Vacation III

 I'm having trouble remembering which day we did what.  My memory is awesome!

So instead of trying to remember the order of things, I'll be listing some of the fun things we did...in a random order.

Get ready for lots of pictures...

We drove to the end of the island to a beach called The Pirates cove.  A very cool place!

We hiked around a while and found a ladder going down into the rocks.  So we went down the slightly rickety ladder into a beautiful little cove.

We snorkeled and walked on the beach.  

We saw tons of star fish (huge ones!), a manta ray that swam right by us near the beach, and really enjoyed the day there.

Here's the rickety ladder that we found going down into a cave type of thing by the water...

Coming out of the cave, we were in a beautiful cove, shallow enough to walk all the way around to the beach.

See the rock overhang?  We snorkeled under there later.  It was cool!

Our first starfish

The manta ray...you'll just have to trust me. :-)

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We took a boat to Middle and North Caicos

The last time we were here we had a great day on these two islands

snorkeling

hiking

eating

and exploring.

And these islands are known for the pink flamingos that live there.

So we arrived early in the day and immediately starting looking for somewhere to have breakfast.

and we looked

and looked

and drove 

and drove

we stopped and saw a couple of nice beaches along the way though so it wasn't totally wasted.

But we did drive a lot.

We finally ended up eating at the first restaurant that had seen...way back at the other end of the island!

We explored a cool cave

We ended the day on a lovely beach where we snorkeled.

I laid under this little overhang to keep out of the sun...until the tide started coming in that is.

I thought these were the coolest little plants!

They look like caterpillars when you first look at them, but they are plants.

Very colorful!

The only bummer of the day?

After spending a lot of time looking...we saw ZERO pink flamingos!

Last time there were tons!

So dissappointing.  I wonder where they all went?

Vacation Part II

We spent Monday going to some of our old favorite beaches.

Snorkeling and walking on the beach.
Took very few pictures because we were busy having fun and we were wet and sandy.
Feels dangerous around electronic devices of any kind...

This band was on our plane and we happened across them as we explored beaches.

Someone flew them out to play for their private party. The beach was all set up with beautiful tables and flowers.  I was a little jealous of how awesome it looked.  Of course I didn't take any pictures.  Lame.

Vacation!

This is our big One Year Cancer Survivor Trip.  We decided to go to Turks and Caicos.  We've been there before a few years ago and it was the most amazing vacation we'd ever had. So, even though we are going at a different time of year we're hoping it will be equally amazing!

Even though its a celebration of Frank surviving, we didn't talk about cancer at all.  There was no celebratory dinner or anything like that.  We just did what we do now...enjoyed every day.

I don't think cancer has changed Frank much but one thing about him that is a tad different is that he is now a little more of a "family man".  He used to occasionally say things like "we have got to get away" and he'd want to go on a vacation together.  But now when we were planning this trip he said," I think we should take Carter." So, we brought Carter...lucky duck.

A few things we love about Turks and Caicos:
You drive on the other side of the road...kinda fun for a week.
The driver's side of the car is on the other side.
It's not too crowded (at least the two times we've gone)
Gorgeous blue, clear water.
Lots of amazing fish and reefs (is reefs a word?) to see right from the beach.  Amazing snorkeling!

We got a hotel room with a kitchen and we went and got groceries first thing.
We didn't eat out much which saved us a lot of money (and stress since eating is not that fun for Frank right now).
We had an amazing time!

A few pictures:

The view from our room.  We had a "garden view" room which looked over the "quiet" pool (which got surprisingly loud at night).

The walkway to the beach.