North to Alaska ...

We are on an Alaskan cruise.

Frommer shares his view of Alaska (slightly edited):

(Nothing compares to) when you see a chunk of ice the size of a building fall from a glacier and send up a huge splash and a wave surging outward, or when you feel a wave lift your sea kayak from the fall of a breaching humpback whale.

Or when you hike to stand on top of a mountain, and from there see more mountaintops, layered off as far as the horizon, in unnamed, seemingly infinite multiplicity.

Or you may come across another mountain range, the sun still hanging high in what should be night, and storm systems arranged across the landscape before you.

Or standing on an Arctic Ocean beach, as you look around at the sea of empty tundra behind you, the sea of green water before you, and your own place on what seems to be the edge of the world.

jbv's Competitive Edge