Birthday Vacation Day 4 - Nassau

This was our day in Nassau.

I really like this picture of Mom and the boat.  She took one of me too, but I don't like how it turned out so you don't get to see it.

Monarch of the Seas from the front.

And this is just one I like showing the name of the ship.

I actually took this one on the way to or from the snorkeling excursion, but it's really my best picture of the boat especially if you look at it full size.  I posted it on the Royal Caribbean Facebook page, and Royal Caribbean actually liked it.

We got a day pass to the above hotel.  It came with beach and pool access and towels, and lunch.  It was a really good lunch and we got a rather strong rum daiquiri with it.

Mom spent all day on the beach, once again just relaxing and playing with electronic devices.  The little oval highlighted in the center is zoomed in on the mom when I was leaving on the boat for the snorkeling tour.

This is a not so good picture of my view for part of the morning where I relaxed next to the mom.

These are just some other pictures of the hotel.  The one on the left I mostly took for the dad.  And I just liked how the one on the right looks.

So it didn't take long before I got bored with just relaxing on the beach.  So I started out just sitting there with the lens zoomed taking pictures.

I love this set of pictures.  And the full size ones especially where the seagull is dunking his head in the waves are among my favorites.  I'll eventually post those on zazzle for sale.

Seagull.

I really love this one as it looks like they are talking to each other.

Seagull on a post.

Seagulls on the beach.

More seagulls.

I like how the wind is blowing this one's feathers.

Now there is a seagull here, but my favorite part of this photo is actually the wave crashing in it.

Now for the flying seagull pictures.

Another flying seagull.

And this would be my favorite flying seagull picture.

Now this is the start of the pictures from the snorkeling excursion.  This was with the water proof bag for my camera and videos where I took still frames from them.  Then I photo-shopped them.  The one above is probably my favorites of the coral pictures.

Another coral shot.

I like this one for that little blue coral on the left.

I just liked how the fish was nicely framed right in front of the fin for this one.

Most of the fish were this type with the black stripe.  And I'm not going to comment on all of these, but I will say for most all of these they look much better if you click on them to open the full size images.

I like how these fins looked and there is that one fish in the background.

The one above and the following few are among my favorites for all the fish pictures, and I wasn't even intentionally videoing at this point.  These are shots from when the camera was just floating on the water and sometimes pointing down into it.

This is probably my favorite fish one that I got, either that or the one below.

Although the combinations of the fish and the coral in this one and the next few are really great too.

And finally some different types of fish.

One last coral plus fish photo.

I took this one on the way back from the tour, and I just liked how it looks.

One final shot at the hotel.  I loved their very huge palm trees.  They were two or three times as high as the ones in Florida ever get.

Then back in our room that night after dinner we had our second towel animal, a rabbit, I think.

It was a really good day, and all of my favorite photos are on this day.

Birthday Vacation Day 3 - Coco Cay

So this was our day in Coco Cay.

I took the above picture as the tender boat was beginning to pull into the island.  I really should have taken more pictures of the island itself.  It was really nice there.  But I was just rather tired after my attempts at snorkeling, but more on that later.

So this is basically how the mom spent the day.  We rented her an umbrella to keep her from getting sunburned, and she relaxed and played with electronic devices.

I rented a wet suit for the rather cool water and attempted snorkeling for the first time.  And it truly was just an attempt.  I have decided my face must just be shaped weird, because no matter what I did water would get into the mask.  The above picture shows the theoretical goal of where I kept trying to swim to.   This was an unintentional picture at the end of one of the fish videos, thus why it is so small and fuzzy.  On the right is one of life guard stands and on the left is a dock you could sit on.  But I never made it more than about halfway to it, and I eventually just gave up.

Before going I bought a relatively cheap underwater bag for my expensive and really good camera.  Now for lots and lots of money you can get specially made cases that really let you use all aspects of the camera.  What I bought is basically a bag in the shape of the camera.  And I was actually very pleased with the results.  I took all of these as videos and then pulled the stills from them, and then photoshopped them.

Tomorrow has all the really good fish pictures, but I do like this one.

 I gave up on the snorkeling after not too long, but it was long enough to give me a fairly bad sunburn on the back of my left calf.  I had put on sunscreen, but I apparently missed this spot.

When we got back to the room after dinner that night on the boat, we got our first towel animal.  I did like this monkey one alot.

Birthday Vacation Day 2 - Cruise Day 1

I don't have many photos for this day.  I just didn't take the camera out much on this day.  We had a nice breakfast at the Laquinta that morning, and then got the bags packed.  We took a handicapped taxi to the pier, and got on the boat in relatively short order.

We went to the rooms and shortly discovered that the 4 or so hours Mom had spent on the phone with RC's accessibilty department somehow hadn't resulted in the outcomes it was supposed to.  So then we spent the next hour or so getting it taken care of.  But the end result was we got some very robes in return for all the trouble.

We then went for the spa tour so that we could be entered in the drawing for later that afternoon for free spa services.  And then we went back to the room, and I decorated the room and the door for my birthday.

I'd gotten the supplies to decorate the day before from the dollar store.  So for like 6 bucks we got as good, if not better decorations for the room, as the $30 decorations that RC offers.

I think here is where I will say how much I loved having the window.  Officially it was an "obstructed view"  Yeah, that rope.  It's part of the lifeboat just below our window.  I will rarely pay the extra for the window, but I loved being able to sit in the room and look out at the ocean sometimes.

So then we went to the spa raffle.  And I won an ion thermie treatment.  What is that you ask?  It's this detox thing where they put stuff on your belly and then wrap you in this clay stuff.  Then apply this rather strong electrical current to tense the abdominal muscles for like 40 minutes.  The advertisements say you'll lose 4-8 inches over the application area.

I actually got the treatment on the next day after we were back on the boat after Coco Cay.  I actually lost 12.5 inches over the 5 areas she measured before and after.  And it wasn't like she was holding the tape measure loose before and tight after.  And she marked where she was measuring so it was in the same spots.  You could physically see a difference too.  I don't know that I'd pay $100 for it, but as a free gift it was great.

I will also say here that about a month or two beforehand I had asked for a birthday present.  And I had specifically said it'd be really nice if it was like something from the spa raffle.  Now I was thinking of a massage, but this was kind of neat.  And I really liked the result.  And while the dramatic-ness of the results only lasted a few days, I am still at nearly the same of the final numbers.  So anyway, I'm just happy for the birthday present from God that was probably what I needed if not what I wanted.

So that night we had a very good dinner and then followed it with Ben & Jerry's.  So all in all it was a very good birthday.

Birthday Vacation Day 1 - Orlando

So technically this would actually be day 2 of the vacation, but since day 1 was spent getting to Orlando on the Megabus that doesn't really count.  I do want to say that Megabus is great and cheap way to get around the Eastern US and they seem to slowly expanding to cover more and more of the country.  The internet on it worked great.  You do need to be sure to bring extra layers as it was rather cool on the bus.  But for less than $40 me and my mom got to Orlando and back, and that was with mom in her powerchair.

This day had its ups and downs.  The most enjoyable would be the beach.

The water was too cool to get into it, but it was pretty to look at and just rather relaxing.

The photo of the para-sailing surfer (or whatever they are called) just turned out really well I like think.

I love this picture and it probably my favorite of the day.  I have no idea what the seed pods are, but visually I just like this picture.

 And another pretty flower I saw as we walked back to our hotel after the beach.

These are quite obviously palm trees.  I like palm trees.  They remind me of my childhood from 2-10 when we lived in Florida, actually at one point not far from where we were staying on this day before the cruise.  However this particular photo reminds me of the low point of the trip where I cracked my iPhone screen.   I took this photo on the way to the store to get a few things we had forgotten to pack, and I broke the screen while getting cash at an ATM on the way back. However this then leads me to the happy memory near the end of the trip where my wonderful Aunt took me to the Apple store in Atlanta and got my phone fixed.  So it all turned out fine in the end.

And mostly this day was just a relaxing day my mom and I as we got ready to get a real start on the vacation the next day on the cruise.

MLK Day 2012

I decided to go to the 7th Annual Sevier County Martin Luther King Day Celebration.  I had seen an article in the paper on the day before about it along with an ad elsewhere in the paper with a schedule.  I'll be honest that most of the reason that I wanted to go was the 3 dance numbers you'll see in the videos below.  I figured for most of the other bits, well, I have a phone with Drop 7 on it.  As it turned out, I rarely played Drop 7 at all. 

The opening number was Martin Luther King's I Have a Dream Speech over a video about the Freedom Riders.  I didn't really understand why the one was laid over the other until later during the keynote speaker's speech/sermon.

After this the National Anthem was played on the trumpet by Wilkes Chandler.



Most of the videos I took so my Mom could see the parts I thought she might like.   She likes horn music.  I actually don't.  Something about the higher notes on most any wind instruments just strikes my ear the wrong way and makes me kind of cringe.

Anyway, next was this dance number.  I can't actually decide between this one and the last one for my favorite.  They were both great and very worshipful.



I want to note here that for all videos I was mostly actually watching the stage and not my phone.  I would look down at the phone occassionally.  Thus the occasionally adjustments to get things centered again sometimes.  Somehow I seemed to keep unconsciously aiming the phone higher.

The next notable thing (for me, at least) after this was the next dance number.



The coolness and impact of this number would have been better on the video if I had been sitting further back. The young man on the 2nd row had 3 other young men always doing the same move he was, but well I sat where I did and it worked out better for most of the others.

After this was the keynote address by Ernest "Rip" Patton, Jr.  It was scheduled for 30 mintues, but he went for an hour.  It did not really seem like an hour though, and I never once wanted to pull out my phone for Drop 7.  His address was somewhere between history lesson and sermon.  Much to my own surprise I enjoyed it.  I think most of the content from his speech is probably on the Oprah show special that he referenced at various points.  The link there is actually to just one portion of that special.  I can't really describe what was so neat and impactful about his address.  I just know I enjoyed it and went away from it feeling like I had learned something and been moved.

I might later post at least part of a video from the speech, but for now there are technical difficulties with that.

After this there were some good choir numbers with many of the audience members singing along at many points.  Then there was one of the things I rather like about living in Sevier County as it was a very small town sort of moment despite the tourism center that it is.  They had a poster contest with local schools and they awared prizes and each child came up and got back their poster and got a medal.

This was the last dance number, and like I said before, I can't decide between this one and the first dance number for favorite.



It ended with some intentional group songs of "We Shall Overcome" and "Let There Be Peace on Earth".

It was the first time I have ever wanted to go to such an event, and I was truly surprised at how much I enjoyed the whole event.  Next year I might even go earlier for the symbolic march from the church to the courthouse and back.