R and J in the USA

When we planned our itinerary, we had hoped it would work out to be someplace with a touch of romance on September 25th, our anniversary. We have a tradition to take a “honeymooniversary” every year and try and check another place off of our bucket list. This is the first time where our anniversary would be amidst an entire year of bucket list traveling. Still, we were hoping to be able to spend that particular week in more of a vacation vibe rather than the go-go-go, get to know as much of the USA as possible pace of the rest of the trip. When all the chips settled into place, it worked out that we’d be on an Alaskan cruise for our anniversary. That is a honeymooniversary trip right out of central casting, so we were psyched for the vacation (from, admittedly, the most vacation adjacent lifestyle possible). And we were psyched for it to be in someplace romantic where we both had always wanted to go and had never been before. Enter Alaska.

The cruise landed us at Icy Straight Point on the day of our anniversary. As far as we understood, about two miles from shore there was a native village that is not part of the cruise. They’ve built a teeny little outpost by the cruise dock that is clearly built just for tourists, with a short gondola, a little forest walk, a handful of restaurants, and, of course, gift shops.

We had a lovely afternoon walking through the little outpost. We have two other anniversary traditions. One, that, honestly, is a mixture between fun nostalgia and feeling kind of like work, but we know our future selves will benefit from it, so we do it anyways. We write down all we can remember of the prior year so that, when we are 90, we can read through and remember little details along the way that we may have forgotten. Heck, forget 90. It’s already fun to read the entries from years 1 and 2. Much of that we still remember, but there are little things or details we have already forgotten. It takes discipline to actually sit down and do it, but, like doing a tough workout, we are glad we did it.

Our other tradition is to reread our vows to each other, preferably in or next to some lovely body of water. It’s nice to circle back and see how we are doing in terms of living up to what we promised. So far, so good.

This year, we read our vows to each other on the shores of Icy Straight Point, Alaska. The setting was pretty dang romantic. There were a bunch of tourists milling about, but, hey, the more the merrier.

The tradition is a dear one to us and typically turns into a “I’m not crying, you’re crying” moment.

We went down to the pebble-covered shore and pulled out the vows to get started. It was the teeniest bit more difficult to feel the purity of it this time with the extra element of people milling about in the near distance as opposed to the total privacy we are used to, but it was still special…until…

Until it became just about the most magical and special feeling of any that we’ve ever done before (with the likely exception of the first time in front of our friends and family).

While Julie was blubbering and pouring her heart out, as close to shore as was physically possible, maybe 30 feet away, DIRECTLY in front of us, a humpback whale rose up out of the water and then gently dove back in!

Sounds of awe and excitement burst up from the tourists in the vicinity a hundred yards in either direction. It lasted maybe all of 3 seconds. In the first milli-second Julie stumbled to try to grab her phone to visually capture the memory, and then in the second millisecond promptly abandoned that fumbling with the thought, “This is probably one of the coolest things you have ever experienced, don’t miss it! Just watch it!”

And that’s what we did. It was so flipping cool.

So, to all of those who remembered our anniversary and reached out to celebrate, a sincere and heartfelt “Thank you!” Every single Happy Anniversary wish gave us the warm fuzzies and added to our celebration. That said, I’m afraid you’ve all been outdone. Mother Nature did it best. Yes, we’ve decided to take it personally. That was the best Happy Anniversary we’ve ever received.