Some people, like Aramco ExPat Fred Bobb, have all the luck. At this very moment, Fred and Barbara are cruising the southeastern coast of Alaska on a Celebrity Cruise ship. Their cruise started in Seattle—a city whose name immediately summons images of rain and cold in some people’s minds—where the sun shone brightly and temperatures hovered in the 80s for the three days they were there, with nary a drop of rain falling. When the weather’s like that in Seattle, it truly is what the locals like to call it, God’s Country.
SeattleWhen the voyagers arrived in Skagway—home of the legendary outlaw Soapy Smith and gateway to the Klondike during the Yukon Gold Rush days—the temperatures stayed in the relatively comfortable 50s. They didn’t even have to haul out their winter coats.
Tracy Fjord
An expert from National Geographic narrated their visit to the breathtaking Tracy Fjord, where the ship’s Greek captain deftly maneuvered the vessel through a flotilla of icebergs without doing a Titanic rerun. On the day of their visit to the glacier, the sun rose at 4:00 a.m.—this being the Land of the Midnight Sun—and Celebrity opened the dining rooms for breakfast early. Novelist Rex Beach once described southeastern Alaska with these memorable words: In one way the southern coast of Alaska may be said to be perhaps a million years younger than any land on this continent, for it is still in the glacial period. The vast alluvial plains and valleys of the interior are rimmed in to the southward and shut off from the Pacific by a well-nigh impassable mountain barrier, the top of which is capped with perpetual snow. Its gorges, for the most part, run rivers of ice instead of water. Europe has nothing like these glaciers which overflow the Alaskan valleys and submerge the hills, for many of them contain more ice than the whole of Switzerland. This range is the Andes of the north, and it curves westward in a magnificent sweep, hugging the shore for a thousand leagues. Against it the sea beats stormily; its frozen crest is played upon by constant rains and fogs and blizzards. But over beyond lies a land of sunshine, of long, dry, golden summer days. Take the words of Fred Bobb and Rex Beach: Your Alaska cruise will be an adventure you’ll never forget.