Delany and Eve October 2002
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Friday November 08 2002 - Past time that someone sent an update! Thanks to Ted & Jen Norman for sharing a picture of Delany and Eve from October 2002. How about hearing from some more of you?
Delany and Eve October 2002
Friday August 16 2002 - The California Cousins came to McGregor this summer for a visit. It was fun talking about the fun times in the past with them.
Jeannette King - Ruth Hinkins - Mary Lou Peterson - with Donald Strutt
Jeannette King enjoying a ride on the Strutt Houseboat
Ruth Hinkins relaxing on the Mississippi river with the Strutt cousin from McGregor, Donald.
Wednesday July 03 2002 - Jackie sent us some photo's to share of Micheal Perkins Memorial gathering of the family and friends. There were lots and lots of good pictures, but I've chosen what I thought might be the best to bring back all the good memories of that event. Truly a family that enjoys being together and celebrates the good times and the good lives.
Click here to share in the memories.
Sunday June 23 2002 - Hi All... We entered the bay to Ketchikan, Alaska this morning. It is the first incorporated and first town you see when you come into Alaska. They call themselves the #1 city in Alaska and I guess they are right. Summer average temp is 60 -70 degrees and the winter average is 30 degrees. Not much of a difference there. The average rainfall is 162 inches - rain almost 240 days a year. They say to tell the forcast - look at the mountain and if you can see it, it's going to rain: - if you can't see the top of the moutain it's raining. We were sure lucky as we didn't have any rain here. We came all prepared, but it didn't happen. 8000 people live on the island proper and there are 8000 cars registered. The island is 1/2 mile wide and 7 miles long. Not many places to go on this island.
We took the horse-drawn carriage on a tour of the town and it was a good introduction to the area. The staircases were actually named streets and were really long and high. They told us that the long stairways helped your legs and your memory. Legs for the obvious reasons, and your memory because you only forget your car keys once. Saw lots of totem poles and all the wooden staircases up to homes just built among the rocks of granite.
Every totem pole tells a story and they pass it on from one generation to another.
There is no soil here. Even the play ground and the football fields are granite. Can you imagine that? Most peoople are buried off the island (it's expensive to bring in enough soil to cover you.) If you want to be here they have to blast a place to put you...
We were taken into the city in a tender off of the ship. That was a new experience for us too. It only took 10 minutes to reach shore tho'.
This gives you an idea of how big the ship is - that's the little tender by it's side.
We ate at another good brew pub where we HAD to sample all of the local brews. Bought out some of the stores. Alaska can keep the lights on for awhile.
I thought that this was an interesting way to do the shops. They have to build everything up on stilts because the tide comes in over 20 feet and of course they can't dig anything into the granite.
Here is Creek Street. Neat shops.
Home on the boat in time for a little R&R and then dressing for the formal night. We ate Lobster and Beef Wellington. Not bad huh? Then we saw the show Rhythms of the City. The Sun Princess Dancers are sure good AND enthusiastic. Tonight they have the big thrill of filling over 600 glasses of champagne - but we just may miss that. It starts at 11:30 and that's way past our bed time.
Here is a beautiful picture of the mountains around Ketchikan with some of the local flowers. With so much rain they can grow almost anything.
This is a good shot. We have seen so many beautiful things the mind just can't keep up.
P.S. This will be the last one from the boat. It's been fun talking to you and we hope that you've had enough time to read every thing.
Saturday June 22 2002 - Hi All... We visited Juneau today. The big capital city of Alaska. There are 30,000 people here so we did see some cars today. Most cities here are very small. Lots of mountains and glaciers the same as all over the place. We walked thru the town and sent our email from an email cafe and it went much faster than on the boat. Caught the city bus to the Alaskan brewery. It's about 8 miles out of town so we enjoyed the ride.
I think that most of us decided we like the Alaskan Amber best (Darci still likes her Stout best.) They are very proud of the brewery here and have won a lot of ribbons in the national contests - also they protect the enviroment by not disposing their by-products in the area but shipping them by ship into the lower 48 and letting them be used for feed for animals there. They don't have many cows or pigs up here.
We ate lunch in the "famous" Red Dog Saloon. It has the old swinging doors that you see on westerns and sawdust on the floors. The drinks in the menu says "Expensive shit $5.95 / Cheap shit $4.95. We go to classy places. It was great fun because the old piano player played and every one sang their hearts out.
The decor at the Red Dog didn't leave out much.
The walls were covered with signs and animals of the area. Fun place.
We had a very good Alasakan meal tonight - we all had crab legs - and they just kept bringing it out for us. Our head waiter has taken a liking to Dad and brought him about 1/3 of the whole Baked Alaska. They brought it in flaming (you who have been on a cruise remember that. Here they had to pull the curtains because it was still light out.)
It looks so neat in a dark room with all those Assistant waiters walking in with the Baked Alaska.
Here's Dad with his Baked Alaska.
He really didn't eat all of it - but people did come over and take his picture with it. We got a big kick out of it. Darci and Mike are out on the deck watching the whales and Dad just pointed one out to me from our window. We are on the way to Ketchikan. Fun day again tomorrow.
Friday June 21 2002 - Hi All.... ANOTHER once in a life time experience. We were in port - Skagway Alaska early this morning. We took the morning to visit the little city. Population of 800 and they had three cruise ships here today. I know that we have 1900 on board, so imagine what McGregor would be like with 6000 extra people a day. They handle it very well.. and we enjoyed it. Great shops.
This is main street (Broadway) in Skagway.
The sidwalks are made of wood - so you had to watch your step. Hardlly any traffic / I suppose that the locals just stayed home on the cruise ship days. They told us, however, that the day before they had had 4 ships in port.
After lunch (and a trip to the pub in town ) we took the helicopter to the glacier and had a wonderful time. It was awesome.!!! We have so many pictures that you will have to see when we get home. It was great to be on one and look into the crevases. Everything looked so blue and neat. They did dress us so we were almost too warm.
Here we are walking on the Chilkoot Glacier.
You can see the breaks in the flow that you have to be careful of. When you look down inside them the color is great. Wish that you all could have been here.
Here are the 4 of us on the Chilkoot Glacier.
Each of the little spikes of ice which you see in background are over 100 feet tall. The entire glacier is 900 feet thick where we stood. really awesome. People in history had to walk there and bring their food for the winter - they made them carry over 2000 pounds of food and they carried only 200 at a time. Lots of trips for those people. They crossed over into Canada on the Golden Staircase trail.
This is a view of the Princess and the Holland America in dock.
This is a cool shot of the Eldred Rock Lighthouse in the Chilkoot Bay at the 990 N marker.
How would you like to live out there awhile?
Thursday June 20 2002 - Hi All... It was an exciting day yesterday, but we don't have many pictures to show for it. It was a kind of thing where you had to be there. We were in Glacier Bay and the sounds were wonderful. When the 'burgs calf it is a sound that we won't ever forget. Calving is when the iceberg breaks off and falls into the sea. Sometimes you didn't see anything, but way in the back someplace you knew that something was happening.
To be called a glacier they have to be 25 acres minimum. Most are a whole lot bigger than that. There are 100,000 glaciers here. The largest we saw was Margerie Glacier which was 250 feet tall/ 100 foot in the water / 26 miles long and 1 mile wide. What a sight. The blues in the glacier were just beautiful and I hope that the colors come out in the photos. Because of the calving we could get no closer than 1/4 of a mile but the sights were awesome.
Calving of the Margerie Glacier.
The sound was just great. We got a lot more pictures where that came from. You'll all be bored to death maybe. But you can tell we were excited.
This is the blue ice of the Glacier - hope the colors come across better in your computer. It is beautiful...
We have a helicopter ride today out on the glacier. Get to walk on one of these babies. Wow !!!
Wednesday June 19 2002 - Hi All... We had another wonderful day yesterday. Ate - drank - slept - ate- drank- ate- drank. You get the idea. Good day to be at sea because it was overcast. They kept us busy tho.
We went into College Fjord. Our first sightings. It was thrilling. Harvard Glacier is the largest -- 300 feet tall and I don't know how long. We got to within 4 miles of it. That was the closest that they could ever get before because of all the ice in the water. (Titanic like) The crushed rock coming down the face made it look like a giant chocolate water fall.
This is Harvard Glacier in the back.
Ice in the college Fjord.
Then we turned the corner and Yale Glacier came into view. They said that they had to seperate Harvard and Yale by a mountain. :-) It was smaller but very impressive
Yale Glacier. Looks more like a waterfall.
We did have a whale sighting as we went out into Prince William Sound. I grabbed my camera, but he was too quick. THEY say there will more better chances today.
Had a little wine tasting. Fun and of course we ordered a couple of bottles for dinner.
It was a fun time and the boat rocked even MORE when we were done.
Tonight was a formal night and everyone looked great. The captain came and talked to us and we met our head waiter for the first time. His name is Jerry and he's from the Phillipians. Has a great sense of humor. Like him, much...
Of course we had a lot of portraits taken and will show them off when we get home. If you arn't too tired of looking at vacation pictures already. :-)
Today into Glacier Bay. The glaciers in Glacier Bay are remnants of the little ice age which began 4,000 years ago. THEY say that we should see dozens of them. I'm very excited. It is cold out in the front, but we are dressing warm and should be just fine. I did buy a pair of earmuffs. It's overcast today, but no rain. It's better to photograph the glaciers in overcast days when the ice is most visible.
Tuesday June 18 2002 - Hi All...We are off ..!!!! The boat seems very familiar and we are glad to be on board. We headed out on a bus from Anchorage to Seward and the bus driver again was very informative. We had a 5.2 earthquake just a few miles away today, but we were on the bus and really didn't notice it until someone told us. They say they have about 3 a day here. We stopped along the way on our 4 hour ride and took this picture of the four of us.
Standing by Turnaround lake with yet another beautiful mountain in the background.
The next stop was at a nature wilderness center. We saw some bears, carabou, moose , owl and raindeer. Some of them were injured in the wild and were brought here to heal.
We got to the boat and went thru a very thorough search. They told us that they really have gotten more careful about this since 9/11. Even had to take off the belts. We don't mind that tho'. We took a short tour of the boat and found out where the important things are - like the business center was. Took some pictures on Deck 14
Getting to know the boat. Then we had to go thru the drill at the Muster in case of emergency.
Recipe for the day.... Apple Tini - Absolut Vodka with Pucker's sour Apple Schnapps. Ummmmmm !!!!!!!
Monday June 17 2002 - Another day, some more stories from our travelers.
Hi all... Slept again today and it really felt good. After a nice breakfast we took a morning tour of Anchorage. Had a very funny guide again who is an actor and enjoyed us as his audience. He explained to us about the school system and I asked if they ever had snow days and they said hardly ever. Once they had 27 inches of snow and it was 40 below and they had school. The parents really like it that the kids are taken care of all day and have a good meal. I guess we're wimpy ...!! We saw where the earthquake had hit very hard in 1964. Some places sunk for 50 feet - and they were lucky that only 131 were killed. In some places on the coast they lost over 80 houses into the bay. It was the worst on record...
We could even see Mr. McKinley AGAIN... We feel very fortunate. They keep telling us how lucky we are. Next we went to an airport which is just for sea planes. (kind of like a marina for planes). Saw a plane take off.
Plane taking off from the marina...
Alaska is the only place where they can land on a highway. 60 % of the people fly for transportation / 10% go by road / 10% go by railroad / 20% go by boat. . Juneau is the capital and the only way in or out is by boat or plane. Strange... Some people want to change the capital but everytime they vote on it is fails. No one wants it in Anchorage because they already have so much power. 1/2 of the entire population live in Anchorage.
In the P.M. we went on the Heritaage Center tour and watched some native dancers and learned about their customs. It was all very interesting.
We will have to relate the customs to you when we see you all. There are 7 different native tribes here and they each have their own customs and language.
Sunday June 16 2002 - Hi Everybody... What a day we had. Slept in this morning because we really needed the rest and it's a good thing we did. It was a long day. This morning we got up and bought some cards and wrote them on the deck overlooking the mountains and the river.
Ate breakfast about 10 and then at 11:30 caught the bus to the train. Sure glad that they handle all the luggage. We left on the train about 12:30 and ate a very SMALL lunch because we knew that the supper would be really outstanding on the train. Settled in for the long ride. We ate supper second shift about 6:30 and really did enjoy it. We had Alaskan salmon and pork chops that were the best we'd ever eaten. The desserts were wonderful and of course we all had to have some of that.
The weather was beautiful and we got to see the Mt. almost all the way to Anchorage. I guess that 20 % of the time it can be seen so we were very lucky. We took LOTS of pictures of it but will only enclose one of them. For you that have been here I guess you know how lucky we were. It is just awesome and we can't get over the beauty of it. Even seeing the pictures gives us the shivers. Hope that you enjoy them.
Here she is.... What a sight. We still love it... This view is about 60 miles away. Some views were 79 miles and the closesst was only 46 miles. You can tell it's a giant.... LOVE it. Quote for the day....When you live in Alaska you learn never to tell your children or spouse "Yes you can go, as long as you're home by dark" ! We've learned that's about Aug.
Saturday June 15 2002 - Day 3 for the intrepid travelers:
Hi All... Another wonderful day. We had to have the bags ready before 6 A.M. but we didn't have to get on the bus until 7:15. They took us right to the Midnight Sun Train. It is really a great train and we had a great breakfast on board. We have assigned seats so that made it more relaxed. The narrator of the train did a good job and we learned so much that I hope it will be recalled when needed. They do a great job on the spoiling us.
After the train ride we arrived at our hotel. the view is just fantastic. We were lucky enough to get rooms overlooking the mountains and the little river. Sounds so nice. Can't show you all our pictures so you have a lot of them to look forward too.
We got on the bus to the Denali National Park and had Bruce as our guide. He was really an enviromentalist and was an obvious loner. His soft voice almost put everyone to sleep so for the first 20 minutes he talked and most of us slept. He is a dog traner and that is his first love. We went thru the Tundra Area - the road is 90 miles long, but he took us in only 35 miles of it. We stopped many times when ever any one on board thougth they saw some kind of animals. We did see Carabou and Dall sheep and some kind of varmit. We all really wanted to see bears, but not today. He told us many things about the park. It is 3 times the size of yellowstone and about the size of Mass. This has been the warmest spring on record - but it was cold here the last two days so the rivers are running pretty clear. July is summer Aug. is fall and in Oct. they can take theri dog sleds on the rivers because they are frozen over. The mountain roads are very steep and of course - no railings.
Quote for the day: You know that you might be an Alaskan when you know the "Four Seasons" consist of Almost Winter, Winter, Still Winter, and Tourist Season !
Friday June 14 2002 - Time for another vacation installment.
Hi All... What a wonderful day we've had. Up early - partly because we had to be on the bus, but - partly because the inner clock got us up REALLY early. It was a good day but we are very tired tonight. We got on the bus with guide Jim. ( a history teacher in real life) and we went to the pipe line and then to the gold mine. Then lunch and then to the river tour. It was all great. Jim was very good and we all enjoyed his stories about the area. I thought it was interesting that all the parking spaces in front of the stores and in the parking lots have plug-in's in them because here in the winter you need to plug in the car even for a few minutes. He told us that the code for buildings is over 1 foot walls and at least 26 inches of installation in the ceiling. The glass in the windows has to be a certain R rating. It really gets cold up here. They said that it ranges from 90 or 100 in the summer to - 60 in the winter. I don't see how they stand it. I can take the 20 some hours of sunshine, but I don't think I could take 20 hours or more of darkness. We learned all about perma frost -- which is permantly frozen ground. Can you imagine? I can't. They have to work around it all the time. In building the pipe line they had to put it above the ground when they couldn't dig enough to get it in - so it goes under part way and then above part way. It is 800 miles long and they had to allow for expansion of 80 feet because of the heat of summer. It kind of snakes along. It is built so that the animals of the area can always get under it and not be hindered. Our guide was not in love with the enviromentalits. He said that the pipe line was the best thing to happen up here. He made a believer out of me. Then we went to pan for gold. It was fun, but we are not going to quit our day jobs. None of us got much, but it was interesting. After this exciting morning we went for a relaxing river ride in the afternoon and learned all about the native customs. That was a fun time and we learned a lot more stuff that we can store up there for future reference. We also learned that the kids were required to go out for recess if it isn't below - 40 degrees, but then the teachers complained about having to be outside with them so now the new rule is - if it isn't below -20 degrees . I can't imagine that either. Having a great time and the day starts earlier tomorrow. We are going to Denali Park. I sure it doesn't rain (like it did today on us). We didn't mind it tho'. We are traveling by the Train tomorrow and they say that is just great.
Thursday June 13 2002 - The head geneologist is off on vacation, and I thought I'd share some of her notes and pictures home for those of you interested. I've told her, I don't know of any relatives up in Alaska, but they were still quite set on going. Anyway, here's a note we received from last night.
We made it !!!! It really was a good flight and we flew over some very beautiful country. When we came into Anchorage we came in over Prince Willman Sound and it looked so large. It reallly surprised me because I had heard that all the towns in Alaska were small. We found out that Anchorage is 2000 sq miles and is larger than the state of Delaware. We noticed all the mud flats on the way in and assumed that they were for when the tide came it and we were right. They told us that sometimes the tide comes up almost 42 feet - the average is 36 feet. The tide comes in under some of the mud flats and makes them dangerous. People think that they can walk on them and its' like quick sand. It really was an awsome sight. Then we got on another plane and came to Fairbanks. It's a little more primitive, but our rooms are very nice. Here it is now 10:30 (which makes it 1:30 at home and we are all pretty excited and the sun is still out nice and bright. I don't feel we can stay up to watch it set tho'. Tomorrow is a busy day and we have to be up and on the bus by 8:30. Sounds like they have a big day planned for us. Write more tomorrow night.
Friday May 10 2002 - Vicki and Collie shared a few pictures with us for our family "album". Click here to view them.
Tuesday May 07 2002 - Jack Reese shared these pictures from his family album. Click here to view them. He also shared some pics of his cruise with friend Barb. Click here to view them. Everybody else... start sharing.
Tuesday April 23 2002 - Welcome to the Strutt.Com relative news page. This is a spot where we can share with other relatives the exciting things (to us anyway
Major groups of pictures will always be at the top. Other pictures related specifically to an entry in this log will be linked directly from the log entry. Check in and read up on the family events. Most importantly, SHARE!