BIRTHDAY GIRL / HONOLULU TOMORROW

Cake provided by dining room staff.

Last sea day for this segment today.  Should be in Honolulu when we wake up tomorrow.  Only there until dinner time then depart for Hilo for short overnight.  Again a few hours there before leaving again in the evening.  Today is clear and sunny and warm.  Feeling like Hawaii.  Saw several sea birds flying around the boat this morning.

Last night was Arlyene's 72nd birthday.  The hardest part about that was convincing anyone that she was actually that old.  She had a good time and with a little luck I will manage to post a few pictures below trying not to use up my allotted internet.  Tomorrow we will be able to use our phones for internet access and even for phone traffic for a couple of days.

Sunset last evening.

Door to our stateroom decorated by Kimberly

Port 2, Honolulu (San Diego was #1 and will be #11)

   

SEA DAY FOUR - ARLYENE'S BIRTHDAY - ONLY SIX INCHES TO GO!

The seas continue to be moderate and it even looks like we might get some sun today.  This is also Arlyene's 29th birthday so we have some celebrating to do.  Our internet has been on and off way out here.  Imagine that! 

We are getting close to Hawaii.  Only six inches to go!

SEA DAY THREE

As you can see from the screen shot above the west coast of the US is almost gone and Hawaii has started to appear in the lower left as we continue to work our way west.  The seas have calmed considerably and it has been quite pleasant aboard today although overcast.  I can see breaks in the clouds up ahead and the outside temps hover in the upper 60's and low 70's at times.  Our outside deck seems to be one of the best places for relaxing and reading.

The crowd aboard this cruise is a pretty geriatric bunch.  Our guess is that the average age is in the high 70's.  Way more walkers and canes and even scooters than I expected.  Once we leave Hilo many of these folks will not be able to go ashore because they will simply not be able to get in or out of the shuttle boats.  After Hawaii there are no more docks and the only way ashore is by boat.

So all continues to go well and all in  our party of six are enjoying each other's company..

Blue Sky ahead.  Well, a little anyway.

SEA DAY TWO

This is our second full day at sea as we inch our way towards Hawaii at an average of 17 knots.  The seas have been a bit rough with swells from 5 to 15 feet causing the ship to occasionally shudder as it pounds into the waves. Captain says we had gale force winds in excess of 60 knots last night.  That explains why we thought we might get tossed out of bed once or twice last night. 

Lots of folks stayed hunkered down yesterday as they tried to get their sea legs.  That included me but feeling somewhat better this morning. Having a nice day today and special dress up dinner tonight.  All is well.  Not much to show that you will be able to appreciated.  Those 15 foot swells don't look all that impressive from deck 7 but much more so on deck 2.  Maybe I can get a photo of that tomorrow.  As you can see below, lots of nothing out there today but happily all is well here.

FIRST AT SEA POST

 I broke down and paid the (Hefty) price for internet while at sea so we can keep up with e-mail and hopefully make a few blog posts.  This is my first attempt at the latter.  Have had some issues with the shipboard wifi so we will see how this goes photo-wise.

We left San Diego promptly at  5:15 yesterday afternoon.   The captain  warned us that it was going to be a bit bumpy the first couple of days and so far he has been correct.  It has been a while since we had our “sea legs”.  The rolling and bumping is wonderful at night except once Arlyene woke up wondering if she was drunk.

Other then that there is not much to report.  We did a little exploring of the ship yesterday and will do more today.  Lots of activities to choose from including doing almost nothing which is pretty high on my agenda.  I did not get my nap yesterday.  Will need to fix that today.

If these photos post OK you will see one farewell photo of  San Diego and the ship's position this morning as we head west.  Having some unusual issues with formatting text etc that I may just have to live with. 

After waiting 18 months for this trip it is great to finally be on our way.  Having Arlyene’s brother Mike and Sister Sandy and spouses Kimberly and Ken with us is making it all the more special and fun.

View of the Eurodam from our hotel room Saturday morning.

Leaving San Diego

TROPICAL VOYAGE

"Don't talk about the things you are going to do, Do the things you are going to talk about"

I read this recently and I really liked it so it will be my theme for a few weeks.  

As I type this Arlyene and I are in the final preparations for a 28 day cruise that will take us from San Diego to Hawaii for about three days and then on south into French Polynesia.  We will cross the equator and the international date line twice and we will visit such places as Fanning Island, Bora Bora, Raiatea, Moorea, Papeete, Fakarava and Nuku Hiva before returning to San Diego in early April.  Arlyene's brother and one of her sisters and their spouses are going with us - so a party of six.

This is the cruise we always wanted to make in Denita - but life just got in the way.  (For those of you who knew Denita she is now in southern Chile with her new owners).  We are making this cruise to celebrate our 50th wedding anniversary.  That is not until September but this cruise only runs once a year so we are celebrating early.

I don't know what kind of internet connection we will have on the ship or how practical posting pictures will be so we may not have much to post in the way of photos until we get back.  We will at least be able to post some once we are in Hawaii.  I should be able to post text to the blog from time to time at the very least.

We are thankful to Jim, an old high school buddy, who is house and cat sitting for us.  That is a big load off our minds.

There are going to be some long days at sea between ports.  Hope we have loaded up our Kindles sufficiently.  Packing for a month has been a new experience.

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DEWS' DESERT DIGS

(This is a post I started back in December but never finished.  Posting it late because I am too lazy to retype it as an update.  It is now March and most of this is still true.)

It has been a busy three months since getting back to Las Vegas.  Not only busy but with some major changes for us.  In September we found a house we really liked even though we thought we were not seriously looking yet.  One thing led to another, we made an offer, it was accepted and we got the keys on November 1st.  Since then we have been making the house our own and trying to find where we put things while moving in.  As I mentioned in our previous post we also adopted a kitty and named her Peanut because she was so small.  That was a mistake as we now have a seven nine pound Peanut.  (I guess since our boat was a 43 foot Oyster a nine pound peanut is not so unusual for us).

I have been so busy with move in related projects that I just have not gotten around to posting  much of anything about all this activity so hopefully we can correct this now.  As I write this Peanut is busy climbing our first actual (artificial) Christmas tree in about 20 years.  She has turned it into a Charlie Brown tree.  None of our tricks to keep her out, or any amount of yelling or threats, has done any good.  At least we now have room for the tree to fall over without breaking anything.

Two of the attractions to this house that made it an especially good purchase for us was that it has an RV pad next to the house with all the necessary hookups.  The house was built for that back in 2007.  That made the move easier as we just parked the coach next to the house and moved stuff off of it at a comfortable pace.  There is still stuff on the coach but mostly stuff that should stay there.  The other really nice thing was that the sellers offered to sell all the furniture with the house.  Have NO furniture ourselves this option saved us a bundle of money and allowed us to spend a little more on the house itself then we might have otherwise.  For the most part the furniture is in good shape and fits the house well.  Over time we will replace some of it piece by piece when necessary but for now it is working out just fine.

Another feature of the house the was a high priority for us is that it has not only one good guest bedroom but TWO.  So, we can well accommodate the guests we hope will come and visit us.  We are only about 10 minutes from where we were at the Las Vegas Motorcoach Resort  so we are still close to the airport and very easy to find.