Jewelry - The Story Behind the Necklace

Last July my husband and I celebrated our 25th Wedding Anniversary.  We got married young and didn't have any money for a honeymoon. We were more interested in saving our money and paying off our mobile home, so that we could buy a house. So 25 years later we finally took our honeymoon... a cruise to Alaska. We took a week long cruise and did three days on land in Denali National Park. We also took our 17 year old daughter, so not quite like a honeymoon.

Our second port-of-call, Juneau, landed on the day of our anniversary. We had a forest hike excursion planned for the day. The weather was not being very friendly that day, rainy and chilly. Fortunately, by the time we got off our tour bus at the Mendenhall Glacier the rain had let up. Our tour of about 30 people  split into two groups, the first group took off with their tour guide. Our group, the ones that had to make one last trip to the bathroom, brought up the rear. The first group was probably 5-10 minutes ahead of us. Our group started down the hiking path and a short distance later we came to a foot bridge. The foot bridge crossed a rolling stream with some nice sized salmon swimming in it. Of course with salmon present everyone was looking for bears, someone asked our guide how often he saw a bear here, and he said not very often. Wouldn't you know just then we hear a rustling in the branches along the stream, and lo and behold ambling out of the underbrush in a female black bear, thankfully no cubs in tow. We watched her, mesmerized as she crossed the stream and went under the foot bridge we were standing on. We watched her come out on the other side, and not more than 20 feet from where we were standing, she decided to do a little fishing.

That was one of the best hikes of my life. We did not see any more bear that day, but the rain forest  area was beautiful, and looking down on the Mendenhall Glacier was awesome.

The next day we were in Skagway, and after we had walked past all the cruise ship owned jewelry stores, I happened upon a local craftman's jewelry shop. In the window was this necklace...

It is the perfect reminder of a wonderful day and a wonderful life.