11/26/08 Happy Thanksgiving Blog Readers! Tomorrow is the big day and we hope that all of you have a marvelous time with family and/or friends. We have driven our RV down to the Colorado River near Ehrenburg, AZ where we arrived today to spend the holiday with our fishing group, the RoVing Rods. Not being inclined to wait until tomorrow for feasting, Chuck and Peggy Palumbo prepared a nice spaghetti dinner for the 16 people already here, with everyone else contributing salads or dessert. If we had any hopes of starting to drop some of the pounds we gained on our recent cruise, they were dashed by this delicious meal. Usually this group meets at Mittry Lake, near Yuma. But they have relocated here in the hopes of catching more fish, and this move has already paid off for some of the fishermen. We hope this luck continues so that there might be a fish fry in the next few days, as well as the customary turkey dinner tomorrow.
Here are a few more details about our cruise and some pictures, which I promised you last time. The last post on this blog was from Punta Delgada, Azores, which was the second stop on our 12 day trans-Atlantic cruise. The cruise was on a Royal Caribbean ship called the Navigator of the Seas. Here we are in front of it. As you can tell, it is a huge ship: about 3000 passengers and 1200 crew.

The interior of the ship was very pretty (although the art work was kind of cheesy). Here is a picture looking down towards the Promenade deck:

There were also some whimsical characters near the onboard casino. The one is black is Elaine.

One of the best parts of the cruise was having our friends, Dick & Carole Schneider on the ship with us. Here they are with Elaine up on the upper deck.

Punta Delgada is a very nice little town, with old yet attractive buildings and is obviously very well maintained. This time there were a lot of Christmas decorations up in the narrow streets and also lots of colorful flowers:

Besides walking around in the streets and doing some e-mails at the internet, Carole, Elaine and I took a local bus over to the other side of the island and back. It was interesting to see the fields in the interior as well as what the other towns were like where there was not much tourist activity because they are away from the cruise port. Besides meeting 2 Mormon missionaries on the bus, who greatly impressed us with their maturity and dedication, we also met a young man in a small bar when we stopped for a glass of local wine. He gave us a lot of information about the life there, as well as the food and the wine.
Then it was time to enjoy 6 days at sea. There were many activities on the ship, including 2 different ice shows, live entertainment every night after dinner, and game show type events and dancing until the wee hours. Elaine and I did several exercise classes each day and also spent some time using the elliptical machines and weight machines in the gym, as well as walking on the deck a lot to try to burn off some of the thousands of calories we were eating every day!
There were three formal nights for dinner, so we dressed up a bit. Here we are with Dick & Carole, looking much nicer than usual, don't you think?

There were 4 gay guys at the table next to us at dinner, so we exchanged seats with the straight couple who was assigned to their table and we ate with them several nights. They were all very nice and wonderful company, and we were glad to have the chance to spend some time getting to know them better.

Another friend we made on the ship was a guy named Ray Rosborough, who used to work in the SF Sheriff's department with our good friend, Jonna Harlan. What a small world!

Our last port was Nassau. We have been here before several times and think that the town is not very charming, but we walked around a bit anyway, just to get off the ship. Here is a picture of the ships that were already moored here and the town:

We had a very nice group of people at our table for dinner every night, including a delightful older couple from the Czech Republic and a Canadian couple who also have a place in Florida, named Paul and Joan. We had an enjoyable cocktail party in their room while the ship was docked in Nassau, and it was great to hang over their balcony and look at the scenery and passing boats.

Our cruise ended last Saturday, but by the time we flew back from Ft. Lauderdale, Florida it was late so we stayed at a hotel near SFO. Then we took BART back to Fremont to pick up our car from Tarra's. Next we had to drive back to Park Sierra, stopping on the way to have a late lunch in Merced with my granddaughter, Paige. Monday was busy with chores like laundry and appointments at Kaiser in Fresno. So we felt lucky that we were able to get away from Park Sierra by about 10 AM on Tuesday to start the drive south. Tuesday night we stayed at an Indian casino between Redlands and Palm Springs and a massive rain storm hit after we went to bed. There was so much standing water in one of the rest areas we stopped in today that I'm surprised there weren't ducks swimming around! We are hoping for nice weather tomorrow for the Thanksgiving Feast, since RV events always have to be held outside.