Exploring the Navigator of the Seas

On our recent cruise, the first two days were spent at sea.  The ship (christened the Navigator of the Seas, hence the title of this post) had to make its way from Texas to Honduras.  The other ports were further north so we could make our way back as we visited the different places.

Those two days at sea were very relaxing.  We spent them exploring every nook and cranny of the ship (at least when I wasn't reading a book, since  I did a lot of that.)

Here are a few of the fun things we did in those first two days.

We discovered the wind.

I became the king of the world.

Robyn did her impression of a helicopter on the helicopter pad.  (You thought that was a real helicopter didn't you.)

I ate ice cream.  Lots and lots of ice cream.

We watched people surfing on the Flowrider.

We watched people wipe out on the Flowrider.

We did some golfing

During dinner they did a parade of servers.  It was important to wave our napkins in celebration.

This was my view for a good portion of the cruise.  My Kindle, my feet, and the ocean: most relaxing thing ever.

The days at sea were not particularly adventurous, but they were just what I needed to rejuvenate. But don't worry, I'll write about the adventurous parts soon.

Goodbye to the Lake House

I've written a number of times about our various trips to Bear Lake.  It's been an oft visited place made possible by some good friends of ours.  These friends own a house there and have been gracious enough to let us take a number of fantastic trips where we've stayed there.  (Even as recent as just a few weeks ago.)

Recently, they made the decision to sell the Lake House.  Of course, since it makes sense for them to sell it, then obviously I wanted it to sell for their sake.  However, there was a small part of me that secretly hoped that it would stay on the market forever.

About a week ago we received word that the selfish part of me was going to have to be disappointed because the house had sold.  However, we did get the chance to have one last hurrah this past weekend with a few other couples.

We had a great time, even if I had to cry inside as we said goodbye to a house filled with happy memories.

But here are some of the fun things we did.

We flitted and floated in tubes.  Of course, naturally we didn't get any pictures of us floating in the tubes.

But we did get one of me on the shore with it stuck on my belly.

And we got one of Robyn looking so cute as she stands in the tube in a foot of water.

Despite the lack of photographic evidence, you'll have to trust me that we did do some floating.  Although, I'll admit that it wasn't very long because the water was pretty cold since it's still early in the season.

Due to the cold, we spent a lot longer in the kayaks because they were more up out of the water.  Robyn was possibly the cutest kayaker that ever lived.  (I personally interviewed everyone that has ever sat in a kayak and I have verified Robyn was the cutest of them all.)  Look at this cute kayaking video below.  (You probably didn't even think that kayaking could be cute before, did you?)

Do you want to see her kayaking in an animation?  Of course you do!

She's cute no matter what media you view her in.

I wasn't nearly as cute, so I'll just include a picture of me.

Probably the best part of kayaking was when I tried to take a video of Robyn and got off balance and nearly capsized.  Here is an excellent point of view video of what it's like to fail at kayaking.

It's been a tradition since I was a small child that you always swim, float, or whatever transportation you choose, to get to the buoy.  Naturally, we kayaked out there.  Look how precious Jared and Lindsi were.

Of course, there was excitement back on the shore as well.

Robyn made sure to steal a small child for a while.  An important part of every vacation.

Robyn also found a fellow teacher so she could talk about boring teacher stuff.  

Alas, eventually our day had to come to an end.  We returned to the house, cleaned it up one last time, and said our goodbyes.  I made Robyn give the house a hug so that we could take a goodbye picture.

Look at that sad face.

All in all, it was a great weekend.  We're super glad we got to have a last hurrah there.  I'm sad in my heart that it won't happen again, but I'm glad for the Stevensons that they were able to sell it.

P.S. Have you seen Google stories?  This is a story that Google made for me to illustrate the weekend.  I added the captions, but everything else was all Google.  Not a bad little feature, am I right?

A Fever, Jammies and True Love

I don't get sick very often, and when I do, it's usually Robyn's fault.

That may sound harsh, but it's the truth.  I can count on getting sick once a year, and it's always in September, right after the beginning of school.  Robyn meets her new class, and they always introduce her to brand new diseases.  Robyn has some sort of heroic immune system that allows her to not actually get sick, while still keeping the diseases strong enough to come home and infest me.

This past week was an exception to the rule of all diseases being Robyn's fault.  I'm not really sure whose fault it was, but they should definitely be punished.

The symptoms started out pretty basic.  First, I just got really cold.  I really don't get cold very often, but this sickness came with some serious chills.

At first I thought that part of it was kind of fun.  I got to put on warm, snuggly jammies.  I've always been jealous of the idea of jammies, because being all snuggly sounds fabulous.  But, in actual practice, jammies make me much too hot and smuffed.

Robyn was so excited that I was wearing jammies that she had to take a picture.  If you can't tell, my fists are clenched because I'm shivering.

Robyn also really enjoyed this phase because it meant I cranked up the heat.  Basically, when I get sick my body functions just like Robyn's does normally.  (At least when it comes to its ability to stay warm.)

But then the less fun parts came.  The swollen sinuses, the cough that never ends and feels like it's tearing apart my insides, the achey muscles, the fever that feels like it's frying my brain and my eyeballs.  Basically, it's not awesome.

Yesterday, Robyn even convinced me to stay home from work.  I don't usually stay home when I'm sick.  I figure my job consists of sitting at a computer, it doesn't require that much physical exertion.  But this one really had me wiped out.  And I think the extra rest really helped me recover faster.

Then it snowed.  I figured I'd had a full day of rest.  I could totally handle shoveling the sidewalk.  Normally, it's a task that takes me 20 minutes tops.  But I got out there and was able to take about 2 scoops before needing to rest.  Plus, my cough was getting worse being out in the cold.  But Robyn got home from work while I was out there giving it my best shot.  She sent me inside and said she would do it.  That is true love.

But don't worry, even in my weakened state, I still thought to make an animated gif of her shoveling prowess.

Well, now comes the part where we receive proof that she didn't give this disease to me.  This morning she was complaining of not feeling well, and now she can't even get out of bed.  That means not only did she not infect me in the first place, but I infected her.  Now I'm the one who should be punished.

Remember how it made me super cold, even though I never get cold?  Remember how Robyn is always cold?  What do you think this disease that gives major chills does to someone who is always cold?

It's my turn to show true love.

Take a good long look, because my thermostat will never look like this again.

A Clovis Christmas

This year Robyn and I spent Christmas week with her parents in Clovis, California.  It was a great week.  We had loads of fun.  We went on a few adventures, had lots of relaxation, and lots of family time.

I'm just going to warn you now, I started writing this and it got really long.  I won't be offended if you don't read all the way to the end.  Just know it was a fabulous week.  Here are a few highlights.

The Nativity
Robyn's family has a tradition of acting out the Christmas story on Christmas Eve.  Her Dad reads it from the Bible and we all get to play various characters.  We're a dramatic bunch, and I feel this picture captures some of the drama that goes into this family room production.

Teanca was an excellent angel that made everyone sore afraid.

Stollen
I don't know how to describe what stollen is.  It's German.  It's delicious.  That's all I know.  Here's a Wiki if you need to know more. Robyn took lessons from her Oma and she made us some stollen.  I told her she needs to make it every month so she doesn't forget how.

She's the cutest little stollen maker.

And look at that deliciousness.

The Interpretive Dance
Out of the entire week, there were 3 1/2 minutes that shined like a jewel as the greatest 3 1/2 minutes of the entire trip.  Robyn's Dad read "The Night Before Christmas" while Robyn and Teanca performed an interpretive dance.

It was the greatest thing ever.  Despite that, Robyn is embarrassed about it.  (She's embarrassed that no one else can even approach her awesomeness.) So I'm not sharing the video, but here is an animated gif made from some of the highlights.  Hopefully that won't embarrass her too much.

We're bikers
I wasn't doing my normal exercise routine, but we tried to get out and do something every day to exercise.  We even did some biking.  Despite the pain in the buttocks region, it was a lot of fun and after our ride I told Robyn I want to buy a bike, so we can do more at home.  She agreed and said we totally should when there is no snow at our house.  Woot!

We're totally bikers.  We biked to the John R. Wright station, named after Robyn's Dad.  It was 9.2 miles round trip.  Not a bad little ride.

Angry Birds
Have you ever played Angry Birds on your phone? Have you ever wished you could catapult birds at piggies in real life? We got a fabulous gift for Christmas. Take a look at this.

The moment we've all dreamed of is here.

The piggy death star.  Destroy it before it destroys you.

It was just as fun as it sounds.  Here's a video of us taking it on its maiden voyage.

The Zoo
We took one day and went to the zoo in Fresno.  I've loved the zoo since I was a little kid.  What can I say?  I love animals.

I FED A GIRAFFE!  I totally got to pet them as well.

Will was not nearly as excited about feeding giraffes as I was.  In his defense, their tongues were as long as his whole body.

The goat let me pet him, but when I tried to take a selfie with him he ran away.

Also, this happened.

Sometimes Teanca poses with statues.  It's how she rolls.

Woodward Park
We took a couple hours to explore Fresno's Woodward Park.  I want a ginormous park like that.  Good thing they're building a new park right by my house.

Robyn said she didn't remember a fountain being in this park, but we found one anyway.

There were these weird structures all over the park.  I assumed they were built by an ancient civilization.  Robyn said they were exercise equipment so people could do circuit training outside in the park.  I like the ancient civilization theory.

There were millions of ducks and geese.

In California, they haven't invented urinals yet.  Instead they use troughs.

Yosemite
Yosemite National Park is one of the most beautiful places on Earth.  It's only 2 hours from Clovis, so I convinced Robyn to take a day trip with me.  It was totally worth it.  We did the Mirror Lake hike this time around.

The trail was really pretty.  I loved the bits of snow and ice amid the beautiful trees.

Just looking up at the mountains.

Mirror Lake isn't much of a lake.  In the winter it's basically a stagnant river.  The word on the street is that in the spring there's much more water.  Robyn looks really cute standing in what would be the bottom of the lake at a different time of year.

It looked like a stairway to heaven.  I climbed it.  It was just a stairway to some rocks.

Sometimes I'm a tree hugger.

There's no scale in this picture but this crow was ginormous.  It followed us for a half mile because I was eating a cookie.  It reminded me of the movie "The Birds".  It would just fly and sit somewhere near us until we got more than 30 feet away and then it would fly somewhere in front of us again.  It was creepy and awesome.

Robyn is cute among ginormous trees.

I loved seeing the mountains and trees reflected in the water.

You can't go to Yosemite without taking at least one picture of half dome.

Christmas Morning
Of course, Christmas morning is always a highlight.  I think the best part of Christmas morning was that my 18 month old nephew decreed that I was his official assistant to open his presents.  I think it was because I had him help me open one of my presents.  After that, he just kept bringing me presents and I let him rip them open.

Eventually, he brought me a present that wasn't addressed to him.  I made him take it to his Dad, who it was addressed to.  That act of betrayal lost his trust, and he didn't bring me any more presents.

The Christmas tree before we opened anything.

Megan and Will frolicking in the wrapping paper.  Sometimes the paper is better than the presents.

Of course, the best thing was just being together with family. We had lots of laughs and lots of good times. That's what Christmas is all about.

Adventures in Lake Tahoe

I wrote about road tripping to Lake Tahoe.  Now it's time to find out what we did once we got there.

Friday was our big adventure day.  But before the adventure there was some important sleeping time.  I let Robyn sleep in as late as she wanted.  I woke up early and had a small breakfast.  It actually got pretty cold in the morning and I started to fill a little chilled.  (This is a new thing that happens to me now.  It turns out losing 60 pounds makes you lose some insulation.)

I decided to go outside and soak in the hot tub by myself.  That was my primary activity all morning long.

I have to say, enjoying the quiet morning with the chirping birds, the hot tub, the brisk air and the beautiful view was the greatest thing ever.  The only thing that would have made it better was if Robyn joined me.  I kept hoping she would wake up and come out, but she was enjoying her sleeping, so I'm glad she got to do what she wanted to do.  At least I had my underwater camera with me to keep me entertained.

This is what it looked like in the hot tub

This is what the hot tub saw when it looked at me.

When I was done hot tubbing I went and took a shower and my loud bumbling throughout the cabin eventually woke Robyn up.  That meant it was time for our adventure to begin.

I had selected a couple hikes that I thought would be fun.  The first was the Rubicon trail beginning in DL Bliss state park.  My good friend, the internet, said that it had some of the most beautiful views of Lake Tahoe.  It's a trail that follows the shoreline, sometimes climbing up 3 or 400 feet above the water to give views looking down, other times going all the way down to the beach.  I figured it would be a good workout going up and down, but also a good experience in nature seeing lots of beauty.

I had planned to walk a good 2 miles of it (4 miles round trip.)  Unfortunately, the state of California had other plans.  When we got to the park we found this.

The park was closed.  It didn't even have anything to do with government shutdown.  It was just closed for the season.

That sign was accompanied by a barricade.  There was no way our car was getting through.  But we didn't let that stop us from our adventure.  We just started hiking earlier than we thought.

Beyond the barricade is there a world you long to see?

The one advantage to the closed park was that we had the whole place to ourselves.  We ran into a total of maybe 10 people the whole day.  This road beyond the barricade was 2 miles from the trail head.  Round trip that turned our 4 mile hike into 8 miles.  But it was sure beautiful.

There were lots of Lake views.

The deep blue of the water was amazing.

I never got tired of the beautiful trees and water.

Of course, 8 miles is a lot of walking.

We walked through Mordor.

We found the big trees of Endor.

We even made it to the beach.

The water was so beautiful.  Robyn said it just made her want to swim in it.  I told her that was not recommended, since the water is about 40 degrees.  She said she at least needed to touch it.  Usually I'm the one that needs to touch things, so I certainly didn't object.

After our 8 mile hike, we discussed if we wanted to do the second hike I had planned.  Since we had already gone 8 miles, which was double what we had planned, we were feeling a little tired.  But we didn't want to miss out, so we went to our second destination.

I had heard (again from my friend, the internet) that there were beautiful views on the trail to Cascade Falls.

Robyn is tired, and concerned that we are in the land of desolation.

 The good news is that we never saw the abomination of desolation spoken of by Daniel the prophet.

However, it definitely was not the super simple hike we had planned on.  First, this hike had the same problem our first hike had.  The park was closed, which meant we couldn't park at the trail head.  It was supposed to be a 2 mile hike, but there was an extra quarter mile added each way by walking from outside the park.  Plus, the internet said it was only a 150 foot climb.  The elevation change was 150 feet, but the trail went down and up at least 3 times, so the climb was more like 450 feet.  Normally, that amount of climb would not be a big deal, but our total walking that day was now amounting to 10.5 miles.  We were some tuckered out little tikes.

Nevertheless, the views were still very pretty.  The trail winds around Cascade Lake.

This is a view of Cascade Lake along the trail.

Also the timing of the hike allowed us to see the views across Lake Tahoe as the sun was setting.  We had Cascade Lake in the foreground and Lake Tahoe further away.

The camera didn't fully capture it, but the purple mountains were beautiful.

Later we got to watch the moon rise.

After passing the lake, the trail goes into a rocky area right before getting to the falls.  We were super tired and almost ready to turn around when we heard running water.  We continued to where we were only 100 feet away when what to my wondering eyes would appear but a naked guy.  Like totally nude, wearing nothing.  He and his girlfriend (or wife, or acquaintance, I'm not really sure, I didn't interview them) had apparently been skinny dipping.  I let Robyn know that we should probably sit down and wait a few minutes on the other side of the hill.  But we made sure to make plenty of loud noise during our waiting period.

Naked people are just like other wildlife that you encounter in nature.  You want to make plenty of noise so that they are aware you're there and you don't startle them.

Eventually, the naked team emerged from their quarantined area fully clothed.  The guy gave me a look that said, "I'm pretty sure you saw me naked and I appreciate that you aren't drawing attention to that fact."  I gave him a look that said, "Yes, I did and I'm sure glad that's over."

After their exit we climbed down into the "falls".   The waterfall was a bit anticlimactic.  It was mostly a stream that tumbles over a few rocks.  Robyn assured me that if it were early spring there would be lots of water.  I imagine in April or May it looks awesome.  In October it looks like this.  But, I guess in October visitors are infrequent enough that you can skinny dip if you feel inclined.

Doesn't it make you want to take your clothes off?  Me neither.

By the time we got back to the car, it was getting dark outside.  We had had more adventure than 2 old people like us are used to.  We went out to dinner at an italian restaurant called Scusa, in South Lake Tahoe. Foursquare told us to try the lobster ravioli.  Lobster Ravioli!  It was amazing.

That night the hot tub was my friend.  My legs and back were sore after a lot of hiking.  My old body is not used to that level of adventuring.

Are old people allowed to hike 10.5 miles in one day?  I'm not sure we should be.