We just spent 7 days on board the Diamond Princess cruise ship – our first trip to the great state of Alaska and David’s first cruise. David’s parents, brother Eric and his girlfriend Robin were with us on the cruise. We had a great time and the scenery was out of this world!
Here are some photos to prove it!
Leaving Vancouver B.C.
We embarked from Vancouver B.C., where the two of us had been staying the previous week, and spent the first day at sea.
Ketchikan, Alaska
Our first stop was Ketchikan, AK, where we went on a Rain Forest Island Adventure tour in the morning and walked around town afterwards. On Creek Street was the famous Dolly’s House (we didn’t go inside though). We stared hard into the water and fish ladder but it appeared that we missed the salmon run by a couple of weeks (too early).
Juneau, Alaska
It was a cold and rainy morning when we arrived in Juneau, Alaska’s state capitol. Unfortunately our flight seeing was canceled due to poor visibility. We took a bus to the majestic Mendenhall Glacier and enjoyed our first close-up view of a glacier and icebergs. Eric and Robin got even closer on their helicopter tour in the afternoon (when the weather cleared up), where they flew over the glacier, walked on it and even tasted glacier water!
Skagway
In the morning, five of us went for the Adventure Park and Zip Lines and had a great time – Amber sat out on this one because she is not a big fan of heights. After a quick lunch, we all went on the Yukon Jeep Adventure, where we drove Jeeps into the Yukon Territory with a brief stop at Carcross. It took about 5 hours to get there and back, with some off-roading (but not enough for some of us). It was very warm and dusty, but we managed to have a good time.
Glacier Bay
The ship went into Glacier Bay National Park and we admired the Margerie Glacier from the comfort of our balconies. The air was crisp and cool, and you definitely feel a different sense of time and space when you’re confronted with such natural wonders. The only disappointment was not seeing the glacier “calving”.
College Fjord
Still at sea, we went into College Fjord and saw more glaciers, lots and lots of them. Whatever calving action we were missing in Glacier Bay, the Harvard Glacier in College Fjord made up for it! The air seemed even colder here than Glacier Bay as we watched in awe of the calving action causing more and more icebergs to be littered across the fjord. There were some seal and whale sightings but we never saw more than a tiny glimpse of the huge whales beneath the water.
Whittier and Anchorage
We reached Whittier, our final destination, on the 7th day and disembarked the ship. It was a fun-filled 7 days, with only minor sea sickness (Amber) and well-fed stomachs… maybe a little too well fed.
We then took a bus to Anchorage, where we met up with family friends Dan and Christin, who recently relocated there, for lunch. We walked around Anchorage a bit, rested a few hours, and took different flights to our homes.
Just when we were getting used to the 4am sunrise and 11pm sunset…
We’re getting back to our “high tech” roots and publishing more web sites – it’s been a challenge keeping up but we enjoy doing research online and learning about various topics. Funny thing is, I (Amber) wanted to do web site development and multimedia publishing when I graduated from Berkeley over 10 years ago! Oh well, better late than never.
David just posted a review of his 2009 site stats (his first full year of blogging) on his personal blog DavidOverfield.com. I selfishly encourage him to blog more so that he can share his insights and stories with more people and not take up hours of my time when I’m trying to get work done
David has been shooting videos of houses bought at the foreclosure trustee sales and the actual live auction – you can find these videos on his YouTube channel and posted at AccessWealthStrategies.com. I’m getting used to video editing but find that it takes more time than I would like.
We believe distressed assets are a major opportunity and hard money lending a good way to take advantage of it. So we’ve been working with a group of friends on flipping houses bought from Phoenix foreclosure trustee sales.
We’re also working on more “expert interviews” to be posted on AccessWealthStrategies.com – please subscribe and stay tuned!
Wow the first month of 2010 went by so quickly we barely noticed
We had a full month of no traveling, which was a nice change, after getting back from visiting our parents in southern CA.
This year our major goal is: SIMPLIFY. We did the big house with the big yard in the suburbs for 3 years, had a big real estate portfolio, traveled almost every 4-6 weeks, and we tried to run multiple businesses without being able to focus on any one of them.
Now, we’re living in this rental condo in Scottsdale that’s 1/3 the size of our TX house, with no yard to maintain and nothing to worry about when we do travel. We’re pleasantly surprised that we love this living arrangement a lot!
We’ve been cooking more too – which is something we always wanted to do but for some reason didn’t do as frequently when we had a very nice kitchen in our big house. David thinks it’s because this place feels “cozy”. Whatever the reason, it’s a positive development.
I’m also happy to find a local Chinese market to buy groceries and snacks; less than 30 min. drive whenever I miss “home food”.
It’s been nice living in Scottsdale – the weather is wonderful in the “winter” except for a few bouts of rainstorm last couple of weeks.
David has found a group to play ultimate Frisbee with every weekend. He’ll probably look for a hockey team to join too.
My Dad and I attended the Barrett Jackson auto auction in Scottsdale on a very busy Saturday. There were classic cars as well as brand new concept cars.
Here’s a video sample of what we saw that day: a live auction of a 1932 Ford, browsing sold cars on display, and up-close view of a multi-hundred thousand dollar concept car (Locus Plethore).
The event was lots of fun, we’ll probably attend a car auction again at some point in the future. We did learn that the lower priced cars are sold earlier (mid-week), not on Saturday where most cars were auctioned for more than $100,000.
While we were visiting my parents in Long Beach for the holidays, we took a boating trip and cruised in our Riva 50′ from Shoreline Marina in Long Beach, past San Pedro, up to Palos Verdes and back.
Though we never found the migrating whales we were searching for, we saw many interesting sights. Watch the video highlights below and see LA Harbor Light House (“Angel’s Gate”), Cabrillo Beach, South Shores San Pedro, Trump National, Point Vicente Light House, and Long Beach Harbor.
Make sure you watch the whole video (2 parts) to see the seal pod we found and listen for what mom wants to feed them!
