An Update from our 6 Month Vacation from Cruising...Celebrating Family and Enjoying Travel!

Our last post reported that we were storing Sum Escape and doing some family visits and air travel.  This was one of those “stars are aligned” opportunities.  One, it was our 40^th wedding anniversary and we wanted to celebrate it with some travel.  Second,  we wanted to be with our daughter and son in law in Bellingham for the month of February for the birth of our first grandchild.  Third, our youngest son will be married in late May in Estes Park Colorado.  Fourth, we really like the North Channel, Georgian Bay, Thousand Islands fresh water summer exploration so a winter storage of the boat in the North allows us another summer here as we travel South again for the winter.  Lastly, the marina could perform all necessary maintenance during our absence so we would be ready to go.  So, it was planned and what a great six months it was!
We left the boat in Grand Haven MI on October 10 and spent a couple months in Sarasota at a VRBO.
An egret at the Dry Dock on Longboat Key.  Maybe this is "Big Bird" one of the egrets Julie's Mom used to feed.

We had a great time there and had visits from Carey and Nancy (Tug Lee Loo), Tom and Vicki (Grand Baron), Ken and Karen (Island Girl) and also visited Ed and Diane (Coaster) at Longboat Key marina.  We also flew to Michigan for Thanksgiving to see Mom, son Jordan and daughter in law Eliza for a few days.

We had a good time in Sarasota enjoying daily walks, the Amish/Mennonite markets nearby, boating twice with with Julie’s brother Kevin and sister in law Debbie, a visit with Tom and Jill (Julie’s cousin in Punta Gorda) and planning/booking the rest of our six month vacation.

Our friends Kevin and Mary flew down and stayed for a few days too.  

It was so much fun with all the folks we were able to see in Sarasota!

In mid December we flew to Denver to see our son Brett and his fiancée Natalie.  Got to try out the newly purchased down coats on a trip up to Rocky Mountain National Park to check out the wedding venue on the way.

Then we flew on to Bellingham to see our daughter Sarah and son in law Joe who will be having our first grandchild in February!  We hosted a baby shower at a local restaurant to meet all of their friends and celebrate the upcoming birth of our first grandchild.

Some more cold weather on Christmas Day!

We sadly also lost some friends during this time.  After our visit to Jill and Tom’s for Tom’s birthday celebration, he passed after a battle with cancer.  And Julie was also able to call and speak with our friend Cindy in December prior to her passing at the first of the new year.  We are so glad we had these short moments to spend and of course have many memories to cherish.  May they both rest in peace.

Sarah and Joe drove us to Seattle, we flew to Los Angeles and then on to Auckland New Zealand on New Year’s day.  We were very lucky to be able to upgrade to business class at the gate in LA for a very good price (versus the advance booking rate).  What a luxury that was on a 14 hour flight!  Lay flat bed, pajamas, slippers, two meals, etc.  Spoiled now…..

This was the start of a 20 day Globus Tour of New Zealand and Australia.  We arrived a couple days early and will stay a couple extra days at the end so our time was actually 23 days in the Southern Hemisphere.  Wow, what a trip.

We took a walking tour of Auckland upon our arrival.  The next day we took a ferry to Wahiki Island and hiked around a bit the day before the Globus tour officially started.

Our tour started with an introductory meeting and dinner.  There were 38 people on the tour and we enjoyed every one of them.  We were able to do many of the optional additional excursions with different people and tried to sit on the buses with others to get to know them.  Counting us, four couples were from Michigan!  We hope to host them at the boat in May sometime as a short reunion of sorts.

Many of you have already viewed our posts on Facebook so we think the best way to describe our New Zealand and Australia trip is through a few pictures and captions so here you go….  We wish we had spent more time there, there is just so much to see!
On our way to Mount Cook.

A helicopter tour of the Talisman Glacier.  Julie's first helicopter ride!

Various New Zealand photos.

 Milford Sound boat tour.

 The view from Queenstown after a gondola ride up for dinner.

 Our group at Uluru sunset. If you look closely you can see we are all just big kids!
We are now in the famous Outback of Australia!!

A cloudy day at the great barrier reef.  We did a glass bottom boat instead of the cloudy and wavy snorkeling.

Our day trip to the Blue Mountains.  They say the blue hue comes from the eucalyptus leaves.

Sydney is a spectacular city!

A photo from underneath the Opera House where the windows are angled to get a view of the city.  Great photo Julie!

Meeting Julie’s distant cousins in Sydney.  Lyn and Dennis from Julie's Dad's side of the family.  A great meeting!

Our farewell dinner with the group.  

After our farewell dinner in Sydney we departed for a couple days at Bulli Beach to “decompress” from our travels.  Decompress you ask?  Well, the tour company packs a lot into the tour!  Some mornings we were up for breakfast served at 6 AM with a “bag pull” from our rooms at 7 and a 7:30 bus departure for the next flight or adventure.  And some evenings we did not arrive at our destination until 8:30 and still needed dinner!  This is not a complaint, it was a fun packed 20 days!  With flight schedules and so many things to see they did a great job organizing.  All we had to do was get our bags to and from airports, all other times bags were taken to and from hotel rooms.  It was great to always have a room, breakfast and sometimes lunches and dinners all arranged for us.  We highly recommend Globus Tours.

After driving on the left side for a couple days we arrived back at Sydney for our flight to Honolulu.  Here is a little friend we picked up on our drive through a National Park.  It was as big as Julie's hand!

We decided to take a week cruise around Hawaii on our way back to Bellingham.  A big thank you to our travel agent, my sister Betty, for arranging the Globus tour and Norwegian cruise.  The stop “halfway” back to the US in Hawaii was great.  We only did one arranged excursion but rented a car at almost every stop to explore on our own.  Again, we will let the photos do the explanation. 

Diamond Head near out hotel before leaving on the cruise.

 

 We were even able to spend some time touring a coffee plantation with Allen and Ruth whom we met on the Globus tour.  They were spending a couple weeks in Hawaii on their way back to Michigan.

The Napali coast, just gorgeous.  Pictures cannot capture the beauty.

 We arrived back in Seattle and took the bus to Bellingham where Sarah picked us up.  It was snowing quite hard and the bus driver let everyone know we could be late and he would be focused on safe passage.  It really was not that bad, just wet and a bit slushy on the roads. We were so happy to be with Sarah and Joe as we awaited the birth of our first grand child.  On Sunday the 10^th of February Sarah picked us up for Church and we also went out to brunch.  She was remarking how great she felt on her due date!   That night while eating ice cream the process started.  We got a call that they were headed to the hospital!  It was a long labor capped with a C-section but a healthy Lucy Jo was born on Feb 12 in a historic snowstorm.  Bellingham received 13 inches of snow during the storm, the most snow in decades!  Our plan was no car as we had a VRBO about ¾ mile from Sarah and Joe’s and 1 and ¼ miles from the hospital.  But with no snow plows and only tennis shoes, Uber was in order to go to the hospital.  After that Joe got us the keys to their Jeep and we borrowed it for most of the rest of our stay.

 Our little Lucy Jo!!!

 

It was wonderful to be in Bellingham for the big day and to support Sarah and Joe and especially hold the precious Lucy Jo!!  What a miracle and blessing she is!  We are so happy for Sarah and Joe!

Brett and Natalie also flew out to see the baby and celebrate the birth.  We took a short day trip to Vancouver and walked around the beautiful city park a bit.

After the birth, we looked at one another and said what’s next?  Well Sue and Brian our good friends from Jenison said they were going on a 10 day Southern Caribbean cruise.  We had cruised with them a number of times years ago.  We played a bit coy and said we would consider it.  We never revisited the subject with them but we did book it and surprised them.  They were most definitely surprised!

After that we spent a couple days in Fort Lauderdale then flew to Marsh Harbour the Bahamas.   We took a ferry to Hope Town where we rented an old cottage for three weeks. 

Our little two bedroom 1890’s cottage was great for us.  Air conditioning, a back up generator for the frequent island power outages and close to the Hope Town Harbor and the Atlantic ocean side of the island as well. 

 Our time there included time with David and Vicki from our Great Lakes Grand Banks Association.  They have rented a home on Elbow Cay for many years and graciously included us in a couple boat trips, one to Lubbers Cay and Cracker P’s for lunch and another trip to Man-O-War Cay for lunch as well.

 A photo of Tahiti Beach.

We also had visitors from the AGLCA.  Jim and Mandy (Shell Belle) visited the harbor with their boat and we were able to have a coffee and also a dinner.  Infact, they had us aboard for a dinner!

Bill and Lauren (Sea Star) another GLGBA couple were enroute back from Grenada with their Grand Banks and stopped in Hope Town.  We were able to have a wonderful lunch with them and David and Vicki. 

 Kathy and Kenny (No Zip Code), whom we met in 2015 on our trip down the river system, were in Marsh Harbour for the Barefoot Man Farewell concert.  They graciously ferried over to Hope Town one afternoon and we were able to have a cocktail and dinner with them.  

We flew back to Fort Lauderdale for a couple days in Dania Beach before we headed to Denver for Natalie’s bridal shower.  We planned a two day stay but a forecasted major winter storm in Denver changed our minds!  Julie suggested that we look into changing our flight to a day later as airlines usually waive change fees if the storm is predicted to be severe enough.  Bingo, we changed and spent another mid 80’s day in Florida!  Here's why!

The visit to Denver for the shower was very nice.  The ladies had a great time at the shower.

Tom went out with Brett and his Father in law to be for snacks and beverages.  We were also able to go hiking with Brett and Natalie on Sunday and a great lunch on Monday before we left late Monday.

 We got back to cold Michigan on April 15.  Our boat was supposed to be ready for launch but the marina did not get all the work orders completed.  They were still varnishing, rebuilding the bow thruster motor, etc and said they would be ready to launch in a week.  So we found a home in Grand Haven on VRBO and rented it for a week.

We have so many friends and family to try to see here.  Tom is visiting his Mom every other day or so and we started to arrange times to see many others. 

Here is a photo after our Easter Sunday dinner with brother Larry, sister in law Eileen, Brian our nephew and his wife Holly and boys Jackson and Gavin.

 A view from our walks up to the top of Dewey Hill in Grand Haven.  This was our preparation for the altitude at Estes Park for the upcoming wedding of Brett and Natalie.

 Dinner with Mom for Mother's Day.

The time flew by as we finished up maintenance tasks on the boat, visited family, friends and started doing some re-provisioning for our travels in June.

We flew out to Denver and drove to Estes Park for the afore mentioned wedding on May 21.  Weather was surprising when we landed in Denver!

We rented a five bedroom home near the wedding venue in Estes Park and had our children and Julie’s brother and sister in law stay with us.  The wedding and visits with family was wonderful. 

 Weather did not cooperate (30 degrees below normal temperatures) for the outdoor wedding, but all went extremely well.  We think you will agree the snow adds a great character to the wedding photos!

 

 Congratulations Natalie and Brett!!

Upon our return on May 26, we continue to re-provision, assure the marina is done with all their assigned tasks and get back to our cruising lifestyle by the first of June we hope.
We did some more visiting with Mom and Courtney and Uncle Bud.  Here is Uncle Bud at almost 101!

We are looking forward to some warmer weather to get moving slowly north on Sum Escape.  We will post again once we get moving....more soon we hope!