A Year Later Remembrance: Our To-The-Cruise Trip Last December

It's hard to believe, but last year at this time we were making our last minute preparations for our Caribbean cruise! Could a year already have passed? I never got a chance to blog about those experiences last year, so I am hoping to write some "A Year Later Reflections" as well as post many pictures of those adventures. (I may put up too many, as I have hundreds to choose from!)

We had an early Christmas at my Mom's house in Cincinnati on December 18th and 19th, during which time was a big 6 inch snow storm that knocked the power out for many in eastern Kentucky. Our home was without power at that time, but it didn't matter since we were not home! It was back on when got home to finalize our packing, but I remember thinking how horrible it would have been to be without electric while we were getting our last packing completed. Some in our area actually were without electric for that entire week!

Christmas day saw the Pure Water Hollow bunch leaving the cold and snow in the family van with visions of sun and palm trees dancing in our heads! We drove into Georgia and stayed Christmas night at a hotel. I wonder why we were the only ones there?

The children had fun playing in our hotel parking lot, which we had all to ourselves!



After driving another few hours, we stopped at a gas station and took some pictures of some of the first tropical plants we found:





The giant cow was pretty neat, too. They don't grow that big back home!



We drove on the rest of the way to our hotel at Cape Canaveral on the 26th. It was here at the Raddison that we got a foretaste of the luxury we were in store for on the ship. It was a beautiful hotel with many amenities. Here is what the pool looked like at the Raddison, with cousin Brett standing by it. You can't see the waterfall very good in the background, but it was so pretty:



It was neat that we could see the ocean from the hotel! We wondered if that was our ship off in the distance?

Here it is zoomed up. The anticipation was up to a fever pitch by this time!

I am glad that we chose to drive down there from Kentucky instead of fly, which was the first option we had considered. While driving down I-75 on the 25th and 26th we kept hearing reports on the radio of an attempted terrorist bombing of a passenger jet landing in Detroit. Other flights were grounded as the authorities tried to figure out for sure what was going on. This al-Qa'ida recruit actually had some sort of bomb in his underwear and almost blew the jet up, but he caught on fire instead of exploding! I'm not sure if our flight would have made it in time for the ship's departure on the 27th, had we flown!

It is also interesting how we can't really remember any of the negative feelings of being cooped up in the van for all those hours driving. We're not even sure now how many hours we drove each day! It was all erased by the incredible experiences that followed aboard the Freedom of the Seas!

With all of this winter weather we are having here, right now, I will enjoy going through our pictures and memories of the tropical Caribbean adventure we had which closed out 2009 and opened 2010 for us! (I will try to post more about them in the next several days.)