Red hats cruising the inside passage: this group of women, all over the age of 50, takes on the world with passion.

• Author: Pilkington, Steve
• Position: Alaska This Month - Cover Story

Some things are hard to explain without telling the whole story. When it involves imaginative people, it is best to let them speak in their own words. This goes doubly for the Red Hat Society, whose members are visiting Alaska and Canada on a cruise ship this month through the Inside Passage.

The Alaska Summer Sail Away 2004 departed Seattle on Aug. 29 aboard Holland America Line's MS Amsterdam. Over the next two days, it cruised Glacier Bay National Park on the way to Juneau, Sitka and eventually Ketchikan. The onboard plans and the shore excursions scheduled by society members promise fun and adventure, two things dear to member's hearts since the organization's beginning.

According to the Red Hat Society, its origins began with a poem.

"While visiting a friend in Tucson several years ago, Sue Ellen (Cooper) impulsively bought a bright red fedora at a thrift shop, for no other reason than that it was cheap and, she thought, quite dashing," the Red Hat Society's official site tells. "A year or two later she read the poem "Warning" by Jenny Joseph, (which depicts the writer) as an older woman in purple clothing with a red hat. Sue Ellen felt an immediate kinship with Ms. Joseph. She decided that her birthday gift to her dear friend, Linda Murphy, would be a vintage red hat and a copy of the poem. She has always enjoyed whimsical decorating ideas, so she thought the hat would look nice hanging on a hook next to the framed poem. Linda got so much enjoyment out of the hat and the poem that Sue Ellen gave the same gift to another friend, then another, then another," it says.

"One day it occurred to these friends that they were be coming a sort of 'Red Hat Society' and that perhaps they should go out to tea ... in full regalia. They decided they would find purple dresses, which didn't go with their red hats, to complete the poem's image. The tea was a smashing success." As the group's participants grew, other groups, beginning in Florida, began to spring up. Since then, conventions have been held and hotels filled by those involved.

According to Cooper, who...