Always Onward Adventures

What a day today was. As you can see, an orca came to say hi to our boat today - the facial expressions say it all… We kicked off the morning with a hike to see the tortoises! The hike was about a mile and a half in an area called Urbina bay. This area was underwater until 1954 when an earthquake caused a dramatic uplift and about a mile of new land popped out of the sea within sec/min.

Day three in the Galapagos saw more snorkeling, an excursion to see the marine iguanas, and a Zodiac trip along the cliffs in the rain(amung other things). It also saw my first “Galapagos Moment” which Angela/I have defined as moments where you see something truely amazing that feels unique to the Galapagos. Each day, we were provided with a sheet that showed the schedule for the day along with details about what we needed to bring.

This was our first full day on the boat. A couple of remarkable things about the Galapagos: 1. It’s hot. The heat dictated our schedule and we tended to have early morning excursions and late avernoon excursions to avoid the heat of the day. It also impacted the animals - each with their own different adaptation for how to keep cool - or keep their eggs cool in some cases. 2.

Our day started at the hotel ~6a with breakfast and packing. We were to meet up with Nat Geo for a bus ride to the airport, flight to Galapagos, bus ride to the docks, and Zodiac rides to our ship. This was my first real taste of the level of organization that this company has - it was truely impressive. The morning went off without a hitch and when we landed in Galapagos it was early afternoon.

It’s been a while since my last post, but we haven’t been idle. Lost of skiing and boat work (in addition to real work) before our big trip to the Galapagos… Just scheduling the trip has been an adventure (credit to my mother), but 4 years later after countless reschedules, flight issues, and vaccine issues - we were on our way. Our trip began on Tuesday (4/4) with a 6a flight to Denver where we were to meet up with the grandparents for the continuation of the trip.

I had a grand plan of attempting the Palouse-to-Cascade trail, but plans fell through with some bike issues. Bit of a bummer, but we made the best of it! Our plan for the weekend was to leave on Friday night and grab a moorning ball at Blake island for the night, then spend the day playing around on Blake island before heading to Port orchard marina on Saturday night and head home on Sunday.

You may be wondering why there is a post in here about a new toilet… That doesn’t sound like an adventure (or at least not a fun one). Well, this project was quite the undertaking, so I wanted to document what I did and why - in case it’s of value to myself in the future (or anyone else). The toilet that came with the boat was the original when the boat was made in 2007.

This blog post will be slightly different than ones in the past. I recently went to Europe on a work trip, but I was able to carve out a couple of days for my own adventures. I’m certainly not going to write about work, but the trip had several experiences that I want to remember - hence the post. I had planned to go on a whirlwind trip with 2-3 days in each location (Dublin, Berlin, and Geneva) and the way schedules worked out, I had a free day in Dublin and another one in Geneva.