Roatan Honduras

So after a fun visit to the Cayman Islands, we made for an island off of the coast of Honduras called Roatan. The ship docked in a beautiful harbor called Coxen Hole where the locals were ready to greet us (We think they played their druns and danced the whole day).

We then headed to a nice spot by bus called Carambola Botanical Gardens. Incredibly green, they had not only let the natural forest grow, but had cultivated all sorts of plants native to Honduras there in the garden so that tourists could see them and learn about them. We saw a huge variety of plants: vanilla, cacao, coffee, mahogany, spanish cedar, teak, and palm trees of all kinds, just to name a few. We got to try some of the locally grown fruit and then headed on to the second part of our excursion.

After the botanical gardens, we headed to the Penang Butterfly farm. Not only did it have all sorts of butterflies, it had also become an animal sanctuary where they rescued abandoned pet birds and injured and sick wild animals that had be brought to them. Here's a sample of some of the animals we saw:

So after a couple more hours lounging and strolling on the west side of the island, we headed back to the ship. Another fun day.

The Cayman Islands

Our first stop in the cruise was the Cayman Islands. For anyone that has watched Pirates of the Carribean, the Grand Cayman (the island we stopped on) used to be called Tortuga. So besides the illegal bank accounts and the duty-free jewelry, there was pirate stuff everywhere.

The main excursion of the day was a pirate cruise excursion. We basically putted around in a pirate ship replica and watched a little show that the pirates did with some of the families on the excursion. They gave all the kids on the ship scrub brushes and made them swear on their lives that they would never lose their brushes. The kids also had to take a bunch of pirate oaths stating that they would never do their homework, go to bed on time, and that they would play video games all night. When one mother objected, they tied her to the mast and soaked her in icewater. Then they made all the kids scrub the deck. There were refreshments, and those that wanted to could walk the plank. The water was really warm, clear and blue, almost like a heated pool, except filled with saltwater instead of chlorine.

We spent the rest of the day walking around, taking pictures and checking out the local shops for trinkets. It rained off an on a lot of the day, but it wasn't bad, as the weather was so warm. Good times were had by all.

The Cruise

So it's been a long time since we've posted. With all the craziness, it just hasn't really been possible to find the time. But we're hoping that we can slowly get caught up on this blog with all the wedding and cruise and such.

Let's start with the cruise in general. We know, the wedding happened first, but as you probably know, weddin pictures can take a while to get picked and processed, so we'll try to get to those later.

Back to the cruise. Well, we had a great trip. It was so nice to just relax for a week. We hadn't realized how frazzled we were until we got on the boat. No cares and no worries after these last few months was just great.

This is our boat, the Carnival Legend. It was super-luxurious. Our room was very nice, and we had a balcony from which we spent quite a bit of time just sitting and relaxing, watching the water.

This was our room. It was very nice, not so much for the room, because being on a ship, it wasn't particularly large, but because of the service. We literally had people coming in, straightening up, and making the bed and replacing the towels twice a day. They even folded us all sorts of fun creatures out of towels while they were there.

They even offered free room service, but we didn't do much with that, as we preferred to go to the dining area to eat. They had a great selection of food, which allowed Camshaft to be adventurous with his pallette (fish, sushi, lobster, caviar, escargo, and a ton of different fish, to name a few menu items) and Mandee to be more conservative in her meal choices.

The ship always had a lot of fun activities, and we did a few. One afternoon, we decided to pretend to be all sophisticated and went to an art auction. We bid on a few things, but didn't win, as pretty much everything there was way out of the price range of a couple of poor newlyweds. The big item of the auction was a genuine Picasso that had a starting bid of $58,000. But while we weren't on excursions, we mostly spent our time either in the room, napping and relaxing, or in the dining hall (they did have a 24 hour buffet as well, incidentally, but we didn't eat there as much). There were also a lot of shows, including a big show every night that seemed to alternate between comedians or else big musical reviews with singers and dancers.

Well, that's about all we can think of for this post. We will try to go through our excursions in the following days and will get to the wedding when we get our pictures back. On and incidentally, here's another interesting picture from our balcony. That's Cuba! Crazy, huh. We were that close.

This past month...

Well, not much really exciting has gone on with Mandee and Camshaft the last month or so. We have been very busy with the wedding planning and family and such.

Things are slowly shaping up. Most of the planning is done now. We have a place to live in Clearfield and have the honeymoon pretty much all planned.

We've had a few chances to go do stuff during all of this madness though. The Gateway has been a frequent hangout for us in recent weeks (we even saw Mehmet Okur there (starts for the Utah Jazz)). Last Saturday we also went to the Dinosaur Park in Ogden.

So sorry for the lack of updates. I'm sure we'll have a ton to tell come October.

And the Rest...

The rest of our trip up to Washington was mostly concentrated on us getting ready for the wedding in Ogden in October.

Tuesday, with the help of Mandee's mom and her sister Chelle, we pretty much got the photos for our wedding invitation taken care of. This is one that we aren't planning on using, but gives you a good idea:


We also spent some time going through Mandee's boxes of stuff and did some shopping for some gifts and souveniers.

Thursday, we made a brief trip to Mukilteo Beach. We had originally wanted to go to some forts on the islands, but the ferry was having some troubles that day, so we spent the afternoon at the beach and lighthouse.

But it was a great trip. Both Mandee and Camshaft had a blast and enjoyed spending as much time together as they did.

Road Trip Part 4

Monday was our excursion into Canada, Victoria to be exact. Unknowlingly, we had happened upon the 150th Anniversary Celebration of the province of British Columbia. It was super busy and crowded, with people everywhere.

The ferry ride over was pleasant, and we spotted both seals and porpoises.

In Victoria itself, we mostly walked around and took in the sites. As we arrived, there was a boat show, with tugboats floating together in formation.


We then headed over to Chinatown. What we saw was pretty cool, but it seems like the Chinatown has shrunk over the years, as the Chinese have become more integrated.


After some more wandering and site seeing, we ended up at an English-style pub called the Sticky Wicket and had a late lunch there, heading back over to Washington on a converted passenger ship.

Road Trip Part 3

Sunday consisted mostly of us doing the regular Sunday activities, then getting on the road and staying the night in Port Angeles.



Port Angeles was a quiet little town that is on the north end of the Olympic Penninsula. It seems to get a fair amount of traffic from Victoria and ships coming down from Alaska. The evening ended up being fairly laid back. We wandered around the port area and watched the ships coming in through the mist and the minnows jumping in the shallow water around the docks. There had also been a sand sculpture contest around the town, which was cool to see.



All in all, a pretty laid back day. We went to bed early to get ready for our adventure into Canada the next day.