MY TRIP TO SEATTLE/ALASKA 21 JUNE 2006 TO 10 JULY 2006

Special celebrations were rife in the Cooke family this year, (funnily enough in 1977 they were as well as my brother, David was 21; I was 18; my mum and dad were 50 and celebrated their silver wedding and, oh yes, in between my grandma decided to get married again!).

This year, in chronological order, David and Robinne celebrated their silver wedding anniversary; David was 50; my nephew Evan was 18 and graduated from high school; my eldest niece, Meredith, was 21 and graduated from University and Carol and I celebrated 10 years as a couple last week – 30^th August.

The only person to miss out on having a special celebration was my youngest niece, Sarah, who was 12 on 2^nd August. Conversely, however, she was the reason that Seattle and Alaska was chosen for the family celebratory holiday.

David, Robinne and the kids live in Florida and Sarah is a synchro swimmer, as Meredith also is, (at the moment, though, she does more coaching as, at 21, she is at the end of her competitive career), and it just so happened that the USA National Synchro Swimming Championships were taking place in Federal Way, 20 miles outside Seattle. Sarah, although 11 at the time, was swimming in the 12-13 age group and she and some of the other Suncoast Waterworks team had made it through the Regionals to the Nationals.

Sarah was swimming her solo; as part of a 5 girl team, (usually there are 8 but unfortunately, they only had 5. This went against them and stopped them getting into the finals later as they had 0.25 pts docked for each member short), and part of the trio. She came 17^th in the solo, (out of 40); 11^th in the team, (would have been 9^th and swimming in the finals but for the penalties – top 10 made it through to the finals day), and 4^th in the trio. Remembering that this was over the whole of the USA, and she was a year younger than most of the competitors, I think she did brilliantly and definitely warranted celebration. One of the other girls in the trio also came 6^th in the solo so, all in all, Suncoast Waterworks did rather well in the 12-13 age group

Evan is also a strong swimmer and is a lifeguard and now my brother, who is not the keenest swimmer in the world, (in fact swims like a tank!), can father such good swimmers, I don’t know – unless it is something to do with his birth sign, an Aquarian! Could it be more to do with their mother, who can swim like a fish?

After the pool, which took up most of the first 4 or 5 days, we had time to do some sightseeing. Seattle is a lovely city and is walkable, if you don’t mind a few hills. We went to see various attractions, the Museum of Glass; a tour round the harbour – where we realised where R2 D2 went after star wars. There is a tower that has a green dome on the top and Seattle residents have re-named it the R2 D2 tower; the underground tour – which used to be the actual city until a fire in the late 1800s early 1900s and the city was actually raised for safety’s sake; the Space Needle – similar to Blackpool Tower and approximately the same height and the Pike Place Market – where you can see fish flown and I got a present for my friend from the Lefties shop. It was a plaque that read:-

“Everybody was born righted handed but only the gifted, (Karl Lee and Brian Porter for two), saw through it and changed. Obviously, I am not one of the gifted people.”

My highlight of the Seattle sightseeing had to be the Experience Music project where everything was hands on and you could have a go at most instruments; there was a sculpture of 600 guitars; and you could form a band for the day. David, Evan and myself decided to do so and we absolutely crucified Joan Jett and The Blackhearts “I love Rock and Roll”. Basically, we played the instruments, which did make a noise and karaoked along to the record. Then the real instrument sounds were dubbed against our voices to make the DVD, and so it looked and sounded like we were actually playing the record. There was no point buying the DVD as it wouldn’t have played in England, although I did buy a poster which is proudly displayed on my hall wall next to my Hadrians Wall certificate from last year.

We also found time during the week to take a trip to Mount Rainier and Snoqualmie Falls which are each about 40 miles from Federal Way. Fortunately, the weather was glorious – in fact it was for the whole 3 and a half weeks. On Mount Rainier there was actually snow and, believe it or not, this was actually the first time Sarah could remember seeing snow. Snoqualmie Falls is, strangely, a waterfall which has a 2 mile trail down hill to get to the viewing point. Guess what, then you have to walk back up it.

On Sunday 2^nd of July we started our Alaskan cruise round the Inside Passage, which includes Yakuta Bay, [Hubbard Glacier], Juneau [the Capital], Sitka, Ketchikan and Victoria BC, [Canada].

The boat was called the ‘Westerdam’ from the Holland America line and, if I was a religious person, I would have been deeply offended as there was a lot of blaspheming on the boat. There were Dam mugs; Dam towels; Dam everything…………… It was a really nice boat with 11 decks and very posh. We had two formal evenings and one casual but even on the other days we couldn’t wear shorts in the dining room.

The Hubbard Glacier we arrived at on American Independence Day and was one of the highlights, watching the ice carving, (falling off), and seeing the blue ice, (the thickest), and just being on the boat in such peaceful surroundings. They had a party for Independence Day, which we decided to join in, under protest.

Juneau had its own glacier, the Mendenhall, which had a visitor centre and also had a salmon factory which we had a look round. You could also take a cable car to Mount Roberts, but the more fit of us decided to walk up the trail of 2 miles (quite a few of the synchro families joined us on the cruise), and then get the car back down for 5 dollars (round trip 23)

Sitka was also nice and was surrounded by inhabited islands. It is Russian dominated but also had its own tribe called the Tlinket and we saw both types of dancers while we were there. Very cultural! Both Sitka and Ketchikan are dominated by totem poles which tell a story of various sections of the tribes.

On the Thursday night – after Sitka – there was a dessert extravaganza at 10-30, where there was every dessert imaginable with carvings of various animals as a showpiece. Different and MOST enjoyable – yum yum.

Ketchikan was probably my least favourite place of the places we visited, but it had its attractions. We went to a lumberjack show in the morning and then on a horse drawn trolley round the town including Dolly’s Creek, where Dolly “entertained her men friends” at £3 a head and didn’t stop until she had earned £75 in the night – busy lady!

Unfortunately, the only semblance of bad weather was Friday night where we encountered 90 mile an hour winds – puts me in mind of the old 1974 Forest song “Rock the Boat” – where a few of our party were not too well, including Carol and Toni – who had made it through to the Karaoke final the next day. She came 2^nd in the end but was not at her best.

On the Saturday morning, in the face of the gales, there was a 5k walk which Carol wanted to do in aid of breast cancer cure. We both paid our 15 dollars and set off at 8 in the morning, Carol still rather worse for wear, to be told that the presentation was to be at 8-45 so we had to be back at 8-30, (you tell me anyone who can walk 5k in half an hour unless they are trained race walkers, especially in bad weather). They did say that we could continue after the presentation but only Carol and I did. She was really proud of herself and even spent 21 dollars for the photo to prove that she did it.

The knock on effect of the winds was that we got to Victoria an hour and a half late and basically the place was shut, (8 p.m.). We just had a wander round and it seemed like a nice place.

One of the highlights of my trip was being able to run properly with David, who has always run, but, at the time I started to take it seriously he was overweight. He has lost 3.5 stone, (50 pounds), since 2004 and so we were able to go for proper runs, which was great.

What a wonderful time we all had.

Written by: Peter Cooke

Submitted: 6^th September 2006

Edited by: Brenda J Earnshaw WRR Editor