Love-One, CoCo and I returned from our trip to Alaska. CoCo will be 40 years old in a couple of weeks. Oh, so difficult to believe, my baby has one toe in middle age. Didn’t I just dive into that pool?

CoCo “planned” the trip. By that, I mean she talked about how much she wanted to go to Alaska all her life. That’s almost all she talked about for the past six months. It really didn’t take that much planning because Ann Marie from Hilton Cruises did most of the work, just letting us know what decisions we needed to make and when. Plus, Loved-One researched the shore excursions. (Okay, I have a new consultant job, so I had to delegate.)

I could go on and on telling you about the black bear we saw catching salmon or the whales bubble net-feeding and breaching or the landscapes, or the marvelous service we had on the Celebrity Millennium or the wonderful people we met (Shout out here to Ken and Nicky and Diane and Dan.) All those things were, indeed, memorable, but [tweetthis]the thing I want to hold on to the most is our sense of peace and tranquility.[/tweetthis]

We were nearly cut off from the world: no newspapers, no Fox News, No CNN, no NPR, no internet. We went through the day occasionally wondering what was going on “out there,” but not too much. The more we remained disconnected, the less it mattered.

You can here it in this video I made while we viewed Hubbard Glacier. (It’s almost 5 minutes long. Still, I bet you’ll feel relaxed by the time you finish listening.)

I came home vowing not to tune in as much as I did before I went. Still, once I had access to WiFi, I did take a quick peek at the news. Success is my name if I can limit news to a brief rundown in the morning and again at night. In the meantime, I’m burying my nose in some good novels. Right now, it’s The Aviators Wife by Melanie Benjamin. [tweetthis]Funny how old things are new again and in the words of the cook in The Muppets Take Manhattan “Peoples is peoples.”[/tweetthis]