We invited the Lewiston Gossages to a birthday party for Dorothy at our house. We had 21 guests and had a great time! It was Dorothy's 85th birthday.
Dorothy with her three boys: Howard, Jerry, and Clyde. It was fun to get them all together during our visit to Lewiston.
We got a cake for her birthday and we almost ate the whole thing! Gossages are good eaters!
The family. Even with some family members missing, we had a great time and had a lot of good visits! Isn't family great!!!!!!
On 19 July we embarked the Star Princess and left the port of Seattle at 1600 hours on our way to Skagway in the inland passage. It was a beautiful day in Seattle with beautiful views of both Seattle and Mount Rainier.
Howard and I were in the bow of the ship when she backed out and got really good views of the whole harbour.
Our first port of call was the picturesque village of Ketchican, Alaska. We went on a tour of the city.
At our first stop we were greeted by Emily Heward!!!! That was a huge surprise and a special highpoint of our cruise! She's working there this summer with an internship. Made our stop even more special.
Our next stop in Ketchican was a totem village where they explained some of the stories totems tell and how and why they were carved.
We were to go to Tracey Arm, but the weather had other ideas so we went to Endicott Arm. The Fjord was beautiful with sheer cliffs, waterfalls, and of course the glacier.
Because it was overcast, the blue in the glacier was more prevalent and beautiful!
Just to prove we were there! Yes, it was very cold!
This is Mendenhall Glacier in Juneau. It was really pretty too.
This is a shot of the Juneau harbor. Those aren't current, its a solid mass of salmon. They were running and we saw lots of salmon all over along with the bald eagles hunting them (no bears).
Skagway and the White Pass & Yukon Railway! Wow, its one of the Civil Engineering Wonders of the World and was a beautiful trip.
This is one of two tunnels on the ride and one of many trestles on the trip!
This shows the rail a long way up on the mountain and really small you can see two trestles. The views were pretty spectacular even though shrouded in clouds.
Downtown Skagway was very frontier-like. It was a neat place to shop.
We toured Victoria, B.C. by horse drawn trolley. It was a neat way to see the city and experience Victoria.
It's been awhile since we've driven from Boise to Moscow and we picked a beautiful day. We had sunshine in southern Idaho, but as we got north of New Meadows we started to see clouds. Traveling through the Salmon River canyon was beautiful with the clouds starting to really move in so I took shots of 1) driving down the canyon, 2) rounding the bend before Slate Creek, 3) the road to Pittsburgh Landing in Hells Canyon, 4) looking at Whitebird hill, and 5) the view from the top of Whitebird hill. Boise visit: We had a really good visit with family while staying in Boise (didn't get any pictures!) We had a barbecue at Jane's house with her whole family on Memorial 
Day and a picnic in my Mom's backyard with the whole family there. We also got to see a lot of Loriann, because she took a 3 and a 4 day weekend while we were there. It was really good to see everyone and to get to help Loriann with projects around her house (good excuse to spend the day with her!) I especially liked shopping with someone who also likes to shop. We camped in Grangeville Thursday night and got word that our friend Josh was going into surgery the next morning, he was one sick young man. Josh made it through the surgery and was stable Friday night. Early Saturday morning we got the word that Josh had "gone home." The service 
yesterday was really beautiful. There were probably close to 500 people in attendance. Josh touched a lot of lives in his 23 years. He looked at each day as a gift from his Father in Heaven, and he loved and was loved by many. I am very glad to say that I knew him and knew him well enough to love him and to mourn his passing and I look forward to seeing him again. Brighter note: We have gotten to see lots of friends while visiting, and we've been able to renew lots of friendships. We have lots of people who are special to us in the Moscow area. It was good to spend time there visiting. Hopefully our next visit will be on a happier note. I didn't take any pictures while
visiting Moscow either (I've gotten really bad since we've been in Idaho.) We did enjoy our visits with friends though and we got all our doctor appointments done for another year!!! That was a really good thing! Our next stop will be Lewiston to visit Howard's Mom and 2 brothers for a week or so. First we'll drive over to Bridgeport, WA to go to one of Howard's Aunt's 93d birthday. It should be fun to see family on his side and visit with them for the day. Family is so important and we have to make the most of our time with them. Newsflash: We have been full-time RVing now for one full year! We moved into our 5th wheel on 8 June 2008. Yes, we're 
still loving it and plan to see a lot more of this great country! We've met a lot of neat people this year and we've gotten to spend lots more time with our family. That's a good thing -- RIGHT! 
Sunday, after church, we drove south of Burley to City of Rocks. The California pioneers went through this valley and thought the rocks looked like an old abandoned city, thus the name. Its a beautiful valley, but very rugged!
Some of the rocks with the snowy peaks behind. We had rain this past week, but it snowed on top of the hills. Sunday we had 80 degrees! I love Spring weather -- if you don't like it, wait 5 minutes, it will change!
Kate and Jenn and I went on a hike into the rocks to see the valley. Got a good look at some of the rocks. There were lots of climbers all over the place. They like to climb the bigger rocks.
This was taken from the trail Jenn and Kate and I went on. While we were doing this the boys walked around a big rock.
We weren't sure if this was graffiti or markings with axle grease that were done by pioneers. It was a really neat afternoon. We found a campsite and had a picnic and then walked around the park.
Not the greatest picture, but she did it! Jenn received her Master's in Health Education on Saturday.
The Jones Family. The kids were excited. I don't think they understood what the fuss was all about, but they got to go out to lunch afterwards.
Jenn was excited two of her siblings could make it to graduation! It was a neat Mother's Day weekend gift for me too, I got to have three of my four kids together for awhile!
Jenn with her very proud parents.
They call Shoshone Falls the "Niagara of the West." It is really beautiful, especially when this much water is flowing!
I took this shot to get perspective on how big the Falls are. There are groups of people standing at the observation point just to the right of the falls on the rocks. They are so small though you can't really see them!
This angle was cool with the rainbow. What a neat experience!
Brochures say this is the most photographed spot on the Trails (Oregon, Oregon & Mormom). It is impressive. We saw it coming from the west and could see it for about 12 miles out. The pioneers could probably see it from a lot further out coming from the east. At this point they were a third of their way west and only through the easiest part of the trail..JPG)
Scott's Bluff is about 20 miles west of Chimney Rock (about two days travel for the pioneers). Those on the Oregon and California Trails had to pass through the little pass about half way along the bluffs. The Mormon Trail was on the north side of the North Platte River so they didn't have to go through the gap.
This is a close up of the gap in Scott's Bluff. The road was very narrow and rocky so going was slow up through here.
This is the Oregon and California Trail between what looks like mounds on either side of the path. The ruts were so deep they were indented about four feet. Usually the Trail was many wagons wide, but anywhere they had to go single file really scarred the landscape to the extent the ruts are plainly visible today.
After leaving Nebraska we drove through Wyoming. The brochures we bought said the landscape in Wyoming is much the same as when the pioneers crossed in wagons over a 150 years ago. They aren't kidding, we really had to plan fuel and camp sites. There were sections where we drove 25-50 miles with only exits to ranches or coal plants, no towns or fuel stops.
It was just nice to see a road that curved and a hill higher than a few hundred feet. We camped at 6700 feet just outside Green River, Wyoming. As we were breaking camp to move it started to snow and snowed most of the morning, off and on, first we'd seen since last year! None was sticking on the road so good day of travel.
We met some good friends and neat people in Florida who are making their first trip to the west this summer. We were trying to explain to them that sometimes you just see an exit for a ranch way out in the middle of nowhere. When we saw one, we had to put it on our blog.
This is Emigrant Pass. The Railroad now goes through this pass and some of the California and Mormon Trains went through this pass. Found some really good booklets put out by the Department of the Interior on the different trails, landmarks along the trails , and some of the history of each trail. They were really good for describing each trail and some of the stuff the pioneers went through. Would love to follow the trails from east to west one summer.
The Devil's Slide is in Ogden Canyon. Its pretty impressive.
This winter, one of our friends asked if we knew what a cattle guard was. Howard pulled off at a random exit with cattle guards, so I had to get a picture of one. We've had a great adventure driving from Florida to Idaho and it has made us realize how much more there is to see. So much history along the east coast. Every area is beautiful in its own way. We really do live in a beautiful country and when it comes to traveling: we are not done yet!!!!!
