Thanksgiving In Captiva…

Dylan day-dreaming in his floaty at the pool – South Seas Island Resort, Captiva

Every other year we try to make the trip down to Captiva Florida to spend the Thanksgiving Holiday with Julie’s family and all of her Cousins, Nieces and Nephews. It’s always a nice time getting together with Julie’s immediate family, but being able to get the entire family together in one place like this every two years is truly special. What made this year even more special was that there would be a new member added to the family reunion… little Dylan! Not only would this be Dylan’s first trip to Florida, but more importantly it would be the first time that Dylan would get to meet Julie’s Cousins and their children.

Julie, Dylan and I wanted to say thank you to everyone for a wonderful week! We look forward to getting together with everyone again soon, but until then please keep in touch. I’ve added some photos from the weeks events to this post… and yes, I know that most of them are of Dylan, but honestly… what did you expect?!
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Dylan’s First Bermuda Trip!

When my wife and I first decided to try having children, we made a pat with one another, that we would do our best not to let parenthood infringe upon our need to travel and our passion for scuba diving. Well… I guess one out of two isn’t bad! At first, I think I was most worried about just trying to travel with a small child. You hear horror stories all the time about a small child screaming the entire flight and pissing off the other passengers or how you have to pack three times as much stuff when you travel with children… you know… just in case?!

Dylan’s first day at the beach… ever! – Tucker’s Point Beach Club, Bermuda

There’s no wonder that a lot of families just don’t bother to travel anymore after having kids… No doubt, it’s a lot of work, but I really didn’t want us to fall into that category no matter what! So, not to long after Dylan was born, Julie and decided to make plans for a experimental trip to one of our favorite getaway spots… the island of Bermuda. Julie and I visit the island quite often, so not only do we know our way around, but we also know what to expect once we get there. And to top that off, it’s only a two plus hour flight from DC… so even if we found it overwhelming trying to manage a child on the plane at least it wouldn’t be long before we were back on solid ground.

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The Macy’s Day Parade 2009!

This past Thanksgiving, Julie and I traveled to New York City to spend the holiday weekend with her family and take in some of the sights of the city. One of the highlights of this trip would be a front row seat at the starting line of the Macy’s Day Parade! Julie’s sisters place is a half a block from the starting point of the parade at 77th street and Central Park West, so since neither one of us had ever seen the parade live before (and we happened to be in the neighborhood)  we decided to check it out first hand. Wow… looks like everyone else in the city had the same idea!! I’ve added some photos from the event, but I have not had a chance to add captions yet. As you look through the photos keep in eye out for the one’s with Cindy Lauper… she was on the pink castle float! Enjoy…!!!
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The Cayman Islands… Revisited!

Okay, so it’s been almost a year! That doesn’t mean that I’ve totally forgotten about it… it just means I’ve been a little busy!! Forgotten about what, you ask?! Well for those of you who don’t know where this is going let me bring you up to speed. In September of last year, Julie and I put together a dive trip to Grand Cayman for ourselves and a couple of friends of ours who had just finished their open-water scuba certification course.

It would be their first time diving in ‘true’ open-water and they asked me if I thought Grand Cayman would be a nice spot to break in their dive logs. My response… “Why hell yeah… there’s great diving in Cayman!!” Anyway, to make a long story a little shorter, we took our good friends Chris and Val to Grand Cayman for a week of excellent weather and better than average diving on Cayman’s North Wall.
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More From Colorado…

During our trip to Winter Park we found some time to get away from the slopes for a little sight seeing. We took a day off in the middle of the week to hit Steamboat and then another half day to tour around downtown Denver. On our last day in Colorado we took a long detour to the airport and hit the town of Golden Colorado to see the America Mountaineering Museum. This was such a great trip and we covered so much ground it felt like we were driving all over the state! Here are some photos from our sight seeing detours during our stay in Colorado…. Enjoy!
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Snowboarding In Colorado…

We just got back from spending a week at altitude in Winter Park Colorado and for someone who’s not use to being much more than one or two hundred feet above sea level I can tell you it was a task!! I’m not going to go into a long story about the trip just because the photos can pretty much speak for them selves! I will say that after finally getting the hang of it the snowboarding thing was a hell of a lot of fun!! Enjoy the photos… more to come!!
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A Captiva Holiday…

This past Thanksgiving Julie and I traveled down to Captiva Florida for her family’s annual holiday gathering. We spent the week at South Seas Resort on Captiva Island which is on the Gulf side of Florida. There’s not much in the way of diving there, but that wasn’t the reason for our trip anyway. While visiting with her family, we managed to find some free time to do some sight seeing and a little exploring.  We even found some time to hit the beach… after all, it is an island! But the highlight of the trip (at least for me) was the chance to finally meet all of Julie’s cousins and their children for the first time. Here are some generic photos from our exploration of the island resort… enjoy!

South Seas Island Resort – Captiva Island, Florida

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Some Photos From Cayman…

I’ve taken a break from my normal daily grind to throw a couple of images up from our Grand Cayman trip. It always makes me feel better to do non work related stuff during the day! No, I still haven’t gotten around to editing all the underwater photos yet. Nor have I had a chance to make a new travel page for the ‘Dive Trip’ section of my Web site. However… I did save a ton of money on my car insurance by switching to Geico! Sorry… I’ve been dieing to use that line!

Anyway, here are some teaser topside photos that didn’t need any editing. Enjoy… more to follow!
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Sunset at Castaway Island…

A couple of weeks ago, while going back through some of the photos from our Fiji trip earlier this year, I came across a folder of images that I had not previously seen. The photos were ones taken by both Julie and myself with our small land camera on Castaway Island. We normally use large format cameras for our underwater photography, but now we also keep a small Fujifilm FinePix F31fd with us as a pocket camera (for those times when we don’t want to look like a paparazzi.) Although it doesn’t have the same sensor quality as a digital SLR, it does take very nice pictures and at a fraction of the cost of my Nikon!

Just about every evening, during the Castaway Island cocktail hour, Julie and I would go to the Sundowner Bar to watch and photograph the brilliant South Pacific sunsets. It wasn’t until I looked at the photos on a large monitor that I realized how nice they actually turned out. Here are a couple sample photos from the sunset collection taken with our Fujifilm FinePix F31fd… Enjoy!

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Home from Grand Cayman…

Well we’re finally home and some what settled from our land-based Cayman dive trip. Despite the storms that hit the island just prior to our trip, the weather and diving conditions were much better than expected. I haven’t had a chance to look at all the pictures yet, but I think we came back with some really good ones! I’ll write up a full post about the trip later after I’ve had time to go through and edit all the photos.

This weekend will be spent doing the usual unpacking & cleaning of all our dive gear. As much as I hate having to clean it all up and put it away, I know it has to be done. I’ll also have to soak the camera housings and strobes in clean fresh water for several days to loosen all the sand & salt deposits. Sounds like a lot of fun, doesn’t it?!

Stay tuned… more on this trip to follow!!