Puerto Rico (We’re Going on a Cruise)

 It had been over two and a half years since Mom and I had been on a cruise, so we felt that we needed to go on one.  Also John and Becky wanted to go on a cruise, so we decided to go.  Shortly after the last time we went on a cruise that started in Puerto Rico (2005) we heard about the bioluminescent bay, where tiny plankton like creatures glow in the dark when the water moves.  There are only 5 locations in the world that have the type of plankton that glow all year long and three of them are in Puerto Rico with the best one only 30 miles from San Juan.  We decided in 2005 that “someday”, we should do another cruise from Puerto Rico so we can see it.  Well, “someday” finally arrived.

In order to have plenty of time to see the bioluminescent bay and have time to see other cool things in San Juan, we left on a flight out of San Francisco on Thursday night for a cruise that left on Sunday evening.  Our first flight arrived in Ft. Lauderdale early Friday morning.  Since we did not sleep well on the plane, some of us took a nap and some took advantage of the free WiFi to write to Joseph.  

John is good at yawning.

  We arrived in San Juan in the early afternoon on Friday, rented a car, drove to the hotel, grabbed a bite to eat and then went to the beach about three blocks from the hotel.  The water was about 84 degrees and felt wonderful. 

We played for quite a while.  John and I snorkeled a bit but saw nothing but sand and a couple of fish.  After the beach, we went back to the hotel to our rooms, took showers and got the good night of sleep that we did not get on the plane the night before.

The next day, Saturday was decreed to be an A+ day.

It started with breakfast in the hotel and a return trip to the beach.  After that we returned to the hotel to shower and get ready for the rest of the day.  We drove into Old San Juan and drove past the forts and other interesting sights.  We then parked and went to Ben and Jerry’s for lunch.  

 The food was really good and the ice cream was what you would expect from Ben and Jerry’s – excellent.

After lunch, on our way back to the car, we passed an old really cool Catholic church.  We went in and looked around.

 While we were in the church it started to rain, so we waited out the storm in the church.

 We passed one of the old city walls on our way back to the parking lot.

We had reservations for Saturday evening at Laguna Grande for the bioluminescent bay tour, but we had time to stop and visit the El Yunque rain forest and see a few things.  Most of the rain forest was closed to visitors after the damage from hurricane Irene a couple of weeks earlier.  One of the main roads just opened up the day we went.  This is what it looked like where we parked. 

 It seems that it rained more in the rain forest than it did in the city so the waterfall we stopped at was flowing very vigorously. 

 We drove a little way further up the road to the tower, which was closed.  Even though the tower was closed, the view overlooking the valley below to the ocean was still pretty nice.

As we left to drive to the bioluminescent bay we got stuck behind large trucks that had been working on clearing the roads and it took FOREVER to get out of the rain forest and back to the main road.  We ended up getting to the Kayaking place very late and barely made it in time to go with the group to the kayaks and paddle to Laguna Grande.  See Becky and John’s blog post with photos from the kayaking company.  Conditions are just right in Laguna Grande for the little organisms that absorb light during the day and then release it at night when the water is disturbed around them.  Laguna Grande has over a million of these little guys per gallon of water.  It was really amazing to see it in person, but it was not something you can capture with a camera as the light level is pretty low and you can only see it after your eyes are adjusted to the dark.  Then it is really cool.  There were a lot of mosquitoes that we had to fight, but I am glad we went.  

Disneyland

It has been many years since I was last at Disneyland. I think it was when Katie was a baby. At that time, the parking lot was right in front of Disneyland. That parking lot is now the California Adventure Park. Terri and her kids rode with Mom and me in our car to Disneyland and met up with Russ, who drove from Utah.

We started at Disneyland Main Street.

We rode lots of rides without a long wait because Terri was in a wheelchair. It was pretty nice to have short lines for each ride. We had a nice rest riding the Monorail.

At California Adventure Park, we were disappointed that we did not get short wheelchair lines. Since it was built recently, it was designed with wheelchairs in mind. That means that you can wait in the full line without getting out of a wheelchair. As a result we had a lot more “waiting in line” time.

While we were waiting in line for the Toy Story ride, Mom was texting Julie.

Then we got our 3-D glasses.

Here Stori is working on a turkey leg. I believe they turkey may have weighed more than Stori.

After going on California Screamin’, we went on a ride that was the scariest one there. It was Goofy’s Sky School. It had sharp turns that were not banked and I did not feel very safe. Signs like this one do not give one a feeling of comfort.

Mom and Stori rode on the Parachute ride.

We had to wait in line for the Grizzly River Run for quite a while.

The ride broke at the end of our ride, so we had to sit in our raft for about 20 minutes or more to get off. While we were sitting in the raft, they shut down the ride and sent everyone in line away with some having waited over an hour. They gave us some Fast Passes for any ride we want as compensation for our wait.

We then went on Tower of Terror. I took a photo of the photo that comes up on the monitor. Most of us look like you expect to look when you suddenly drop several stories…except Mom. She looks calm like nothing happened. She must have guts of iron.

Elder Crapo – The New Zone Leader

Joseph’s new mission president, President Mecham, posted photos of the missionaries as they held zone conferences and zone leader training.

A couple of weeks ago, President Mecham was in Pohnpei for the Pohnpei zone conference. The following three photos included Elder Crapo, who was a district leader at the time.

This last week, Joseph was transferred and assigned to be zone leader of the Guam zone. They then had zone leader training and meetings. This is the zone leaders in the mission with their companions.

This is Elder Crapo and his companion, Elder Bano, who is from the Marshall Islands.

The Marshall Islands used to be part of the Micronesia Guam Mission, but the mission split a couple of years ago and they now have a separate mission. Jon Jensen was in the Micronesia Guam Missioin and spent most of his mission in the Marshall Islands.

Both Elder Crapo and Elder Bano are wearing purple striped ties.

San Jose Tech Museum

John and Becky invited me to go to the Tech Museum with them today. This is John in the jet propulsion seat. He had to maneuver his seat to shoot a light beam at targets as they appear. I think it must take some practice to become good at it.

This John, or at least a projection of john in a space suit. He looks happy to be in space.
Becky is designing an Integrated Circuit. I believe the cute haircut and style give an advantage in the IC design.
John and Becky both were participating in electronic finger painting on the screen and making some very creative designs.
Becky looks pretty good as a goalie ready to play with the sharks.
This is John and Becky with their thermal images.
We had a fun time and saw some cool high tech stuff.

New Camera - Taking Rocky for a Walk

Mom gave me a new camera for my birthday. It is a Canon T3i with 18-135mm lens. I love it. Thank you Mom!!!

I have been reading the manual to try and figure out how to use it. I took Rocky for a walk this evening after the sun went down. The following photos were of some pretty flowers that I passed by on the walk. As can be expected Rocky did not want to stop and "smell the roses". i am still learning how to use the camera features. Most of these were using the telephoto to focus on the flower while the background is out of focus. i think my favorites are the first and last ones shown here.

The next two had the flash on which changes the colors somewhat.


I'll keep reading the 320 page manual and move on to other kinds of photos.

Happy Birthday Mark!!!

Today is Mark’s birthday (July 23). We took Mark and John and Becky to the Monterey Bay Aquarium. As has become tradition, we ate lunch at the Fish Hopper before going to the aquarium. See my posts from January 22 and March 28 for more about Monterey and the Fish Hopper restaurant.

From the window by our table at the restaurant, we could see several sea lions lying on the rocks. Only one was moving around much.

I took a few photos in the aquarium but most of them did not turn out all that great. One of the exhibits that I really like is the different kinds of jellyfish. I like the moon jellies because that is the kind of jellyfish that we swam through a school of while scuba diving in St. Thomas a few years ago. The mature ones are about a foot in diameter. These are some of the moon jellies on exhibit.

One of the exhibits showed explained different kinds of sea creatures. We found ourselves on one of the description cards.

The following is a close-up of the text.

After the aquarium, per tradition, we went to Ghirardelli for desert. I really like their hot fudge sundaes.

It was a fun day celebrating Mark’s Birthday.

4th of July – Skyline to the Sea Trail

On the 4^th of July we decided to go for a hike in Big Basin State Park. Mom was going to be going on a 13 mile backpacking trip from Big Basin to the ocean on the Skyline to the Sea trail on July 8-9 with the level 4 girls before girl’s camp. We thought it would be fun to become familiar with at least the first part of the trail so we invited John and Becky to go with us.

We found some great redwood logs and stopped for a “family on the log” photo.

We found a geocache.

After the hike, we went with john and Becky and some of their friends to watch fireworks. We stopped at Blue Rock BBQ to get some of the best smoked pulled pork in San Jose and sat on blankets and ate BBQ while waiting for the fireworks to start.

On Friday morning, July 8^th, Mom and the level 4 girls started their backpacking trip. 11 miles and several sore muscles later they made it to their campsite. I was one of the people that had agreed to pick up them and their equipment up on Saturday at the beach at the end of the trail. I went early so I could hike up the trail and meet them coming down. This how I found the group coming down the trail.

They did make it to the beach.

Mom made it all the way to the beach.