A Year Later Remembrance: Boarding the Cruise Ship

Sunday, December 27th, 2009 was finally here and it was time to board the ship! Almost a year of anticipation and preparation was about to come to fruition! A cruise may not be a very big deal to many, but for us down home country folk at Pure Water Hollow Homestead, it was enormous! We don't even go on many small vacations like a weekend camping trip, and we had seldom been away from the homestead for more than a few consecutive days ever! This trip was going to have us away for at least 10 days, including seven nights on the high seas in the Caribbean!

We had little idea what to expect, so we over-packed and over-prepared. We had the passports made and they came in on time. All the preliminary plans with the cruise line seemed to be in order. I hired a good dependable young fellow to look after the homestead livestock while we were away. We successfully made it to Port Canaveral the night before, just as hoped for. Actually, it was pretty amazing that we got to the Radisson at the same moment that each of the rest of the group got there! It was almost like we had been in a big caravan, when we had actually travelled independently. Hoyt, Merri Ann and Nancy were there, Joe, Nikki, and Kylie made it, Cheri, Chelsea, Chris, and Tad pulled in, and also Justin, Kristy, and Brett! All 5 of our vehicles had arrived safely and at about the same time!

Everything had come together, and I think we (my family) were a bit surprised that it was really happening!

It was a cool, overcast day in Florida when the moment to go to the ship finally arrived. Soon, however, we knew we would have heat and sun!

We left our van back at the hotel and took the Radisson shuttle to the dock. Excitement was really mounting at this point:

We all had to get our luggage and take it into customs to get on the ship. Here is Chelsea, Tad, Merri Ann, Chris, and Sheri:

Better make sure we have the camera! Lisa was ready to get on board...

So was everyone else:

We didn't know exactly how to get into the ship, but we knew we were close:



It took quite a long time to go through the winding line to get checked for customs. I guess they were being careful so no terrorists would get on board, which made the 2 hour wait worthwhile! They didn't allow any pictures taken of the process going through the line....

But finally we were on board! Here is the first picture I took on the ship:



Here we are waiting for the ship to shove off:




In the movies you always see a man in tuxedo smashing a bottle against the ship to make it move, but I don't think that happened this time....(of course it wasn't the maiden voyage of the Freedom of the Seas, either)

But soon enough we could feel the big ship moving!




Waving goodbye to the last sight of United States soil was unique and I must admit, felt a bit strange. We never dreamed we would one day be going away from the US onward toward foreign lands! It was about this time that we realized there was no turning back. We would soon be in the middle of the ocean with no land in sight!



Here was our first look around the deck. (We knew we weren't in Kansas [Kentucky] anymore!) There were crew members by the pool doing some comedy and music:



Now it was time to settle in and explore the amazing vessel we were to be a part of for the next week...