Alaska Summer Solstice Cruise - Time to Get Away

Tuesday, June 4 , 2024

This trip has been a long time coming.  Back in November of 2022, while on the Grand Africa Cruise, we started hearing people talking about an Alaskan Cruise with a new itinerary.  We checked with the Future Cruise Consultants on board and sure enough, the 28-day Alaska Arctic Circle Summer Solstice Cruise had just been announced and the inaugural sailing would be on June 9^th of 2024.  It was over a year and a half away, but we immediately signed up and finally, tomorrow we’ll be leaving for Seattle where we’ll board the Holland America Westerdam ship for the start of our cruise.

As the cruise name suggests, we will be crossing the Arctic Circle on the day of the Summer Solstice

We are taking the Amtrak Coast Starlight to Seattle and spending a couple of days there before the start of the cruise.  We have passed through Seattle many times on our travels, but never spent any time seeing the city, so we thought we’d take this opportunity to do so.   

The train doesn’t leave until mid-afternoon so at least we don’t have to get up in the middle of the night tomorrow.  Val’s friend Marsha has volunteered to take us to the train station, and she will also be taking care of our house while we are gone.  Thanks so much, Marsha!

The first part of this year has been a pretty rough one for Val and I, so we are really looking forward to getting away and clearing our heads.  Val’s sister Vicki had knee replacement surgery near the end of January, so we offered to let her stay with us until she recovered enough to return to her own home.  The surgery went well, and she was recovering nicely when she started having severe back pain unrelated to the knee surgery.

Her surgeon suggested we take her to the emergency room, which we did.  They couldn’t find anything that was specifically causing the back pain, so they kept her overnight for observation.  She woke up not feeling well and went downhill from there as she had gone into septic shock.  She deteriorated quickly and by evening she had passed away.  It was a complete shock to Val and I and we couldn’t believe how quickly things had turned.  Val and her sister were very close, and the grief was overwhelming.

Since Val is the administrator for Vicki's etate we have spent the last four months honoring her final wishes, emptying her house, selling, donating and disposing of all her belongings as well as getting her house ready for sale.  It was finally listed for sale a couple of weeks ago and we finally had time to catch our breaths and focus on getting ready for the cruise.

This was rather lengthy and personal, but I wanted to add a little context to this cruise.  We are really looking forward to getting away, but are doing so with heavy hearts.  Hopefully this cruise will be a needed distraction, particularly for Val.

As usual, when you read this the cruise will be over and we will be home.  I will be writing the blog every day; I just won’t be publishing it.