boca time! Well, I’ve decided that very minor inconvenience just smoothed the way for our SPECTACULAR weather!! Someone should bottle us and take us on all cruises or trips where they need good weather!! Everywhere we’ve been this year they tell us how terrible the weather was the week before we got there band that they’re having the best weather all year now!!

We enjoyed Anchorage in our short time there. It is the largest city in Alaska (300,000) but it has a very small town feel to it —Sort of like Wichita, Kansas . Everyone is very nice. We rented a car and drove around town. Bill managed to find all three properties he used to manage 25 years ago. They are all in good shape.

We sailed on Regent’s Navigator last night. Our rooms are great. They do a nice meet and greet thing right after the life jacket drill. They make an announcement to come out of your cabin into the hallway to meet and greet your neighbors. Butlers and stewardesses are there filling your glass with wine or champagne and passing canapes to all of us. It was a fun way to meet our neighbors!! We have some lovely people on our deck! Including a gentleman from Hayes, Kansas who knew my dad’s dear friend, Syd Platt who recently passed away. Such a small world.

Today we have been sailing to see the Humboldt Glacier. At first glance from far away it doesn’t seem so impressive BUT as you get closer you can tell it is 400′ high with 800′ below the water. The Captain told us this was the best viewing day all season so far. We have bright sunshine and no wind.

Sorry, we just took a short break for 20 minutes to see about 10 humpbacked whales breaching. So cool!!!! Very hard to photograph though. You just have to get lucky! Hard to get your camera focused quickly enough to actually get them!! That was sort of the end to a perfect viewing day. I missed the first few jumping because I was in the shower. Let me tell you, it is some kind of cold to be wet in a bath robe and be outside. That might have had something to do with my lack of quickness getting photos!!! BRRRR!

The GOD of weather continues to bless us this year with great weather for our trips. We’ll hope HE stays with us until the end of this venture!

Tomorrow we have two tours from Sitka
– Sea Otter and Wildlife Quest in the morning followed by Sea Life Discovery Tour. We don’t want to miss anything and since the weather is so awesome- we are excited!!! Duffy is doing great and very much enjoying herself. This a beautiful, calming, relaxing visual feast for the eyes! More tomorrow. I’m posting photos of our cabin and the Humboldt Glacier and the seals we spotted!!! Loving Alaska! The blue ice is the glacier. It has that color because of the minerals inside the ice.

One other interesting fact. On our drive from Anchorage to Seaward to board the ship we passed several “Ghost Forests”! These are trees that were swamped by the tsunami after the 9.2 earthquake here in 1964. There were 20 lives lost – all in Valdes where there were a group of school children on the pier when the wave came in. The “Ghost Forests” exist because the trees were saturated with so much salt water that they don’t decay. The trees stand like solitary ghosts. We are only seeing about the top third of the trees because the bottom two thirds sank into the ground during the tsunami. Very interesting. Lucky that so few were killed. The wave went back more than 30 miles into some of the canyons.

First, before I forget, yesterday we made a quick detour into the tiny country (very wealthy country) of Lichtenstein. We were able to get our passports stamped and take a few photos. We had a quick lunch at the only McDonald’s in the country!!!

Today was incredibly warm (hot) and sunny. We drove to Lucerne and did a little walking and shopping this morning before taking a tram car up the mountain of Pilatus which stands at a proud 6913 feet! It was quite warm even up there! We sat outside for a quick lunch before getting on a cog railway train down the mountain. At the bottom we switched to a lovely big boat which took us across the Lake of Lucerne. We got off, did a bit more last minute shopping (not surprised are you?) before going to one of the best meals we’ve had in Switzerland at The Old Swiss House! We met the owner who is very gracious! They cook wiener schnitzel table side in a pan! Yum! We ended up at this restaurant because Annette is friends with a couple in Boca who actually have a house here in Lucerne .They recommended the restaurant. The couple is living in Boca for the time being and they have someone here looking after their house.

Once again we had another fantastic day!! By the way, the photo of Gaby eating ice cream is her first taste of an ice cream cone!!

Congrats to Roger Federer on a great comeback! What a match!

One last thank you and goodbye to our cute guide, Andrea and our stalwart driver the last 4 days, Claude!

We met our guide, Andrea, and our driver, Claude at 7:00 am this morning for a drive to a real working dairy/cheese farm. It was a spectacularly clear, warm and sunny day! We had a fantastic view of the Alps. We were told there are only a very few days a year where the sky is so clear that you can see all the mountains! So, Swiss weather honored us today.

We met our farm family hosts, Susanne and her husband, Alois. They drove us in their cars to the first field up the mountain where the dairy cows are grazing. We had to go today, because tomorrow they are packing everything in the farm house and moving all the animals to a higher pasture where they will graze for June and July. Then the dairy cows will once agin be moved to an even higher pasture for the month of August. In September, they are brought back down to the first pasture where they stay until being moved into a barn in October for the winter. The cows are let out even in winter. They must be milked twice a day. They are moving 52 cows up the mountain tomorrow starting around 4:30 am. They have a young man, Martin, who stays up in the pasture to milk the cows and make the cheese out of the milk gathered the evening before and from the morning’s milking. The big kettle in the photos holds the milk from 24 cows milked last night and this morning. There are 52 cows but not all need milking. They showed us how they make the wheels of cheese. They can make three wheels a day and it takes at least a week of “curing” in a cool room. They sell their cheese in town but we got a lot of free tastes served with freshly made bread and wine, water or apple juice!!

Susanne made us a typical farm lunch. After the milk had cooked long enough on the fire and the cheese wheels had been made, a smaller pot of water was put on the fire. She cut up potatoes, onions, and macaroni noodles and boiled them in the water. She then added the cheese and cream to the pot and “voila”– the best Swiss Mac and Cheese you could ever imagine!! We had a lovely homemade spice cake complete with whipped cream and coffee that was made in a pot over the fire! Quite good actually!

We all loved the cows with the Swiss “bell orchestra” playing every time they move. They were quite close to the farmhouse and we could even pet them!! There was a new 4 month old puppy by the name of Tony on the premises. He will be trained as a new herding dog. There were also several pigs in the back shed which we went to see. The pigs get fed the leftover “milk” after most of it is made into cheese. They use a fermenting agent that they preserve from day to day to help make the cheese. They stop making cheese in October when the cows are brought down for winter. Since the farm is all organic, they sell the milk for a good price in town. Just before we left the farm they took us in one by one to see newborn piglets! Mom was huge and the babies were nursing. It was a little sad to see three dead babies. Mom can’t be messed with right now, but it appears she sat on them. But she had about eight healthy guys all nursing.

Everyone is relaxing this afternoon in different ways. Bill is watching tennis while I blog and Gaby, Trey and Duffy are taking a quick snooze before dinner and Grant has gone exploring the hotel grounds to take photos!

Now, the Hotel Dolder Grand is a beautiful hotel on the top of a hill overlooking the city. From the outside it looks like the classic “old world” hotel, but look inside and they have built two wings that are right out of Starwars!! Everything is electronic !! The remote control( one on each side of he bed) is like a bachelor pad dream! It controls everything! You can close or open shutters, day curtains (sheers) and blackout curtains. All the lights are on the remote. There are also small switches on the wall but you have to have your reading glasses on to figure out what button you are pressing and what it does! There is even a TV in the mirror in the bathroom! The shower has three different modes and a bunch of shower head sprays! You need a bit of an engineering degree to get a handle on it all. Though the staff does an excellent job of trying to teach you! Some of us are just a tad slower about learning all these new things! But, not to worry. Just call down to the desk and they will send someone up to”re-train you!”

We have dinner reservations at a typical Swiss restaurant in town tonight. Yesterday we also ate downtown at a very good restaurant that our guide, Andrea, had recommended. She left us to our own devices after an excellent walking tour. It was a little shorter than we would have wished because we were late getting checked into the hotel due to road traffic driving from St. Moritz and the fact that we had such a nice time at Heidaland! Heidaland has a little museum house that is straight out of the book! Gaby loved the place because it was like a child’s playhouse. We even got to see “kids” and the mother goats!

Due to all these factors, we were late arriving and then it took some additional time to do a quick change of clothes and shoes for our walk! The temperature was much warmer in Zurich than St. Moritz. We did manage to get a little shopping in before dinner! Chocolates and Swiss watches for all!!

Gabriela has been a trooper! She really enjoyed the farm today— as did we all!

Tonight after dinner the boys and I will watch the soccer championship semi final match between Germany and Italy to see who will play Spain in the finals! We’ve been following the matches the last two weeks and it has been fun. Even Gaby went with us and ate pizza! Yum!

Tomorrow we are touring Lucerne. But then we will have to pack tomorrow night for our flight home on Saturday so this might be my last blog from Switzerland! If so, mark your calendars for July 18 when Mary, Bill and I depart for Alaska!!!

A very BIG and gracious thank you to all our guides and drivers who have made this another incredible Fuller Family adventure!! And, of course, to our friend and Travel agent Arlene Feen at Protravel in Miami!

Well, in order to understand our amazing surprise , I have to first fill you in on a little family history. Grandpa Fuller and his mother, Ada Fuller, visited the Palace Hotel in the early 1930’s. Grandpa often told us the story about “parachuting “from the terrace of the Palace Hotel” when he was here with his mother.

The story goes that he was with several other children and they were going to “parachute” to the terrace floor below. At the last minute, Grandpa decided to “test” his “parachute” and filled a wicker basket with books from the library. He attached a sheet to the basket and threw it over the railing. Predictably, it sunk like a rock and scared Grandpa to death. It was along time before he ever told anyone what happened that day on the terrace when all the ladies were having tea!

We related this story to our travel agent, Arlene Feen, who immediately put people here at work to see if they could locate any information about Ada Norfleet Fuller.

Low and behold today we got the answer!!! We all thought we were going downstairs for a “Gabriela Surprise” but in reality, it was we who were surprised!! The Director of Sales and Marketing of the hotel and his colleague, Deborah, met us in the lobby and took us to a table in the dining room that overlooks a grass tennis court! They had done a great deal of research in their archives and located several articles about Ada being here in 1934. There was a photograph in the newspaper with Ada and several other people sitting at the EXACT table in the hotel where we sat this afternoon!!! It was thrilling!! Duffy (Mary) was teary eyed when she heard the news and saw the newspaper clippings that referenced Ada and her son, Billy Fuller, Mary’s husband!! They gave us copies of all the articles and a CD that has all the articles they discovered in their archives!!

I know they spent a lot of time researching all of this for us and we are so grateful!! I had already told them (even before the surprise) that I thought this hotel is my favorite hotel of any place we’ve ever visited!! The staff has treated us like royalty and the food is superb! They even have awesome American coffee!! And it would go without saying that they have one of the most spectacular views of any place in the world!!

Tonight we took the funicular to the top of a mountain to have dinner. It was wonderful! Once again, our tummys were full as well as our hearts! What an absolutely phenomenal day!! If you ever get to St. Moritz ( and you should all try) you must stay at this wonderful hotel- Badrutt’s Palace!! It has been great in the summer and I’m quite sure it would even be more spectacular in winter!!

Today may have been drizzly in St Moritz but we had sunshine in our hearts after a fabulous horse drawn carriage ride up into a mountain meadow. We rode through the alpine forest next to a roaring river. It is so pristine and so beautiful! Gabriela slept on the way up, but was awake for the journey down!

Lunch was fantastic. We had the yummiest barley soup and Grant actually had a salad with venison! Dessert buffet was scrumptious. I loved the Lindser Torte! The Black Forest Cake also got great reviews!

Tonight we travel up the mountain by funicular to eat at a lovely mountain restaurant which is sure to have unbelievable views!! More posting after dinner!

We had an amazing journey by train on the Glacier Express- rated by some as the third most scenic rail trip in the world. Unfortunately it was a bit of a rainy day, but it was good we were on the train. By the time we arrived in St Moritz it had mostly stopped raining. We were ROYALLY greeted at Badrutt’s Palace. What an absolutely stunning hotel! King Juan Carlos of Spain was here not too long ago. And, if any of you watched The Bachelor this past season the final episode was filmed at our hotel. Dinner was across the street in a fantastic 5 star restaurant in a building that was from 1658. The interior is all gorgeous carved wood. Tomorrow is an hour and a half carriage ride to a town and tomorrow night is dinner on the mountain that we get to by funicular! I think this is our favorite hotel so far!

First of all, let me say we have all voted that as unlikely as it may seem, they have the BEST pizza of anywhere in the world we’ve been! The lasagna got a second place award! Even Gaby ate an entire 8″ thin crust pizza. The tomato sauce and the cheese are outstanding!

This morning we took a cog wheel train to the top of the mountain where there was a magnificent view of the Matterhorn. We saw the second highest mountain in Europe but because of the perspective it looked lower than the Matterhorn!!

Lunch was on top of the mountain- a typical Swiss meal. I had something called Rosti which is made with delicious hash browns and ham and fried eggs- but made differently than we do it in the US. Grant and Duffy had welsh rarebit with ham, toast and fried eggs on top! Also rated very highly by by Grant and Duffy!

After this fantastic lunch Duffy, Gaby and I all took the train down the mountain while Bill, Grant, Trey and Annette hiked down the Gornergrat. (that is the name of the mountain we were on.) Since they hiked so quickly, as a bonus, the guide, Pritska, took them on an additional hike to the Gorner Gorge! Way to go guys!!!

While we were on top of the Gornergrat, we had our photos taken with Nana, an adorable St Bernard complete with the requisite keg! This was another surprise from our fabulous travel agent!!! She keeps spoiling us! We just got the photos a few minutes ago and they are awesome!! I can’t post them on the blog but you’ll see them when you visit us.

Duffy was a trooper by the way!! Made it all the way to the top walking up a bit of a steep slope!! It was a great day enjoyed by everyone!!!

Tomorrow we take the Glacier Express to St Moritz- an 8 hour train ride. However, this trip is rated the third best train trip in the world! The scenery is supposed to be spectacular!!

I forgot to mention something very important! We had a surprise “taxi” ride to the Zermatterhof Hotel yesterday– a beautiful blue carriage pulled by a wonderful horse! Gaby has the toy replica of the horse and carriage they gave her!