Watercraft

Princess Cruise Lines 10-Day Denali Explorer - Tour CB3

Itinerary:
| 3 Nights on Land (Fairbanks, Denali) | Wilderness Rail Service to Whittier | 2 Days Scenic Cruising (Hubbard Glacier, Glacier Bay National Park) | 3 Ports (Skagway, Juneau, Ketchikan) | 1 Day At Sea | End at Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada |

We have always planned on taking a trip to Alaska! For years, Stuart has heard how much Julie wanted to visit the places she learned about from her parents, who traveled the state of Alaska in their camper in the 1980s.

We want to thank Direct Travel Leisure Sales Advisor Mari Ann Casamatta (Office: 440-602-8050) for her assistance in finding the perfect cruise for us. We explained our interests, and she was able to find a cruisetour itinerary that worked with what we wanted to see on our first-time visit to the state of Alaska. This was also our first-time cruise experience, and throughout this blog post, we link to web pages and maps that were helpful in making the most of it. (Be sure to take a look at some of the websites we recommend that might be of interest to you if you are planning a trip to Alaska.) With Mari Ann's assistance, all the details for the air travel and the Princess Cruisetour were successfully rearranged from the trip we originally planned for August 2023 to this year's trip in June/July 2024.

This blog post describes our daily activities, followed by our photos and videos from each day. Our Princess Cruise Lines 10-Day Denali Explorer Alaska Cruisetour went from Sunday, June 23, 2024, through the morning of Wednesday, July 3, 2024. Our Alaska cruisetour included a three-day land journey, followed by the seven-day Alaska Voyage of the Glaciers Cruise on the Grand Princess^® ship. We also added an extra day to our journey on Thursday, July 4, 2024, to explore Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.

For me, the timing of the Cleveland History Days 2023 was perfect, since it was two months after my septal myectomy open-heart surgery at University Hospitals, and I was finally able to be active again for the first time in 2023.

With over 50 events happening during Cleveland History Days 2023, I was grateful to the organizations that hosted so many interesting activities. I did elect to skip the the Cleveland "Take A Hike" tours, since I was unsure of myself doing a lot of walking, but near the end of the 10 days of activities, I felt well enough to attend the "Ohio Freedom Path Hike" on Saturday, July 1, 2023. I can highly recommend the Cleveland "Take A Hike" tours from attending them with my wife in the past. I have heard that in recent years they have developed new tour locations and updated old favorite tours.

I was so impressed with all that was happening during these 10 days, that I wanted to capture what I could in my blog post. I hope you enjoy the following and share with others. Remember that even though Cleveland History Days is only once a year, most of the the places it features are available to explore year round!

Please read about the following:

• Friday, June 23, 2023 - Cleveland History Days Opening Ceremony

• Friday, June 23, 2023 - Cuyahoga County – Rediscover The Detroit-Superior Bridge: Community Conversation

• Saturday, June 24, 2023 - Cuyahoga River Rally

• Sunday, June 25, 2023 - Open House at The Historic B&O Roundhouse

• Tuesday, June 27, 2023 - Buckeye Trail

• Saturday, July 1, 2023 - Ohio Freedom Path Hike

• Saturday, July 1, 2023 - Talk at Cleveland Public Library: “The Other Trails of Tears: The Removal of the Ohio Indians”

It was hot in Cleveland on Saturday, June 25, 2022, but despite the heat, it was a great day to explore our city's evolving riverfront at the Canalway Partners 2022 Cuyahoga River Rally. I have written several blog posts about discovering the waterfront along the Cuyahoga River, and how every year the access improves. Thank you to Canalway Partners for bringing everyone together to learn about our river.

Canalway Partners' Cuyahoga River Rally is part of Cleveland History Days, a week-long celebration of our city’s rich legacy.

I am so glad I brought my bike to the River Rally! While I have biked this area along the Cuyahoga River many times, I visited some new trails. The director of Ohio City Bicycle Co-op, Jim Sheehan,  shared some interesting history of the river.

While I already did follow @Cuyahoga_AOC (Advisory Committee for the Cuyahoga River Area of Concern) on Twitter, I was not aware of the "Cuyahoga River Area of Concern" designation by the EPA, which I learned about on the walk. I look forward to learning more about the AOC, and I enjoyed learning about future plans for this part of the waterfront.

It was great to meet Eddie Olschansky who, as the founder of Trash Fish, spends his days cleaning area rivers in northeast Ohio. He organizes volunteers to go out on kayaks and pick up trash.

Near the end of the rally, I enjoyed talking to some members of the Canalway Partners Board of Directors about their important work. It is amazing what has been accomplished in the 35-year history of Canalway Partners.

I want to finish this blog post by not only thanking Canalway Partners for their 2022 Cuyahoga River Rally, but also for their ongoing work to improve the quality of life by developing new resources to enjoy Cleveland's riverfront.

I hope you find the resources I shared in this blog post useful as you find our own fun and adventures along Cleveland's riverfront!

This blog post focuses on the interesting places we visited together along the route of the Appalachian Trail after Stuart's backpacking adventure, and then visiting water-related locations in New York state on our way home. After many years of hearing from Stuart about the places we visited along the Appalachian Trail, it was really fun for Julie to finally see them! 

Exploring Appalachian Trail Highlights

While Stuart was backpacking on the Appalachian Trail, he wrote down places he wanted to show Julie after his hike. It is his way of involving her in his multi-year journey north up the trail.

Many of the best locations are not accessible due to difficult terrain or the number of miles from trailheads, so this blog post shows just a few of the places we had the ability and time to visit.

New York Water Destinations

After touring locations along the Appalachian Trail, we spent the weekend traveling through the state of New York, where we visited the Erie Canal and Niagara Falls.

When we wrote about completing the first level of the Cleveland Metroparks 2020 Trail Challenge presented by Cigna to earn our 2020 Trail Challenge stickers, we were already working on the next ten trails for the final challenge. We are creating our Trail Challenge blog posts for these three reasons:

• To capture our memories for us to re-read in the future.

• To encourage others to take the Trail Challenge this year and in future years.

• And as we wrote in our last trail challenge blog post:

  We want to thank the Cleveland Metroparks for planning this annual Trail Challenge, and Cigna for sponsoring it again this year! Particularly this year, with everyone in the world facing the health crisis caused by the coronavirus pandemic, it has been important for both physical and mental health to have our local parks to visit.

With COVID-19 closing venues we normally frequent, and having to cancel the backpacking trips that Stuart had planned on the Continental Divide Trail and Appalachian Trail, we have been exploring many parks in Northeast Ohio and along the route of the Buckeye Trail. We are happy to share with you our experiences on the second level of the trail challenge to earn our 2020 Trail Challenge mug.

Weekend Journey: New York & Massachusetts Parks, and Appalachian Long Distance Hikers Association (ALDHA) Gathering

Every year, we go to the Appalachian Long Distance Hikers Association - ALDHA Gathering weekend for workshops on how to backpack the great trails around the world. Normally, we make it a four-day weekend (including traveling), but this year we added some extra days on each end of the trip. These extra days enabled us to see some great New York State Parks with beautiful waterfalls, and more of the park where the Appalachian Trail crosses the highest mountain in Massachusetts.

It was fun to "bookend" our trip to the Appalachian Long Distance Hikers Association - ALDHA Gathering with waterfalls. We write our blog posts to share what we learn about organizations and about places that we enjoy. We hope you will share them with others.

Due to commitments at home, this is the first vacation in quite a while where we both were free to take a week-long trip. Because of this, we decided to write this blog post about the different locations we visited in Michigan from June 24 through July 1, 2018. We are sharing our 100 @sos_jr tweets and retweets to show our activities and our photos.

While not a perfect trip, in that we ended up needing to cut it short by two days, we created this post so we can look back on it to remind us of the fun we had and to share it with visitors to our blog.

• Monday, June 25, 2018 - #MightyMac

• Tuesday, June 26, 2018 - #MackinacIsland

• Wednesday, June 27, 2018 - @GrandHotelMI

• Thursday Morning, June 28, 2018 - #CastleRock and #Fudge

• Thursday Afternoon/Evening, June 28, 2018 - #SeeFrankenmuth

• Friday Morning, June 29, 2018 - @Bavarian_Inn

• Friday Afternoon, June 29, 2018 - @BronnersXmas

• Trip Home and After

Happy traveling!

The Cleveland Metroparks introduced their new Trail Challenge on National Trails Day, June 3, 2017!! It was very appropriate, since the Trail Challenge reflects the spirit of National Trails Day by encouraging people to enjoy the great outdoors and to explore trails in the Cleveland Metroparks.

In this blog post, I will share information about my journey on the 10 required trails (and beyond!!), for the 2017 Trail Challenge through:

• My @sos_jr tweets/retweets

• My comments about what I observed

• Information about the parks featured in this first Trail Challenge.

Thank you, Cleveland Foundation, for your September 13 & 28, 2014 Centennial Gift: Weekends on the Water!

We are very fortunate to have been among the 6,000 Clevelanders who received free tickets to an educational cruise on Cleveland's largest excursion ship, the Goodtime III. On Saturday, September 13th, we joined a joyful crowd on the docks at the end of East 9th Street near Voinovich Park. A light rain did not dampen the spirits of those waiting to board the ship.