June 2016 – For Maddy

June 7, 2016

Destruction

Construction

June 5, 2016

Barb is a special needs case in terms of cake. She has a cake substitute recipe that she has used successfully before and she put it out on the counter for me. It’s actually called a tort but it’s a close approximation to cake that has zero flour and zero milk. It is composed of 12 ounces of chocolate chips, six eggs, one and half cubes of butter, one-half cup sugar, and a pinch of salt. a close approximation to a cake. While she was picking up some of the bulky stuff from Max yesterday I made it for her.

She broiled the steak, made her special cheesy rice, we both contributed to the salad and we had a birthday dinner.

June 5, 2016June 5, 2016

Barb’s birthday hike

Barb decided she wanted to go on a hike for her birthday. She spent a lot of time trying to find just the right hike. Not too short, not too long, not too long of a drive, not too much elevation gain, and absolutely required was “a nice view”.

She settled on Cedar Butte. It was only 30 minutes away from home, 900 feet of elevation gain, and 3.8 miles round trip. It seemed pretty reasonable. But what about the view? I’ll let you decide.

The “trail” started as something which was suitable for vehicles. But then we took a turn up the mountain for a much better experience.

That’s a very creative spelling of Cedar Butte.

On the way back we took an alternate route that added another 0.5 miles to the trip. Barb asked me which way I wanted to go. I opted for the alternate route and said, “I like variety.” She countered with, “I’m going to get you a shirt that says, ‘I like variety.’” I don’t know what she is talking about but we went on the alternate route.

The alternate route was called “Blowout” because of a logging camp which was destroyed when a dam burst. We didn’t see anything that suggested such a disaster but it was nice hike with a lot of trees with interesting moss formations. With the right lighting and mood music it could be pretty spooky there:

June 3, 2016June 3, 2016

Dawes Glacier

On Monday, May 16th, aboard the Celebrity Solstice Barb and I got up early, 4:24 AM, to get good indoor seats for our possible visit to a glacier.

The first glacier we attempted to visit, at the end of Tracy Arm, was blocked by small icebergs. So we turned around and went for plan B. This was Dawes Glacier.

The video below was this second attempt. When we were about a mile away Barb expressed her opinion, multiple times, that it was time to turn around. We continued. We got within about a half mile of the glacier then did a 270 degree turn before leaving.

The scale of the glacier was hard to comprehend. It is so big it seemed much closer than it actually was. We got to within about a half mile of the face. The face was several hundred feet above the surface of the ocean and a half mile across.

The ship is 1041 feet long and 121 feet wide. I created the image below from a screen shot of Google Maps with the Celebrity Solstice represented by a rectangle approximately to scale at the point of closest approach:

One of the possible excursion was to depart the ship and get on a tour boat which went into shallower and narrower waters to get a look at things much closer than what the Solstice could. Barb and I did not do this but others did. If you were to go on a cruise like this don’t count on getting so close to a glacier from the main ship. The cruise director told us that in doing this for 11 years he can count on one hand the number of times the ship has gotten this close to a glacier.

Here is the tour boat as seen from an upper deck of the ship: