Aruba

Brian and I spent last week in Aruba.  Henson's invited us on another trip and it was the first since the whole debacle on the plane home from Costa Rica, so Brian endured some ribbing for that.  He drank plenty of water and was well rested, so no problems on this trip home. :)    We left VERY early Tuesday morning and spent a good majority of the day traveling.  Once in Aruba, we had a couple of hours to rest up and then had a welcome dinner.  We were in bed fairly early that evening - it was a long day!  I didn't take as many pictures on this trip as normal, but still got quite a few.

On Wednesday, our first full day, we slept late and ate a leisurely breakfast.  We had booked  a UTV island tour with 2 other couples we knew.  It was a blast.  The UTV's were super fun.  They would go pretty fast and we were all kinds of terrain - the main road with other cars, rocks, dirt road,  a muddy, potholey road... we had mud all down our sides when we were done.  

Aruba has a lighthouse.  Who knew?

We spent a lot of the time right next to the coast.

A church that was built in the late 1700s, then destroyed, then rebuilt in 1952. :)

I didn't get a picture of us in our UTV, so this one of Logan and Mandy will have to do. :)

Gold Mill Ruins

We stopped to do some diving - there was a little cave that you could crawl down a ladder and scoot across some rocks (as the waves were coming though and splashing on you) and dive into a more calm pool below.  We didn't wear swimsuits and didn't want to be wet the rest of the time, so we watched from the top cliff.

We stopped at this beautiful beach and took some pictures...

and even got a rainbow in this one!

Our UTV kinda acted weird the whole time, and we quickly found out why.  Brian went to start it and the temperature gauge was all the way to hot.  As you can see, there was a huge puddle of antifreeze under it and so we had to hop in another one and continue the tour.  

Here's the line of UTV's (our sad little broken down one is up on the right).

We had a great day!  We got back after dark and were muddy and gross, so we showered and went out for a nice leisurely dinner. 

Thursdays we took a submarine ride.  I was a little leary with my claustrophobia, but I looked online at the pictures of the inside and decided that I would go for it. We met at the office across from tour hotel and took a little ferry boat out to the "dive site".

The water was gorgeous.

There was already a little boat out there.  The sub would "pop" up ( I got a video, but it's taking 100 years to load, so never mind) and then we would sandwich it between our boat and the little boat.  We lined up on top of the sub and the people in side would get on the ferry and we would go down in the sub.  It was a well oiled machine - I think they did it like 8 times a day.  The inside of the sub was fine - almost like being in a little plane.

We saw fish and shipwrecks -  it was fun and definitely worth doing.

Brian filmed some of it for the boys on hid little camera.:)

We went down pretty far. 

We did some shopping in the nearby shops in the afternoon.  Our hotel had stores on the first floor, but they included Louis Vuitton, Burberry, Carolina Herrera, Gucci, etc.  Uh, no. This girl needed a good 'ol souvenir shop with keychains and magnets and t-shirts. :)  

Brian and I stopped in an Archeology museum just a couple of blocks from the hotel.  Not great, but it was free, so who's complaining? :)

We ate dinner that night with 3 other couples in a yummy steakhouse.  My appetizer soup came in the cutest cast iron mini dutch oven thing.  I took a picture and everybody made fun of me.  I'm guessing this is what old people do. :)

After dinner we visited out in the open air lobby and i noticed i got some bug bites.  I had tried a new smelly lotion and I think it attracted all the bugs.  I woke up the next morning at 5:00 clawing at bites my legs.  There was no going back to sleep, so I went downstairs to the Starbucks and got some coffee.  I sat out by the pool and enjoyed the morning view.

After I finished my coffee, I went to the 24 hour casino.  Yep, I was the joke on the trip.   I had been to the casino on and off by this point everybody was making fun of me. I knew there was a casino, so I took $100 to gamble with.  I did the penny slots, and by this time, I had lost it all but $8.  But as I was playing, I won $100, so I ended up winning everything back and called it quits. :)

After Brian got up, we ate breakfast and got ready to do some snorkeling.  We headed out to the hotel's private island.  They had a ferry that  you can take from the lobby.  The island has two beaches and rock "walls" that keep the waves calm so its almost like you are in a private lagoon.  The water is beautiful and there are flamingos that you can feed on the beach!

I snorkeled a little and then we had lunch at the restaurant.

The view was beautiful.

Lizards and iguanas everywhere.

After lunch we decided to do some more snorkeling - there was a shipwreck about 100- 150 yards past the rock wall of the lagoon.  Leaving the wall messed with my psyche.  When we were in open water, every Jaws movie scene came to mind.  I sucked it up and swam out there to see.  I didnt stay nearly long enough because my fear got the best of me.  But what we did see was really neat. (Pictures stolen from Logan and his fancy waterproof phone case)

Friday evening was the farewell cocktail party and hors d'oeuvres.

The sunset was stunning.

We ended up going to dinner after with Logan and Mandy and chatting for a couple of hours. 

I always buy an ornament on vacation to hang on our memory tree.  This one is definitely one of my favorites.  

Brian and I had a wonderful time.  Life can quickly get us bogged down with the day to day, but when we have time to get away and reconnect like this, it always confirms that he's my best buddy and there's nobody I'd rather be with.  :)

Day Six/Seven

I got up early Saturday morning to go back to Arches. We didn't see Delicate Arch (the most "famous" arch in the park) when we went on Wednesday and I knew I wanted to before we left. I decided to get up and go early by myself to see the sunrise. I had everything set out Friday night so I could creep out without bothering anybody. My clock in the car-

Delicate Arch is best viewed at sunset because of where it is on a hill so it's shaded in the morning.   I figured sunrise couldn't be too shabby. :) There are a couple of ways to see it.  The first being a 3 mile round trip hike, some bring over the slick rock  rock face. The other is a further away view point from across the canyon. It's only a 1/2 mile round trip. Being that it was pretty dark and I was by myself, I chose the second option. The pictures weren't as great as if I had gone at sunset, but it was still amazing (I kept fighting going at sunset because I knew it would be packed with people in the shot and I'm not a fan of that).   I was all alone at the viewpoint as the sun came up.

As you can see in the pictures, more and more people started showing up at the base of the arch the later it got (yep, those tiny things to the left are people). It was such a neat experience and I'm so glad I went. I took the drive out of the park slow and easy with the windows down and the cool 80 degree air coming in.  I got to see allot of things leaving that we didn't see coming in on Wednesday morning.

I got back to the condo of sleeping boys a little after 7. I grabbed some breakfast, showered, woke everybody up so we could finish packing up and get on the road.  We left Moab at little before 9:00.  Right outside of town, there is a place to stop called Hole in the Rock.  

A man named Albert carved out a hole in a rock for a house for himself and his wife.  After he died, she continued the work until she passed away.  We took the 12 minute tour.  It was so kitschy and fun.  They still had all the original furniture and everything in it.  It was musty smelling and such, but we got a kick out of going. They also have a petting zoo and some other very random things, but it was a fun little stop. 

We got back on the car and headed to our last destination, Four Corners.  It took about 2 1/2 hours and is in the middle of nowhere.  I'm glad we went, but it is definitely one of those been there, done that, check it off the list things.  We stayed for about 20 minutes. Enough to or take pictures and use the bathroom (pit toilets, ugh).  

Back on the road to head home.  We drove and drove. The trip home always seems longer, right?!?!?  

We drove until 12:45 (our bodies said 11:45) and stayed the night in Lubbock, so Sunday's drive wouldn't be horribly long.  The hotel bed was a welcome sight and we all slept pretty hard. We slept later Sunday morning than we had all week.  It 5 hours to get home and we were ready to be there. :) We had a wonderful trip and lots of sweet memories were made.