WINSLOW, Arkansas

Spent 10 days in the lovely Arkansas hills in the '30's resort town, now grocery-store and school-less town of Winslow located in the Boston Mountains. My relatives own a good 2% of the real estate (my estimate) and those living in Winslow represent 1% of the population. The views are lushly green in summer and only hint at the valleys and mountains visible in winter.

The hotspot on Saturday mornings is the Winslow Mercantile where my brother Jerry serves donuts and coffee and everyone in town seems to turn up at one point or another after shopping at the farm market that sits in front of where the train depot used to be. It's all freight trains now (the regular 3am woke me without fail) other than a Friday and Saturday excursion train from Springdale to Van Buren that will pick up passengers in Winslow if prearranged. 

The most exciting adventure in town is walking through the train tunnel (absolutely pitch black with evenly spaced cutouts to duck into should a train come along) and then out onto the mighty high train trestle. I traversed it back when Kylee was young enough to need to hold someone's hand but haven't ventured in since.

This trip was mostly family and friends for a week-long celebration of Lee's 80th birthday that included an amazing fireworks display put on in by Jerry, swims in Mike and Karen's pool, coffee at the mercantile, yoga at the school and lots of eating and game-playing. I had such a good time escaping the New York heat I'm trying to devise an annual visit! 

SPLIT ROCK RESORT, Pennsylvania

Rather than drive four hours to State College to visit Shelaine and Elliott, we decided to meet in the middle at Split Rock Resort in the Poconos. It was an off-season weekend - too late to ski and too early to swim - so we took advantage of the low rates and empty mountaintop. 

Split Rock is a conglomeration of private weekend cottages, condominiums and two hotels. We stayed at The Lodge, the older of the two, and had a third-floor lake view room that was plenty roomy for the four of us. The Galleria is a newer and less interesting building that also houses a huge indoor waterpark, sports complex, restaurants and convention facilities. We chose the lodge for the quieter indoor pool which we used on Saturday night and Sunday morning.

We'd hoped for a hike through the woods but settled for a walk up, up, up a deserted road with empty cottages. On the way four pheasants jutted across the road adding a touch of wildlife to our jaunt. At the top we encountered an aged ski lift atop a single short slope. I don't know if people actually ski there but I'm certain the lift hasn't been used for at least a decade. 

There is one huge split rock, created long ago by glaciers, as well as numerous smaller ones. The rock formations folded atop each other and looked as if they were separate rocks all precariously piled. It was chilly out so we had the entire mountaintop to ourselves on both afternoons. The bowling alley, however had a 30-minute wait. We rounded out the weekend with indoor games and breezed back into the city with not a single-car wait at the Lincoln Tunnel.

GLACIER BAY NATIONAL PARK, Alaska

We spent the day cruising Glacier Bay National Park, one of the most spectacular places on earth, 3 million remote acres of uninhabited beauty. You can fly into Gustavus from Juneau and drive the 5 miles in to the visitors center and campground but beond that you'll need a kayak, some woollies and a tent. Most visitors observe the park from the comfort of one of the 139 cruise ships that cruise Glacier Bay every summer. We had the distinction of being the last boat of the 25-day season to see the Johns Hopkins Glacier, about 65 miles from the entrance of Glacier Bay and enroute passed Reid Glacier. Johns Hopkins inlet is closed to all boats until September 1 because it is a harbor seal nesting area in the summer (and one of only two advancing glaciers in the park). A host of seals were still in town sunbathing on floating chips from the glacier (see the little black specks in the photo), though most had already swam south to warmer waters.

250 years ago what is now Glacier Bay National Park was covered with glacial ice. The glacier had advanced so far that the Tlinglit who had been living in the bay were forced to move. The inlets present now were formed by this glacier and today there are only a dozen tidewater glaciers remaining in Glacier Bay. According to one of the Park Rangers who boarded our ship (via motorboat and exhilarating transfer) the enormous and accelerated glacial melting of the last few decades is a natural pattern of glacial activity and not an outcome of global climate change. The contact with saltwater is ultimately what causes the glacier to melt, not the temperature of the air. We spent a couple hours hovering about 1/4 mile from the face of John Hopkins Glacier on a sunny (for Alaska) day.

As we sadly sailed out of this otherworldly place a parade of orca and humpback whales dazzled us and punctuated a wondrous day on this magnificent planet with points of exclamation.

SKAGWAY, Alaska

Rain in Skagway! Though I had to admit rain was a walk in the park compared to the torturous (and often fatal) snow-trek of the tens of thousands of prospectors that made Skagway the gateway to the Klondike Gold Mines heading out over the White Pass or Chilkoot Pass at the end of the last century. The White Pass and Yukon Railroad, an International and Historic Engineering Landmark, that I took to the summit traverses the tracks constructed in 1901 and is a much cushier way to make the ascent and view the stunning mountains, ravines and waterfalls.

I took the 12:45 round trip - the very last train of the season - which had an unexpected surprise. It is a rite of passage for the new train operators to dive into the glacially formed lake (34-degrees warm) at the summit on their last ride of the year. Watching our initiate dive in, swim a few strokes and then wave before running back to the train made my already frigid feet shiver. For most of the three-hour ride I staked my claim on a small patch of platform outside at the end of our car to take photos and experience the thrill of huge drop-offs. Brrrrr ... when I made it back to the ship all my clothes were hung to dry on the retractable clothes line in our stateroom.

Our morning was spent wandering the boardwalky historic streets of Skagway (in the rain) which maintains two-story wooden clapboard buildings just as they were 100 years ago, though the jewelry and curio shops of today were saloons, gambling houses and brothels during the gold rush days. The National Parks Department maintains several small museums: a saloon, an original house with furnishings and an exhibit featuring the Klondike Goldmines and those that came to seek their fortunes here, which add to the historical vibe of Skagway. Another moment of interest, the U.S. military took over the town after Pearl Harbor to stage the building of the ALCAN Highway.

At 9pm, while peacefully processing photographs in our stateroom, we observed another Skagway tradition. We heard shouts and hollers and assumed it was some kind of scheduled event on board. Then Benedicta peered out our porthole and saw a swarm of young people running along the pier after our ship. Oh no, had a few busloads of stragglers missed the boat? No, these were not castoffs of the Veendam, they were about 200 Skagwayans waving and partying and mooning us as they waved-off the last "out-of-towners" and reclaimed their quiet town for another isolatory winter. Ahh, the perks of being one of the 1200 passengers on the last boat out of town.