Come Sail Away With Me

It was vacation time for our family.  Last week we departed on a 5 day cruise out of Galveston on the Royal Caribbean's Mariner of the Sea.  I think there were around 3,100 passengers and 1,800 crewmembers aboard.  We headed down for stops in Costa Maya and Cozumel.  The ship got to a top speed of 20 knots as it traveled through waters as shallow as 30 meters and as deep as 3,600 meters (over 2 miles deep)!

We just couldn't resist doing the "King of the World" pose that Jack and Rose did.

We caught some breathtaking sunsets on the deck of the ship!

For most of the trip, the seas were calm, but one night they fastened all the deck chairs and wouldn't let anyone out on deck. The seas got rough and they distributed barf bags.  It was very loud that night with the waves hitting the ship.  

The water in the Gulf was a beautiful blue color!

We were able to see the beauty of God's creation and yes, I did think of Noah's ark!

Our cabin attendant kept our room clean and fashioned little animals out of towels to keep us entertained.

There was lots to keep us entertained though.  We went to see wonderful shows with singers and dancers and ice skaters.  We watched karaoke and pianists, reggae and jazz musicians.  We took part in trivia contests and logged a number of miles on a walking trail.  We went to a gym and worked out and sat in a sauna and steam room.  We watched the movie F1 on the pool deck one night.  Tricia even took part in a country line dance class on the promenade.

And did we ever eat!  We started off eating at Jamie Oliver's restaurant and then ate at the dining room where we got spoiled with 3 course meals on white tablecloth.  I can't explain how good the service was.  Wow!  On the last night, the head chef came out and said that when they left port, they left with 235,000 pounds of food and when they get back, there will be none left!

Here we are at the first port of call:

Costa Maya:

Our next stop was Cozumel:

We had a snorkeling excursion booked, but it was canceled due to strong winds moving in, so we rented a taxi for 3 hours and had him take us to the nicest beaches to go swim.

The water was beautiful and we enjoyed going out, catching waves and body surfing back to the beach.

It was a real nice time, for sure!

I don't know how this became a thing, but passengers bring ducks on the ship and hide them for you to find.  We found many, many ducks.

We had left on Monday morning and on Saturday morning, we pulled back into port at Galveston as the sun rose in the eastern sky as we overlooked the scene on the balcony of our cabin.

It's nice to get away, but it's also nice to get home!  There's no place like home.  (Except at home, we have to actually cook and clean and there's no one to serve us.)  Thanks Dad and Mom for taking care of the animals while we were cruising!

Back In The Saddle!

Well, hello everyone!  We're back.  Each year we try to take a little vacation.  We like to go tent camping on the beach at Fort Pickens National Park in Pensacola, Florida.  Russ, our oldest, was kind enough to take care of the cows, goats, chickens, and garden while we were gone.  There is so much going on on the homestead right now.  Without his help, we wouldn't have been able to get away.

I'll show a few photos of the trip.  It is a short 6 hour trip from back door to sea shore.  The last few miles have a 25 mph posted speed limit, so it seems like you are crawling.  But we made it and did a good bit of relaxing from Thursday - Monday at 11 am when we checked out.

We got the tent set up.  The last time here we picked out the spot we wanted.  It had plenty of shade and privacy.

Can you tell we are relaxing?  The beach is about a 1/2 mile walk from the campsite.  We set up our umbrella, laid out our towels and soaked up the sun.

In Pensacola, you are far enough away from the Mississippi River that the sands are sugar-white and the water rivals that of the Caribbean. 

The wildlife was abundant!  We saw blue herons and pelicans.

Just beyond our campsite was a tree that had an osprey nest in it.  We watched the osprey dive down on the gulf waters and emerge with fish that she (or he) would take back to the nest.  You can see the creature below in the nest in the crook of the tree.

Dolphins came very close to us in the water as we swam.  This morning numerous sand sharks came pretty near as well!  On Monday night, a storm blew in.  Unfortunately, it rained in our tent - not just drips.  It poured down!  I have a new item on my to do list:  Re-apply waterproofing to the exterior of the tent!

The mornings were breathtakingly beautiful and quiet.  The beach was vacant except for us.  There was a little seaweed on the beach.  I follow the Florida Survival Gardener's blog.  He says that he takes the seaweed home and incorporates it into his soil.  It adds marine minerals and other beneficial nutrients to his soil.  Don't think I didn't think about raking a bunch of this stuff up!

This is mostly how we spent our days.  Peaceful.  We re-charged our batteries.

All good things must come to an end, though.  This morning we bid farewell to Fort Pickens as we sat by the beach and listened to the waves for just one more hour.

In six hours, we pulled into the driveway at 5 pm.  It was great to get away, but it's good to be back home, too!  

We'll be scheduling some more of this in the not-to-distant future!!

Toes in the Water, Toes in the Sand

I decided to make a career change at 55 (Yikes!!) and Friday is my last day at this job before starting another next week.  I gave my two week notice but added a couple of days to it as I still had two personal days that I could use that I wouldn't be compensated for.  We left town Friday night after work and headed to the beach!  Tricia had booked Friday night, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday at Fort Pickens National Park near Pensacola, Florida.  We would be tent-camping and were looking forward to it.  Russ took care of all the animal chores while we were gone.

We arrived in Pensacola after a six hour drive.  It was after midnight.  We pulled up to the campsite and began to pitch our tent in the dark but found out that the poles were broken!  Defeated, we found a hotel for the night and purchased a new tent in the morning.  Home Sweet Home for the next few days!

We cooked on a little Coleman stove for the next few days.  Camp food always tastes great.  I don't know why that is.

The further you can get away from the Mississippi River, the whiter the sand is and the bluer the water is.  There's a reason they call it the "Big Muddy."

We saw bottlenose dolphins jumping out of the water, sandpipers poking in the sand, and two stingrays gracefully flapping their "wings" in the water.  That's them below:

It was SO RELAXING!!  No agenda.  No plans.  Just soaking up the sun and napping.

The days were very comfortable, but the nights got cool - into the 40's.  We made campfires and had s'mores!

Tricia and I were able to spend a lot of uninterrupted time together.  We read the Bible, we sang, we laughed and talked.  Just before 5 PM, the sun put on a performance on the western horizon.  We didn't miss it. 

If we could just catch it and make the days on vacation last longer!

Going....

Gone...

Relaxed and Refreshed!

A nice beach vacation...

To The Mountains - Part 4 (The Final Day)

While we were gone, we still had lots of animals to take care of: A dog (Belle), A cat (Ginger), Five Cows (Rosie, Clarabelle, Luna, Aussie, and Clarabull),  Four Goats (Annie, Buckwheat, Agnes, Matilda), and Seventy-something Chickens (We don't name all of them!  We call them all Sally Henny Penny).  Our neighbor's grandson agreed to feed and water them each day, and he did a good job.

The night before we were to leave to head back home, we planned to hike down from our mountain cabin to the creek that you could see from the deck out back on the following morning.  We rented the cabin from Fireside Retreats in Mountain View, Arkansas, and I have to put in a very favorable review.  What a fantastic get-away!  Our cabin was an A-frame that was very modern and had all the amenities that you are looking for on a vacation.

The deck out back had an incredible view.  We spent a lot of time out here just soaking in the sights.  It was so VERY quiet.  The cabin is secluded and away from any traffic.  You could really take in all the wonders of God's creation out here.

The A-frame sleeps 6 people and has a loft up top.  That's where the boys stayed.  Down the hall to the front door was the bathroom on the right and master bedroom on the left, with access to each through barn doors.

The bathroom had interesting and cool fixtures.

The kitchen was modern and stocked with anything and everything you'd need.  We cooked every single day.

So the final night of our stay, we were awakened by gentle, rolling thunder and then rainfall.  We could hear the rain hitting the roof right over our heads.  It was relaxing, soothing, and restful.  That's exactly what you want in a vacation, right?  We woke up in the morning, had coffee and a devotion and looked out on the deck.  It was still raining.  The hike down to the creek was off.

But you know what?  That's okay.  Checkout time was 11 AM, and we had three hours remaining in the mountains.  We all climbed up into the loft and laid in bed, talking about the memories we made while watching the rain continue to fall.  So nice.  A perfect vacation only 8 hours away.  We thoroughly enjoyed our time in Arkansas - The Natural State.

Leviticus 26:4

“Then I will give you rain in due season, and the land shall yield her increase, and the trees of the field shall yield their fruit.”

Against the Wind

While vacationing last week, Tricia and I had the opportunity to kayak.  I've never really kayaked (is that a verb?) before.  It's a lot easier than canoeing, I thought.  It was so peaceful and relaxing.  With both of us paddling, it wasn't really work.  It was serene.  We just glided over the water, taking in the beautiful scenery.  One time, however, going over some rapids, we had to get out and carry it.

We quickly learned that you could paddle upstream but that you were going WITH the wind.  Conversely, you could paddle downstream, but you would be going AGAINST the wind.  It's hard going against the wind!  My wife and I have gotten to where we think exactly alike (on most things).  We remarked about going against the wind and we both immediately began singing Bob Seger's song, "Against the Wind."  We both laughed.  We're kind of strange like that.

But it got me thinking about that song.  What a great song.  I cut & pasted the lyrics below.  To me it is a song about changes - about the passage of time.  About relationships that once seemed so strong, but now are distant.  I love the line, "Wish I didn't know now what I didn't know then."  When you are young, you think things are hard, but often as you get older, things get harder.  It's a song about being young once and then growing old, searching, getting lost, being free and then finding yourself tied down by "deadlines and commitments." 

I think the message in the song is that you never give up.  It may not be easy, but you keep striving.  You keep running against the wind.  Here are the lyrics:

Seems like yesterday
But it was long ago
Janey was lovely she was the queen of my nights
There in darkness with the radio playin low
And the secrets that we shared, mountains that we moved
Caught like a wildfire out of control
Til there was nothin left to burn and nothin left to prove

And I remember what she said to me
How she swore that it never would end
I remember how she held me oh so tight
Wish I didn't know now what I didn't know then

Against the wind
We were runnin against the wind
We were young and strong we were runnin against the wind

And the years rolled slowly past
And I found myself alone
Surrounded by strangers I thought were my friends
Found myself further and further from my home and I
Guess I lost my way
There were oh so many roads
I was livin to run and runnin to live
Never worried about payin or even how much I owe 

Movin' eight miles a minute and for months at a time
Breakin all of the rules that would bend
I began to find myself searchin
Searchin for shelter again and again 

Against the wind
Little somethin against the wind
I found myself seekin shelter against the wind

Well those drifters days are past me now
I've got so much more to think about
Deadlines and commitments
What to leave in, what to leave out 

Against the wind
I'm still runnin against the wind
I'm older now but still runnin against the wind

Well I'm older now but still runnin against the wind

If you wish to listen to the song, you can click the arrow below:

We're older now, but still running against the wind...

And We're Back...

When I was a senior in high school, there was a popular singing group called the Go-Go's that sang a song called "Vacation."  It was the classic summer song that always put me in a good mood and made me think about vacations.  One of the bad things about starting a new job is that I started back at zero in terms of accrued vacation.  Now that I've been there for over a year, I was able to take vacation!  Yeehaw!!  It is quite hard to find someone to watch over the farm to be able to get away, but Tricia arranged a deal with a friend that has a farm where she watched over ours and we'll watch over hers at some point.

We generally like to camp and hike and take in all the sights of semi-secluded areas.  A good friend of Tricia's brothers had graciously offered for us to visit their property that is on the Nueces River in a small town west of San Antonio near Uvalde, Tx.  So we made the trip over there.  In the old days, the whole family would get to go, but now, Laura Lee is working and Russ is working, so Tricia, Benjamin and I made the trip and joined with Tricia's brothers and their families. 

We were 15 miles from the headwaters of the Nueces River.  It is spring-fed and the river is lined with stone, making the water crystal clear.  We approached and looked over a cliff down into the pristine water.

You could see all the way to the bottom, but we knew it was deep.

Benjamin jumped off the cliff and plummeted (I estimate) 25 feet down.  His cousin Juliet had already jumped into the cool, refreshing water.

SPLASH!!

Over the next several days, we didn't come into contact with many other people.  We visited, cooked, laughed, swam, relaxed and recharged.  Here is Tricia walking down the stone lined river. 

I kicked up my feet and took in the sights.

There were some rapids where the water made a nice sound against the rocks.  As we camped in our tent, we could hear the soothing sounds.

We swam down river a couple hundred yards and discovered a really deep part of the river, perhaps 30 feet deep, and there just so happened to be a rope swing.  We would swing on it again and again, plunging in the cold water to cool off.

All the cousins (and even us adults) had fun on the rope swing.

The river house over-looked the river.  Rainfall and high waters last year actually shifted the river closer to the house.  It was nice and shady where we set up our tents.  One night we sat around after dark and watched fireflies.  The cousins ran around catching them.  It was peaceful.

Here is Tricia in the tent.  Fortunately, we had some cots as the ground was rocky.  At night, it cooled off and it was very comfortable to sleep.  There were no mosquitoes.

We even did some kayaking on the river.

At night the area is frequented by axis deer.  They are native to India and Nepal, but in 1932 were brought to be a game animal.  Some escaped and now there are thousands roaming around.  They have a big rack and make a loud noise.  One morning Tricia was having quiet time early in the morning beside the river and this big fella came to get a drink of water.  He "barked" a high pitch bark at Tricia.

Soon it was time to go.  As we exited the campsite, we looked at a big cross someone had erected on a hill (mountain).  Pretty cool!

I always like to take pictures of clever signs.  The welcome sign to Hondo, Texas caught my attention.

In case you can't read it, it says, "Welcome.  This is God's Country.  Please don't drive through it like hell.  Hondo, Texas"  We obeyed. 

We made it back home and will be back posting as we normally do.