TrekSimple

If you haven’t already read Part I of this post, go check it out, and come back here.

In April, I had some family come to visit and we had a little staycation at a favorite place of mine in Fort Lauderdale, Lago Mar. It is an Old Florida resort, directly on the ocean right next to the port. It has lush landscaping and the most beautiful, large beach area. I consider it to be one of the hidden gems of Fort Lauderdale and highly recommend.

Shaky Knees Music Festival – Atlanta
While a music festival isn’t exactly on my bucket list – I seem to go to at least two a year – going to Shaky Knees Music Festival in Atlanta was a treat for a handful of reasons. First off, it had been a while since I’d been to Atlanta, and the area of the festival, Midtown, was quite nice. The weather in Atlanta in early May was pleasant. It was also fun to dress in a group costume. People loved our fringey outfits, inspired by festival artist, Yeah Yeah Yeahs frontwoman, Karen O., and thought we might be some kind of act! (Oh yeah, we are an act, alright!)

What was a bucket-list item for me was seeing the Flaming Lips for the first time. All of the hype I’ve ever heard about this band’s live performances was 100% real. Despite not knowing several of the songs, their set was pure joy! I would love to see them at a standalone show in the future.

Celebrity Alaska Cruise
My dear friend Ashley used to work onboard for Celebrity Cruises, and I had the opportunity to sail with her several times to places including: the British Isles (my first time in Europe), South America/through the Panama Canal, and one year, Thanksgiving week in the Caribbean. Then the pandemic happened, the cruise industry had a rough couple of years and Ash moved back on land. 

When our friend from Ashley’s onboard days, Eddy, now an incredibly popular cruise director, announced he would be heading to Alaska for part of his upcoming contract, we made plans to go. The cruise was a week long, round trip in and out of Vancouver, British Columbia. We took a direct flight on Air Canada from Miami and stayed in Vancouver one night. According to everyone we spoke with, we had beautiful weather in Vancouver. Vancouver is very close to Seattle with a similar rainy climate. We took a hop-on, hop-off tour and saw some sights in town before heading to the cruise port.

At the port, I learned a very important travel lesson. This being an Alaska cruise, the act of boarding the Alaska-bound ship in Vancouver meant we were leaving Canada for the U.S. Whereas I have never (EVER) needed my Global Entry card in an airport returning to the U.S., and, in fact, have been told by agents that I didn’t need it, well, I didn’t pack it. Because I have never needed the card to use my Global Entry status. This landed me, and Ashley, who had her card on her but chose not to leave me in the dust like I deserved, in a torturous immigration line that was easily 90 minutes long.  In Eddy’s words, “Minus 10 points for Maggie.” I’ll never make that mistake again!

Once we got onboard, we relaxed a bit and set sail. Ashley distributed the various Trader Joe’s treats she had brought for her crew friends. Pro tip – if you want to show your cruise crew love, bring along high-quality snacks they can’t easily get onboard or at port. We spent the next day at sea, sailing the Inside Passage up past the coast of British Columbia and approaching the “tail” of Alaska. If you aren’t familiar with cruising, you may, like me, also love sea days because there are no commitments or scheduled activities, unless you choose to attend something. It’s a great day to hang out in a pool or hot tub and read. Our stops on the cruise included Icy Strait Point in Hoonah, and stops in Juneau and Ketchikan, with sea days thrown in. 

Icy Strait Point is best described as Alaska’s equivalent of a Caribbean cruise port. A former salmon cannery site, it’s an excellent location to take off on a whale watching boat tour, and it’s the site of the world’s longest zipline! We saw several humpback whales and some sea lions on our boat tour.

One of our sea days was atypical, because while we didn’t stop at a port, we visited the Hubbard Glacier. Our cruise ship, being fairly large, is only allowed to get about two miles away from the actual glacier, and you can still get great views of the glacier from the ship at that distance. However, if you want to take it to the next level, there’s the option for an excursion on a smaller boat specially built for iceberg-laden water that can get much closer, about a half-mile away from the glacier. I had the immense good fortune of being able to do that, as we hadn’t planned/booked any of our excursions in advance. There was one spot open and I went, which Ashley had done in the past when she was working onboard. This experience was so cool, and literally the coldest I felt on the entire cruise because it rained mildly the entire time, and oh by the way, YOU’RE NEXT TO A GLACIER! There were giant chunks of ice, the water was an otherworldly blue, and I witnessed calving up close, seeing chunks of ice falling into the water, which is a normal thing. 

In Ketchikan, we went on a nature sightseeing boat tour that departed from and returned to a lodge that served us unlimited dungeness crab! We saw a bald eagle and the tour guides showed us how to tell the difference between a male and female crab based on the way their bellies look. Then we ate them, and all of their friends, back at the lodge. 

I saved Juneau for last because Ashley and I had one of the most incredible travel experiences of our lives there. After being split up into different helicopters – her with a family of British sisters and me with a family of San Franciscans, we took an incredibly scenic helicopter ride (complete with moose sighting from above!) over Juneau and over a mountain to a dog sledding training camp at the top of the Mendenhall Glacier. When the helicopters land, the dogs go bananas because they are excited to get to run. We had the very good fortune to reunite and the two of us were treated to a 20-minute sled ride, pulled by 12 Iditarod-race-trained Alaskan Huskies through a snowy wonderland, accompanied only by the dogs’ “Musher”/owner and another musher. We stopped a few times to change position on the sled, sitting, standing and taking endless photo and video. The best part of all, we got to pet every one of these very happy dogs, and take photos with them. At one point during the ride, I looked around and saw nothing but snow in every direction, it was like being in a movie. 

The cruise concluded back in Vancouver and we had a full day of sightseeing, taking another bus tour and visiting the Capilano Suspension Bridge. We went to tea at a hotel in the airport, camped out there for a while, and I ended up rebooking from Air Canada to JetBlue with the help of a friend when my flight got super delayed and eventually canceled! JetBlue saved the day and I made it home on time.

Hockey Madness and Florida Fun
A couple of weeks before the cruise, something was brewing in the world of hockey. The Florida Panthers, a team I had been a casual fan of, were rip-roaring through the playoffs. Shortly before the cruise, I got to go to the Eastern Conference final game, and they won, putting them in the Stanley Cup finals! My hockey-fan nephew reached out and said he was interested in going to a game, so I bought tickets to the first home game in the series, not knowing what day the game would be played or even which team we would play. I learned a lot about how the playoffs work thanks to my hockey sherpa friend Imran, and became a legit Panther fan. Fortunately it worked out, my nephews came down from New Jersey, we had all kinds of Florida adventures including two boat rides, gator sightings, a trip to the Elbo Room, watching the Miami Heat (also in their Finals) at a sports bar, a Flo Rida concert, and oh, a STANLEY CUP PLAYOFF GAME! It happened to be the only game they won in the series, and while it was a bummer that they lost overall, holy moly what an incredible experience to do that with my nephews. The boys even got to throw rubber rats on the ice, a Panthers tradition. Thank you to Ashley for making me buy the rats from Amazon while we were on the cruise.

And if all of this wasn’t enough, I had two more “bucket list” experiences in store in June. The first was staying at The Boca Raton for the first time for a Leadership Florida conference. The resort, formerly known as the Boca Resort, is historic and luxurious in every way. It is also home to a Forbes five-diamond spa, which I almost didn’t go to, but fortunately my pal Krissy showed me the error of my ways. Ah, the good life. 

To bring things full-circle, the end of June arrived and it was time to head to Denver for The Head and The Heart (THATH) at Red Rocks, plus some other adventures. My friend Sarah already had plans to go to Denver so we flew out together. She was iffy on going to the concert but there were so many crazy travel delays and issues (including our own that led us to being stuck in Orlando overnight, losing our rental car reservation and having to be saved by Chris) that we were able to scoop up some last-minute tickets to the sold-out show. Instead of going to the show alone, Sarah and our hosts, Chris and his wife Jessica, all shared in the majesty of seeing THATH at Red Rocks. After the show, Sarah and I headed to Denver proper to meet up with some other friends and hitch a ride to an event at a gorgeous retreat center in Colorado Springs for a personal finance conference with fellow money nerd friends. After the retreat, we did some sightseeing in Colorado Springs including taking the Cog Train up to the top of Pike’s Peak, and touring the Cave of the Winds. Then it was back to Fort Lauderdale for me on the Fourth of July.  

It certainly was an eventful first half of the year. Now finally wrapping up this post in late September, I mostly stayed put over the summer, with the exception of a couple of trips that combined fun and family time. I have a couple of mini travel adventures coming up in October and November, but nothing big planned until 2024… yet! 

That is all quite fine, because 2023 will be fondly remembered for years to come.