Yellowstone

Ah, the joys of visiting Yellowstone National Park. I was glad they handed us this flyer.


It has been a while since I have been to Yellowstone. We are pretty lucky to only live about 100 miles away. We went twice in June, once with Morgan and Sophie and once with our friends Roger and Marin. It was sure a lot of fun. We stayed in Henry's Lake both times so we drove up the night before and spent just the day. The first time we spent most of our time down around Old Faithful. It was fun to go see all of those things again. I think that is really the only place that I have ever been. The next week we hiked to Mystic Falls and then we drove over to the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone.

Mystic Falls was a lot of fun. It is about a 2.5 mile round trip hike. It wasn't hard at all. McKinley walked all of the way there and part of the way back before her carburetor pooped out. Erica carried her the rest of the way out. We were sure proud of her for doing so good. It was funny to watch her stop at everything on the way up. She had to look at flowers and pick up sticks and draw a line down the trail. She said that they were railroad tracks. Gavin rode in his backpack and did great. He walked a little ways as we got right by the falls. It was fun though. This is Mystic Falls. Highly recommended!


The falls on the Yellowstone River were pretty awesome. The lower one is 300 feet or something and the upper one is maybe 100 feet. It was quite the sight. I won't post any pictures of Old Faithful or the geysers but I have to post one of the falls. I had never even heard of it until a guy at work told me about it. It is right off the road you don't have to hike or anything. Pretty awesome. This is the upper falls and then the lower falls.


We sure had fun. I'm not sure when we'll make it back. I have some ideas of things that I want to see.

1. Norris Geyser Basin
2. the Chocolate Pots
3. Fairy Falls

If anybody wants to go see any of these things, get your stuff together and lets go!

Cruise continued....

So we left off with Tuesday in Grand Cayman.

Wednesday we were supposed to stop at Roatan Island off the coast of Honduras, but due to protests about local labor laws, they decided not to stop. Bummer! We spent the day on the ship sailing really slow to our next port. We played volleyball with our buddies from dinner and anyone else who would walk by and want to play. The court was miniature so it was kind of tough and playing in a mesh cage was interesting. It was fun though.


We tried to make the most of it. We did get $20 back for port fees. That was not quite enough for me to make up for not stopping. We were really looking forward to stopping there. We had scheduled to go out in some glass bottomed kayaks and then to a nature sanctuary with birds and monkeys. The refund just wasn't enough.

Thursday we stopped in Belize. It was a pretty good day. We rode the crazy bus through Belize City and saw three of the six stop lights in the country. We went to some Mayan ruins. The road was a one lane paved road. When another car came, both vehicles just drive two wheels off the side of the road and keep driving. They don't really slow down to do this. It wasn't too bad until we came around a corner to see a semi truck pulling a dozer on a trailer that stuck out three feet each side. The ruins were pretty interesting. It is not a very big place. There are some other ruins that were a lot bigger, but there were no empty spots. They told us at the ruins that every 50 years they would build over the top of the buildings and start over. Kind of like an onion. The 50 years was like the life cycle of the buildings and the people just built over it. Weird. We climbed up to the top of the biggest building and had a look around. Pretty awesome. It was fun to be in the jungle. Here are a few pictures.



Now for the exciting part. When we walked down the backside of the big building, there was a kid with an alligator, which he asked if I wanted to hold and take a picture and give him a tip. I was all over that like stink on a skunk, so here I am holding a ferocious alligator, with a string tied around his mouth to keep him from eating me alive.


We bought most of the stuff we brought back from Belize. Erica wanted to buy one of everything. There was a lot of cool stuff. We brought back a carved parrot, a sailboat, a stone Mayan calendar, and some sea shells. If you come over we'll show you.

Friday we spent at sea because we didn't get to stop in Cozumel Mexico. Stupid swine flu. Bunch of hogwash if you ask me. We played volleyball and took a nap. The ocean was pretty rough that night as we were eating dinner. It was kind of funny. We were walking down the hall to our room and there was another couple walking towards us and they were weaving back and forth across the hall together. I couldn't help but giggle watching them as the ship rocked back and forth.

Saturday we stopped in Key West. This was probably Erica's favorite port. The people were not as crazy about trying to sell you stuff. It is actually part of Florida so it is an American port. We rented some cruiser bikes and rode around for the morning. It was a lot of fun. We rode to the beach and then to a museum.


At noon we went out on a catamaran to go snorkeling. It was really pretty out where we went. The coral formations were huge. The water was 20 or 30 feet deep with these huge formations where the water was only 6-8 feet deep over them. It was fun to swim over and see what was down in the next valley. There were some really cool fish. We tried to take pictures with our underwater camera but they didn't turn out really great because the water was deeper and didn't reflect back enough light. Here are a few that turned out alright. This was a really cool trip.


I like this picture of Erica. So that was our snorkeling trip in Key West. It was pretty rad, for lack of a better word.

Sunday morning we sailed back to Miami and got off the boat. We got to the airport at 9:30 am and our flight didn't leave until 3 pm. Erica was feeling ambitious so she called her mom, who was two hours behind and still asleep, to look up the closest church so that we could go to church. The closest ones were all Spanish speaking. Out of the eight wards, five were Spanish speaking. We found one about 20 miles away. A cab would have been almost $80 round trip but we could rent a car and drive for $40 or so. Anyways we had a good adventure getting there. We got to church a little late and had to leave before the end of Sunday School to get back and catch our flight. But it was good to go to some church since we had missed the week before too.

We were wiped out from the trip home and it took us a week to recover. But, the memories are sure great. The kids were pretty happy to see us. Gavin was really tired and about asleep, but on the drive home he started to become more animated. McKinley was just really excited.

I think that about wraps up the cruise. I have a few other pictures that I may post from the ship someday when I have some time. That's all for now.

Intermission

This post is an intermission to the cruise. I've been working on the cabin out by the river that Devin and Garrett made. We've been trying to get a fence up around it to keep the cows out. I finally got a start of a fence up all of the way around, so hopefully that will keep the cows out until we can get back to finish up the fence. I'll have to post some pictures when we get finished.

McKinley, Gavin and I stopped at my parents house on the way home and was in the house getting a few things that we had left, and when I came outside, McKinley had turned the hose on and was washing the sidewalk. The water runs out to the driveway along the road and makes a big puddle. Gavin was laying on his stomach in the puddle/mud trying to get a drink. He ended up with the funniest mud goatee I have ever seen. They the two of them took turns spraying the hose and laughing. Luckily I had my camera to take pictures of Gavin. What a funny little boy! Thanks McKinley for always getting into something and creating this moment for us!

Cruise.....Finally!

I was sitting here trying to decide what to do. I had thought about starting Gavin's truck book, and then I thought that I should update our blog. We went to Yellowstone over the weekend with Morgan and Sophie, then I realized that I had better write a little bit about our cruise and put up some pictures. So, here we go.

We flew into Miami on Saturday night and got there around midnight. We spent the night in a hotel. A cheap one at that. It was kind of like an old college dorm. I guess you get what you pay for. Lesson learned. We crashed around 2am but it only felt like midnight or so because of the time difference, only it felt a little later than midnight because flying for 6 hours on a plane sucks.

Sunday morning we found out that there was no complimentary breakfast. Stupid cheap hotel. After a delicious breakfast of granola bars and some jerky that we brought with us we made our way to the Port of Miami where the cruises leave from. Our hotel had a shuttle that ran from the hotel to the port. That I think was the reason that we stayed there, other than the fact that Erica was at the computer and she picked it because it was the cheapest. The port wasn't too bad. We had to wait in line for a while, but it went pretty quick. We boarded just after noon I think and went on board and found some food and sat up on the deck and watched things happen.

The Carnival Triumph sailed out at 4:00 and we left at 4:30 right after they got turned around and headed out to sea. The beaches outside the port were pretty cool looking. It would be pretty awesome to live right there.

See what I mean. So we sailed off into the sunset. That night we met our dinner mates. You are assigned a table with other couples. We had a smaller table that sat eight. They do some matching and put you with people who are similar ages. Two of the couple have been married for two years and the others just got married the week before and this was their honeymoon, although I think that they have been together for a while. We made good friends with all of them and enjoyed our meals together so much that we started hanging out with them most of the time we were on the ship. Here is a picture of the gang.

Monday we spent at sea. They are supposed to be "Fun Day at Sea", but to me they were just day at sea. I don't really remember too much of what we did, we sat outside on the top deck and got sunburned. Another lesson learned, that makes #2. We had gone tanning and it helped but we should have put sunscreen on sooner. I'm sure that we took a nap, we made a habit of an afternoon nap for the rest of the trip. It was marvelous.

Tuesday we made it to Grand Cayman Island. We rode a tender ship to shore and sat in the crappy port area because nothing was open yet. We waited for a while before our excursion left. We went to the Stingray Sandbar and then to a small coral garden and then to see some starfish. It was a lot of fun to see the stingrays. Fisherman had started stopping there and cleaning their fish so the stingrays started coming to eat the leftovers and now they are accustomed to people and just want a little snack. They tell you before you get off of the boat that once you are in the water, the stingrays will brush up against you. They said that you can scream as loud and high as you want but not to jump, stomp, or kick at the stingrays. It was pretty awesome to be in the water, which was about chest deep, and have some 4 -5 ft diameter stingrays brushing up against your legs! The tour guides took pictures with a nice waterproof digital camera but they charged quite a bit for them, so we took a few with a waterproof disposable camera. The guides catch a stingray and then let each couple hold it and give it kisses. It was pretty exciting.

The snorkeling wasn't too exciting for Erica but I just enjoyed being in the water. I have never been to the ocean. It really is just like salty water! Who knew?! The underwater cameras are real great at taking pictures unless you are pretty close. Lesson #3. We did get a cool picture of the star fish, which were huge. I've only ever seen small ones, about the size of your palm, but these ones were as big as a dinner plate.

We had fun on Cayman but we walked around some of the shops looking for souveniers, but everything they had was pretty lame. Erica said it was like they had no culture, it was just a tourist place. They have a pretty nice beach called 7 Mile Beach, which we should have gone too instead of walking around the shops. Lesson #4.

Well, Gavin has decided to wake up from his nap, so that concludes this blogging session. I got up through Tuesday. You'll have to tune in next time.

To be continued.....