The Second Day Back

It is not unusual to have a good vacation if you planned it. It is not unusual to have a bad vacation with others if you did not plan it. It is rare to have a great vacation, but this past two weeks was just that. We jointly planned the time spent, we did spend some time apart, and I have reached a mellowness in my old age that accepts not getting to see everything or do everything that is in the plans.  There are a number of reasons, which I will not go into, that this trip with son and daughter-in-law could have been difficult, but it looks like we were all good and on best behavior and parted with loving hugs and kisses.  It will be a cherished memory for me forever.  We also had the parents of the daughter-in-law along, and that was a nice event as this trip was more than special for them.  They had never traveled to the Hawaiian Islands.  We spent one week on Oahu and one week on The Big Island.

I did not take enough photos of the food, because I am not thinking of taking photos when food is put in front of me.  I am super thinking of stuffing my face!  We ate many different places, but the best eating was in the hole-in-the-wall local places.  The hotels offered good food but that was also very expensive.  We ate one night at our favorite high-end restaurant, Roys, and were greatly disappointed.  As disappointed as we had been with one of its sister restaurants here in the Mid-Atlantic.  Gotta look for a new anniversary venue, I guess.  But the freshness of the fruits and seafood were never a disappointment no matter where we ate. 

And smoothies and shave ice are the perfect treats after a hot and sweaty hike and eating outside is the best!

I am currently downloading the 1000+ photos that will give me something to play with during the cold winter days ahead.  Right now the weather outside is a perfect dry fall day and I will not want to miss that in the coming weeks.  Such a nice day that a poet could write about it.

Our return was delayed by 4 hours and thus we missed our connection in San Francisco on to the East Coast.  This means that an eight hour time on planes and in airports became 18 hours!  It seems that a computer problem prevented the air traffic controllers from tracking the majority of planes flying over the Pacific!  We were glad that they paused and then seemed to assign planes various altitudes as they left Honolulu airport.  At least I 'think' that is how the Captain explained it.  I had downloaded a couple of movies to my Kindle and was glad as the United wi-fi was also not working!!  United did give each of us a $20 voucher for food at the airport because of the delay.  $20 does not go very far if you order yogurt, fresh fruit, granola, coffee, and a pastry??  Blueberries out of San Francisco are really sweet, though.

Jet Planes

"Leaving on a jet plane and pretty sure when I will be back again. And no, I don't hate to go."  Did John Denver just roll over in his grave or was that a mild earthquake??

We are heading for a week on Oahu and a week on Hawaii (the Big Island.) We will be playing tourist as well as visiting a number of friends. As those who have visited this blog decades ago may remember I went to graduate school at the University of Hawaii as did my husband. We met there and married there and started our careers heading further East toward islands and other countries in the South Pacific.

Anyway, I am going with son and daughter-in-law and hubby this time and hope to get away from all the crappy news, pardon my French, and instead be faced with volcanos and hurricanes in the Pacific which are somehow far more rational than what is happening in the U.S.A. I am up for the challenge and promise photos upon my return...I saw a few of you yawning out there in Internet Land. I will keep it succinct.

The Group

October is a month for loading vans and trucks with banners, collapsible tables, brochures and pamphlets, giveaways, game boards, bottled water, and small plants. 

I meet up at the museum or the historic grounds with other gray beards and we pretend we can assist others with plant plans, ideas, problems, identification, and ecology and climate issues. We are right maybe 75% of the time and also give them referrals that are more authentic for accuracy. It is something old people do to help ease their retirement days and pretend they are not becoming useless. 

One of the men and his wife are recently divorced and they do not come together as a unit but move as very separate entities on opposite sides of the booth and talk to different people at different times. She is what some would say is a challenge. She has hearing issues but would also have an "in your face" personality even if she was not hard of hearing. He is a master at building and repairing and talking about his many projects. He also has an excellent grasp of soil and ecology even though he has no scientific background...he was a mechanic in the Navy for years.  This year they have moved into separate homes and she clearly has a need for conversation.

Another man, a handsome, neat as a pin in his mid 70's comes early and assists in a quiet but accurate fashion. Late in the day a nurse wheels in his wife who is in a wheelchair after a severe stroke more than a year ago. He was angry and hard to work with for many months, yelling if you moved a brochure or adjusted a display. Now he has come back to earth and adjusted to the pain in his life. His wife, a delicate lovely lady, looks bright-eyed and interested, even though she does not talk.  As I watch them in loving touching,  I know they were a really beautiful couple in their wedding photos.

The Matriarch of our group who knows thousands of scientific names of plants has limited patience with those of us who keep using common names.  Her husband passed just a little more than a year ago.  They were sailing mates around the world for many years and he was a famous physicist.  She also was angry and impatient for a while after his death.  She still has little patience for our stupidity but smiles more these days.

The Girl Scout of this particular event (and many others) is a decade younger than most of us and keeps us organized.  She belongs to several volunteer groups and seems to know many people who come by.  She lost her husband a few years ago to Alzheimer's and I think (in her 60's) she is lonely.  We, the old timers, were hoping for a matchmaking event with another naturalist in the community, but that was not meant to be.

I smile as I write this because I wonder how these folks above would describe me...and my husband...and our presence in this group.  Do you sometimes wonder how other people see you?... Or do you not care?  Or do you think you know?

Quick Follow UP

It appears that there are options in user settings for commenting using Google+ on Blogger. Maybe this is why since I have that disabled. I may try to enable and see if it still gives me my privacy...or I could create ANOTHER account on Google+ which is most annoying!

Nefarious Stuff

I really, really, wish I could remember who it was that said they could not get into my blog.  They posted this on their blog.  Instead, when clicking on the URL they got a page where Webroot indicated there was a virus on my page!! This was just a few days ago.  Guess what?  I had the same thing happen to me yesterday when I tried to see a post I had written on my own blog. 

I scanned my PC for viruses with Webroot which is the anti-virus I use and was recommended by an IT person and nothing was found. I emailed Webroot and have not gotten a response as of yet. Luckily, I rebooted my PC and was able to get into my own blog then! Wowie!  Something is rotten in nefarious Blog Land.  I do remove the spam comments from my blogs before allowing them to post unless they comment immediately.  Webroot is not among the top ten virus packages...maybe I should ask my friend who used to work for the Secret Service technology office what virus he/she would recommend.

In another case, I have found that certain blogs I try to comment on after reading default to a Google login with my real name and since I do not use that login, I cannot comment on their blog. I will only log in with Blogger.  So, if I have not commented on your blog in months, it means I cannot log in as Tabor.

I read that 50 million users of Facebook had their identities stolen and/or could not log in.  That has not happened to me...yet.

These are certainly complicated times.

My Ray of Hope

I try hard to be more sociable. It is not that I dislike people, but on some days I do. I have no patience for their small mindedness, their self-interest, and their righteousness. Of course, I have these same traits some days and have no room to pretend I am better. I do think I am more open-minded than some. And of course as I watched the hearings for the new nominee for the Supreme Court, I realize I am totally prejudiced. I have met this creep/type in my earlier life and my instincts tell me he is scum. I try hard to cram a logical thought and a fair approach into this and it will not fit, only pure raw emotion and hatred.  I turn off the TV.  

The "other side" tells me that all  the "little brown" immigrants are here to take their/our jobs  by accepting lower wages and then also living  off our  social welfare programs and do not see  the contradiction in their thinking.  They do not have anger for the rich white boss  that creates the situation of lower and lower pay.  And the same  "other side" tells me they knew our current candidate and Republican Sheriff when he was a cop and that he used to give young girls traffic tickets and then tell  them he would tear them up for  "favors."  They think this is amusing. 

I saw Michael Moore's movie Fahrenheit 11/9. Moore is fat, messy, and a tease. The conservatives hate his guts and some liberals are embarrassed by his tenacity. The movie is pretty typical of his prior documentaries and shows his lack of power and finesse. But it links all of this strange political culture  under a magnifying lens and he criticizes both Democrats and Republicans with only a fair and very brief nod to Bernie Saunders and a chunk of time to  the young  veteran  from West Virginia that  is running for office.  Would love to  hear or  read our last President's response to how he  was thrown  under the bus in this  documentary.

...and women continue to be insulted every single day by those old white guys in  power.

I do see a ray of hope in all  of this.  I watch the advertisements on TV  and the characters and lovers and families in them look like  the real world.  This must drive the  racists and misogynists crazy!  At least that is my ray of hope.  

Sorry, must be the meds I  am on.  I  do feel  so much better after vomiting all  this bile,  though.

Foggy

I am on a cocktail of decongestants, antihistamines, antibiotics, etc. I take them all each day wondering what all this chemistry is doing to my body's chemical balance. How do I feel.  Pretty good, actually.   I am not facing serious illness right now, just a few nagging symptoms.   I am sleeping like a baby each evening even after having an afternoon nap...drugs are wonderful. (I am also having lots of dreams of me working on projects...house shopping or room decorating or trip planning...weird.)

No one knows why I have  this nagging cough and next week it may be an x-ray that I take.  I feel pressured because in two weeks I am  leaving for  Hawaii for a trip planned months ago with my son and DIL.  I lived in Hawaii for a year and look forward to seeing old friends and showing the state to my son and DIL.  We will also visit the big island, but with my health, not going near the volcano due to the  gases.

Now I will go an read your recent posts  using my foggy brain.

Not Florence, But a Flashback

Since Mage asked and others may have missed this post from so long ago...this is the story of when my house flooded. 

And She Turns

Florence was met with great fanfare in our neighborhood and we did not ignore that. We moved the benches from the dock where the tides have been very high for days.

We tied the plastic benches to the deck supports and cleared the deck of all the other patio furniture... which may or may not get moved back out in the coming weeks.

Hubby has been working hard in the humidity to get the widowmaker that finally came down across the path to the dock cut into firewood for this winter even though cozy wood fires seem such a long way away.

I froze several gallon jugs of water and put them in the freezer in the event we lose electricity.  I also inventoried the small freezer and we have been trying to eat as much of that as we can.  While families are hungry in this country we have an embarrassing abundance of food tucked away.

Now we see that the storm is moving south of us. We will just get some bands of heavy rains. Our soils are very wet and we may lose a tree or two, but it looks like we dodged the bullet on this one.

Stay safe, ya'll!

Superfluous or Tabor Who?

Yes, I have been absent. No, not on travel. I have been lying in bed and coughing my head off for weeks. I did not get a cold, or flu...no fever, joint aches, sinus problems. I had loss of appetite, but seemed to be eating well!  No one seems to know (or care?) what is making me cough and cough. Finally, it did morph into a virus thing in the lungs and I sounded as if I had been smoking my whole life. I could not get in to see my doctor, but saw a backup and got some meds to ease symptoms. Needless to write, I was not getting much sleep. Then a few days ago it all started to heal maybe due to the meds and helping me sleep regularly and soundly. Very slowly, I might add, the symptoms diminished.

Yes, I have an appointment with an ENT specialist, but I am not optimistic or even pessimistic that he will find a solution even if he does cram some camera object down my throat.  I am just glad to be up and walking around and on the mend.  Going shopping today for food and supplies in the event we lose electricity with this impending storm.

Anyway...just if you missed me.  If you did not, that is OK also.  I am not the center of my own attention, even.

I did a photo painting this morning for the first time in days...taken back in mid-August.

Disjointed

My life has become disjointed.  It seems to be full of disparate themes these days that make me feel just a bit off kilter.

I saw Mama Mia Part II recently and various ABBA songs keep running through my head at odd times of the day. I like ABBA so there could be worse songs drilling a beat in my brain.  Is it a premonition that the phrases "take a chance on me" and "SOS" are the constants?

I cut myself (again) while chopping garden veggies the other day and now two tips of my fingers are sore when I use the keyboard to type. I try to keep the knives sharpened, but they are getting old.

I am reading "The Crooked Little Road to Semi-Ever Happiness." It is a well-written story, but the kind of story that haunts you with sadness as you finish each chapter.

I have mixed a weed-killer formula of vinegar, Epsom salts and dish soap to kill my weeds while protecting the river. I spray this along paths and where crabgrass has grown over the drains or into the bricks. It took me all day to find where I had left the large bag of salts. I looked in the garage, the laundry room and even under the bathroom sink until eventually finding the bag under the kitchen sink of all places!

I washed all the windows on the outside with one of those Windex spraying tools resulting in a sore shoulder and stiff neck.  It also helped me see more clearly how the inside of the windows is covered in a pale film of dirt. I guess I have to start on those next and do the "wash on-wash off" Karate dance.  The whole time I did this I kept thinking of rain against the windows of friends in Hawaii as the hurricane just missed them.

We lost our large fig tree and now the new ones we planted a few years ago are just starting to come into figs.  Hubby is eating most of them as snacks when he mows the lawn so there will not be much of a harvest this year. They are Celeste figs and seem to taste better than the other ones we had.

John McCain lost his battle this week and I am struggling with the sadness of losing his balanced and fair voice in the Congress. He was one of the few that admitted he made mistakes. The Republicans are now free to fully lose their way.

The DNC, on the other hand, have changed their rules in dealing with Superdelegates in order to appeal to Millennials.    Time will tell.

I have tried to be more regular with my exercise (elliptical and free weights) which results in my Fitbit telling me I am not meeting the 10,000 steps each day.  Nothing more annoying than wiping the sweat from your brow and your Fitbit asking if you are up for a stroll!  I wonder if I will be alive when this technology really tells us how we are doing.

And perhaps the most annoying is that it is 2:59 in the morning as I write this.  A full moon usually means insomnia for me.  I  do not have to be anywhere today, so may take a nap after lunch.  Here is hoping I get back on track sooner rather than later.  Maybe some meditation and breathing exercises?

The Quiet Evenings Return

It is mid-August and the osprey have left their nest which sits so empty and quiet on the water. The mother osprey no longer scolds me when I cross the dock. I can see the family of three some evenings teaching their single offspring how to soar above the river and then dip their talons across the mirrored surface before surging up into the blue once again and perching on an overhanging snag. Soon they will be heading south for the winter.

The wren nest is also empty as they must have learned to fly while we were visiting in the city. Grandchildren are back home wrapping up the last few weeks of summer camp. Our company have all finished with their vacations and are now back home across the Pacific ocean. The house is now quiet of much activity and busy meal preparation. Children's games and toys are slowly being returned to their cupboards, sheets are washed. We have some leftovers to finish eating and that leaves me time to wander to the water's edge for sunsets once again at days end as the sun moves around into a center stage position. We can even catch a sunset down in the village when it crosses the bridge.

Sighing with gratitude.

Just Pondering the Near Time Ahead

It has been a long three weeks of August. The first week I had company, caught a cold, and got the oldest grandson for a few days. The second week I got the youngest grandson who kept us busy with wanting to do something most of the day including kayaking and a 10 mile bike  ride. Although, I will admit we binge-watched "Merlin" on Netflix and he did make it through two seasons and loved it. The characters were uplifting and real. I always like how Britain uses all ages in its series. 

That week was followed by three days with granddaughter  at our house where we played with photography a bit (she says she loves photography but not sure she loves the patience and details required. )  I also supervised her  exercises to get ready for Cheer leading  Camp.  She did 250 jumping jacks and high knee runs interrupted by push-ups for another count of  250.  I got  tired just counting!  She has a really lovely well-muscled body.   We also binge watched the new season of  "Anne With an  E...Anne of  Green Gables."  That is so  well done that she was completely enthralled  and  truly upset when the character, Cole, left. Avon Lea..and we left home had to head up here.  (Her parents have Netflix, so she can watch the ending.)  Then we drove her back home to here in the suburbs outside  the city.  We are being chauffeurs  in taking her to cheer leading  sessions the rest of this week while  also sitting the  oldest grandson  who now has a  little  cold.  The busy life of a  family!

We will  celebrate a birthday of the grand-girl and our  48th wedding anniversary on Thursday evening, and then, hopefully, head home on Friday evening after doing some more chauffeuring during the  day.

It will  be a strange time in the coming week with no child obligations  and only gardening  and housecleaning to do.   It is always like a mini-childless time similar to when my children  headed  off to college and I had  only a job to distract and fill  my days followed by quiet evenings  and  an even  quieter dinner.  Like everything in this world it requires some adjustment.  It just seems in  retirement you have more  time to ponder over the  adjustments being made and less to  distract you.  It seems to bring a magnifying glass  to the  ever creeping end of times ahead.

I am not saying this with huge sadness, but more a realistic view as to how  to adjust so  these final years are more carefully planned.

Kayak Lessons

We have the youngest of the grands for a week and I become somewhat bipolar in making sure they have something fun with which to build a memory and also making sure they are left alone to just vegetate as their summer weeks are usually filled with travel and camps and heavy scheduled time. Yesterday was Kayak lesson day which put Grandpa in his sweet spot. I guess the photographer also enjoyed this!

He is a bit of a water bug, so not afraid to get out on the river.

He practiced strokes while we held the kayak by rope. Then we got into the canoe and he stroked around us while we held on to the rope, then we let him go.

We paddled just around the point and found our selected beach was a bit gone at high tide.  It was still walkable and they got out to rest for a while.

I stayed in the canoe and took photos of the late summer fruited trees against the setting sunlight.

And I watched the kayak bob on the colored water.

The older male taught the younger male how to cast and as luck would have it we got a nice 8-inch perch to add to our crab dinner that night!

It is always a miracle when everything goes perfectly!

Some Days It Is Like Walking Through the Looking Glass

I have my HVAC annually maintained, but this year I skipped the winter check and when spring arrived the spring maintenance team found several issues.  The company explained they could replace some parts but with no guarantees as to how long this 12-year-old unit would continue to function.  I agreed and weeks later they sent us a repairman.

We are old people and my husband loves chatting.  So, as we showed this pearshaped 40-year-old to the basement we talked about house structure, property taxes, maintaining yards.  The man worked for about an hour on both the inside unit and the outside unit and then he told us that the concern for the loss of Freon was not an issue and we would at least not have to pay for that expensive replacement.

As he was preparing the bill at the kitchen table, the man brought the subject around to how divided our country was over politics.  We agreed but left it at that.  Then he began to talk about conspiracy theories.  We smiled and said that many people were easy to dupe if they wanted to believe something was true, but as a former librarian researcher (me) and a former science researcher (Hubby) we felt comfortable in finding the facts we needed to make decisions.

He continued talking and brought up the moon landing and how he wondered how it could possibly be true if that flag was flying in the photos where there is no atmosphere.  My mouth fell open briefly and then I said I had never considered that and I thought it was unrolled stiff plastic because scientists knew it would be limp---NASA knows more about the atmosphere than anyone I know. ( I had to later Google this flag issue to realize that there are people who think the whole moon landing was fake!)  Then he went on about flat-earthers' arguments and I began to get a creepy feeling that he was one of them.  

As he was collecting his tools he went on to tell us a story about his grade-school stepson who was being bullied in school and how he was teaching him martial arts at home.  When I asked why he did not bring the bullying to the Principal's attention, he said the bully was a black kid and they would not do anything because they were afraid of it being a racial call.  I had to take his word for it but was suspicious since he had been so strange in his deductive reasoning in all the prior conversations.

At least you do not have to be smart about conspiracy theories to fix the AC because he must have done what was needed since we have had cool air inside all this month!  (Yes, I do live in one of "those" counties, lord help me.)

A Long Weekend and We All Survived.

This was one of the best days the whole time!!

A man and his wife came to visit us from Hawaii these last few days. We have known the man for decades and his wife (second) for a little less than that. (His first wife died of cancer and we knew her quite well.) My husband hired the man as a graduate student years ago on a grant. They lived together on a boat in the harbor in Hawaii before their marriages, dived together, did lab research together and my husband probably even saved his life when he had an appendix attack in the middle of the night by carrying him to the car and carrying him into the emergency room. Together they were a good team. The man is a big practical joker and hubby went along on some of the actions including re-editing the Science Building calendar announcements to more risque messages for a few months until the University finally got a lock on the glass-encased board.   I write this just to give you an idea of how close the guys were.

This couple, after moving to Texas, now live in Hawaii and we visited them once a long time ago.  The man has recently retired and they are now doing some travel.  The man, let us call him Joel, is a tall thin cowboy type.  His wife is more the shorter wider version of a country girl (woman).  They came to spend four nights at our house as their first stop heading down the coast to Florida.

Since I had visited them many years ago in Hawaii and hubby had also reminded me of their quirks, I was somewhat prepared.  Quirks?  We all have quirks, right?  Well, on the first dinner I served chicken and rice.  The wife, Molly, said she really liked rice, but they don't eat it much anymore.  When I asked "why", she explained that you had to buy such large bags of rice in the big box discount store that they decided they never could get through them before the rice got too old.  (?)  Yeah, I know.  I did not say anything but watched her plow through her second serving with gusto.  She really liked my coffee and I wondered if they also did not buy coffee because it came in such large bags at the discount store.  (Kona coffee is marvelous.)

They brought in big boxes of cereal, a cooler of food, etc. since they were touring the entire southeastern U.S. via rental car, visiting friends and relatives.  I stowed it away for them.  While they ate most of what I cooked, they did eat cereal for both breakfast and dinner some days.  My husband who had stayed with them a few years ago said that Joel would eat nothing but cereal at every meal while hubby was there.

Joel and his wife liked to go to the local large hotel in Hawaii when they had live bands to dance.  He said they did not go for dinner because it was too expensive, but they did order dessert and then danced.  They stopped going dancing a while back for two reasons last year.  The dance floor got too crowded and they started an annoying $10.00 cover charge.  (Joel has over a million dollars in stocks for retirement.)

Hubby also cautioned me that they were very conservative in their political views and so we had to keep the TV off most of the time.  The only news channel they watch is Fox.  Hubby explained that we watch a number of news channels, but mostly Public Television and BBC since they are the most balanced in news.  Thus, we watched the weather channel and few detective shows.

To further complicate this visit my grandson was due to come stay two nights before they left.  This actually worked out really well, because grandson taught them card tricks and Joel had some good card tricks in his repertoire that he taught grandson.  

To further complicate the visit we had 5 inches of rain the first day, 2.5 the second day and rain off and on the entire rest of their visit!  We did take a few day trips, but they were carefully arranged around the many storms.

To further complicate the visit, Molly came down with a cold the first morning and Joel came down with it a day and half later.  They were brave to soldier on with a few trips, but we actually let them sleep most of the time.

Molly acted like a good-old-girl, but she was smart as a tack and I think she knew where we stood regarding our illustrious leader.  She kept complimenting me on food, the house, our letting them sleep in and I kept wondering if she thought liberals were usually not this "nice."

They left today, and we hugged and smiled and proved that people can get along when we admit we cannot change each other's mind.  I did wonder if they were thinking about how blind we were to the truth, because that was what I was thinking about them.

Oh, you can catch a cold from a conservative, because I am now soothing a scratchy throat with tea.

Some Electrical Stimulation

Air travel is less complicated these days in that we can actually check in online before we leave the house, but packing seems to be more complicated. The photo below includes less than half of the electronics we took on this last trip.

Hubby has been aging like fine wine and has the back problems to prove it. We had to take an electrotherapy unit to ease his lower back pain as well as a heating pad. Then there are the phones that need to be charged using the charging units we take. This photo fails to include the two e-readers and their chargers that we own as well as my various battery chargers for at least two cameras that I took on the trip. I did not take a laptop but I thought about it.  I now leave the Fitbit and its charger at home because it is too hard to take care of near pools and in tropical rainstorms.  Hubby has a headlamp that he sometimes brings, but it requires regular batteries.

These intricate items all have to be carefully put into net bags or Ziplocks when packing so that we can keep them together and so that we don't mix them up with the grandkids and kids various electronic devices.

I was just wondering if we could take a trip to a place that had few electric outlets and would we survive?

Or do we just need a cold beer?

Always a Travel Post About the People

My trip to St. Kitts happened to fall on a three-day musical festival at the Arena in the capital. We did not get tickets as being in an arena with tons of people is not my idea of a vacation. Patti LaBelle was the only name I recognized and the majority of singers, band, etc. were Reggie, rap, etc. Yes, they were mostly black folk. What this meant is that for one of the few times in my life I was in a high-end hotel and I was in the minority regarding my ethnic background. This had happened in Egypt years ago, but the Saudi Arabian men were haughty and rude and one actually shoved me aside much like Trump had done with the Prime Minister from Montenegro last year while I was trying to check in! 

These black tourists from all across the globe were much nicer, and really much better dressed.  I wished I had upped my evening wear, and exercised more by the end of the week when waiting for our driver at the front of the hotel.  I saw tons of really interesting and exotic hairstyles, dresses clinging to barbie doll bodies but did not think it appropriate to snap away, so you will have to take my word for it.

There were many other people there as well and below is a brief montage of those whose path I crossed, or who crossed my path.  (The vibe was much nicer than when I went to Jamaica a few years ago.  The economy and the tourist trade seem to be responsible for that.)

Our driver, Nigel, who was absolutely the key to our having great food and a wonderful time.  Getting married this August for the first time!

A nice collection of young ladies on the beaches!

I think these folks said they were from Cleveland (?)...maybe here for the music festival.

They might have been here for an anniversary or some such.  Maybe they were famous musicians!

A young couple who took the boat to Nevis with us.  I think from New York.

A small example of the lovely hairstyles.

A local who works in the tourist trade.

We took the local train on St. Kitts and this was the tour guide.  She had an excellent background in the history of the area.  I think she said she had a graduate degree.

A trio that sang for us...wonderful harmonies, slave songs, spirituals and some oldies but goodies.

While eating lunch I was trying to catch hubby and this fellow apologized for photobombing the event.  He was from Chicago on vacation and fun to talk to. 

It is always all about the people, is it not?

That Lonely Walk on the Beach

The photos from that quiet morning walk are below. Vacations with families (at least mine) are usually filled with lots of activities, tours and restaurant stops. All pre-planned by the two executives (both in their jobs and their lives) and we grandparents make a good attempt to tag along  keep up.

Thus the morning walk by myself was just the tonic I needed. As I mentioned the beaches were not being used by the people staying at the resort. The resort did provide free shuttles to two other beaches on another side of the island that were not covered in sargassum grasses and while not having any lifeguards these beaches did have restaurants and restrooms.

Back at the resort, you can see from above, perhaps, how soft this sand is. The footsteps have been easily softened by the ocean breezes. It is like walking on pillows! Good workout for ankles and knees, but requires one to walk more slowly for careful balance. When I had gotten around the point of the beach and into the more remote areas, this was one of the first beach signs I encountered. Not exactly drawing me in as it reminded me of a death memorial!

Just ahead were the horses...not the donkeys, tied to the edge of the coast with small plastic tanks of water nearby.  The photo below gives a good example of how rural the area was.

I walked some more and came upon an abandoned sea moss research laboratory. Sad in so many ways.  I think it was initiated in 2015 to encourage cottage industry for the locals.  There is a sea moss cocktail/drink, which I did not try, which is supposed to help with male fertility.  There were some buoys still offshore, so maybe something is still happening.

I came across a very few sandpipers (I think) scurrying along the second point that I rounded in my walk.  Conch shells washed ashore are in abundance.

There was no noise on this side of the island.  Just the sound of the wind as it moved along the coastline even muffling the sound of waves.  It was extremely peaceful.  

I did not collect this beautiful conch shell as I did not know the rules for collecting shells, did not have room in my luggage and have passed that time in my life as I have an extensive shell collection already.  I did eat some fried conch that week.

As the island curved out again, the beach appeared to have come to an end.  I paused and explored some of the flora and fauna and then regretfully had to return to the resort as I was out of my water.  The horses were even less curious about me on my return.

Slowly I re-entered civilization.

Maybe ready for a nap before lunch?  Hoping you got a bit of the atmosphere and mood of this tiny island in the Caribbean.