The Cruise: A bumpy flight, a New Jersey bus, and a ferry to Liberty Island

It's a four-and-a-half hour flight, Delta says, from Salt Lake City to JFK International Airport. Add on early check-in on our departure date (9/11) for heightened security, several luggage and body scans, and time on the tarmacs and it was more like nine hours.

That's air travel in the U.S.A. 18 years after Islamic jihadists killed more than 4,000 Americans by turning three airliners into terrorist bombs that blasted New York City, Washington, D.C., and a Pennsylvania field.

But this is not a complaint. It is the new normal for us, and Barbara and I, along with 25 other Utahns signed up for a 10-day cruise along the northeastern coast of the United States and Canada, accepted all this as part of what likely will be a once-in-a-lifetime vacation.

Lady Liberty

We had saved for years with this in mind. The idea had been to celebrate our 45th anniversary with the cruise, but the failing health of my parents, so evident as 2018 drew to a close, convinced us to hold off. When we buried my mother and father within five months of each other, we decided it was time.

Time to leave mourning for life, to mark our 46 years together. While we could. Because when you get into those so-called "golden years," they can be few, as well as many. Health can be fleeting; there are no guarantees that what one can do today, one can do a year later.

So, our luggage loaded onto a bus that waited for us while we took a ferry destined to Liberty Island; we churned to Ellis Island on the way, a brief stop for photos and exploring where Barbara's forebearers from Norway first landed en route to North Dakota. (Mine had arrived earlier at Jamestown, Virginia, indentured Welsh farm labor in the hold of a 1658 British landowner's ship).

Ellis Island train terminal

We saw the massive immigrant sorting halls, dormitories, and now-abandoned train lines from where those cleared by doctors rode off in cattle cars (we were told) to their American Dream.

Ellis Island

Liberty Island was next. Lady Liberty looked small against the New York City skyline, until we landed and walked beneath her 300-foot shadow. Barbara and I settled for the view from the monument's pedestal, roughly 140 feet up -- still impressive.

I wondered, even as I registered awe at the monument's architectural immensity, if Lady Liberty truly stirs the hearts of newcomers to our nation as it must have done for Barbara's ancestors? Or, have we become too complacent, jaded even, about the freedoms so many Americans shed their blood to protect?

I let the internal debate fade, as Barbara took my hand, and we walked down the steps to our ferry back to the New Jersey shore and our hotel room.

The next morning would be an early one, another bus ride to the Port of Bayonne and our home for the next 10 days: Royal Caribbean's Anthem of the Seas.
(To be continued)

A 9/11 World Trade Center girder