Diamonds and Juneau.

AKA Monday and Tuesday...

On Monday we were at sea. Daniel and I and a couple other family members went to a shopping thingy. We thought we were going into a dealio where they talk about where to shop and what you'll find in Juneau and Skagway, etc, etc. But it was all about diamonds. Diamonds. Our plan for Juneau was to take a whale watching excursion. We were set.

This is Monday night dinner in the fancy restaurant.

Anyhoo...Back to the diamonds...So Daniel offers to ditch the whale watching for a diamond.

Say what?!

You got it mister.

Can you tell who most of the siblings are in these pictures? Look at the teeth and the chins.

So I agreed. And that was great because we saw tons of whales without the excursion. But I'll get to those another day!

I went to bed happy.
Juneau was our first port. We docked and got the heck off. Along with 10,000 other shipmates. Better to wait an hour.
We tried to gather for a family picture.
It didn't happen.
But Daniel did get me walking back to him.
The weather looked like it should be cold. But we walked quite a way to the town and removed the sweatshirts accordingly.
The rest of the day was beautiful!!!
Hello ship.
A shot from afar.

We ran into this guy in town.

Don't worry, he's stuffed.

This was on our way up to the tram.

We took the tram up up and up.

Here's the ship from the tram.

Lots of ship pictures for some reason.

We met a family from close by where we live.

Actually, lots of Utah Mormons go cruising. We met many.

Isn't it beautiful?! I'd stop uploading the ship pics if it weren't for the scenery around it!

GORGEOUS!!!

Everything smelled so good and the air was so clean.

I don't think we appreciated it until our last port.

Up on the mountain, we met this guy. He isn't stuffed.

He was injured and won't be released back into the wild. So we took his picture.

He wouldn't smile.

We watched a movie about a tribe of people who have been in Alaska for quite some time.

The language is dying, but we met a couple of young bucks who spoke it and one who even sang to us in the language using a drum.

It's called Tlingit.

Here's an example...I gu.aa yax x'wan! -Be brave

I may have to do a whole post about it!

And here's Daniel with another bald eagle. This one is definitely stuffed.

In town we looked at diamonds. There is a new cut called the Crown of Light. 90 facets. Gorgeous and sparkly.

Talking to a diamond dealer in Alaska ports is like talking to a used car salesman.

Brutal!

We decided on a beautiful ring with a blue diamond surrounded by white diamonds. Boy was is splendid.

We talked the guy down quite a bit but then decided to call my sister in law Annie. She deals with diamonds.

She took all the emotion out of it. She said they send all the junk diamonds to Alaska for people like us.

DanG!!!

So we left and will start looking here with Annie's help.

Thanks Annie!

We did find a really cool store called Del Sol. They have all kinds of stuff that changes color in sunlight. I got nail polish and then t-shirts for the kids. I don't think Isaac's taken his off. I will take pictures and post them soon!

This little guy welcomed us home one night.

We enjoyed shows like you wouldn't believe. We ate food like it was going out of style. We took the stairs at every floor so we could eat again!

And again...