Cayman Trip - Day 7: East Side

Sorry it is taking me so long to get this trip report out. I know I am including more information than anyone out there cares about, but I am using it as my journal for the trip, and I want to remember this stuff. I have gotten busy this week and haven't been able to write up my posts. Hopefully they will be done by the end of this week!

So - Day 7, we are getting toward the end of the trip, and I am totally starting to realize it now. I started to think of the things I hadn't done yet and it was making me sad. So I made a resolution not to ruin the end of my vacation by thinking of it as the ending. Instead I was going to put as much fun and relaxation into it as I could!

Day 7 was a Thursday. We took it pretty slow this morning too. I walked to the store on Rum Point with Val that morning and bought myself a large men's long sleeved rash guard. I did this because I was still CRAZY sunburned from Tuesday, but I wanted to be able to have fun playing in the sun! I put it on (and looked rather silly) but it kept the sun off my shoulders, and I was able to have some fun playing in the water. Val bought herself a new snorkel and mask because somehow her snorkel broke on our trip to Stingray City. I helped to convince her to get the HOT Pink mask. I must admit, I was a little jealous. You can see her from a mile away!

After we shopped we decided to go out onto the pier and take pictures before the cruise ships arrived.  It was amazingly hot and humid that day.  I made the mistake of thinking a skirt would be cooler than a pair of shorts (TOTALLY WRONG) but we suffered through the elements and took pictures.

Matt took this really awesome panorama of Rum Point.  Click on the four armed arrow and you can zoom around.  Isn't it so pretty?

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It seemed like a good day to have lunch at the Rum Point restaurant. the food was pretty good. It was grill food, hamburgers, fish sandwiches, and such. I honestly don't remember what I got! (I guess it has been too long). But it was good and we had fun. Most of my fries went to feed my nephew Daxton, because his food was slower in coming than the rest of ours. But it was good and fun.

We chilled out for a lot of the afternoon. I didn't want to spend the rest of the day at the blue house, so I proposed that Matt and Val and I go for a walk and just walk around. Just as we stared our walk we changed our minds and decided to go for a drive to the East side, since we hadn't been out there yet. We went back to the house and announced our plan. Before we knew it everyone was getting ready to go. We piled into the cars and set out.

Our first hope was to find a good place to snorkel. We pulled over at a public beach. It was beautiful (as is the entire island) but it was grassy and didn't look like there would be very much to look at if we got in the water. It was close to sunset about this time (it went down between 6 and 7), so we walked around the beach. The East side of the island must be where the waves come in, because there was a lot of coral and sea shells washed up on the beach. We walked around and picked up pieces of coral to look at (can't bring it home though - against the law).

Down the beach a little ways was a large Shoe Tree - there were tons of flip flops and other shoes hooked to this tree. I guess they wash up on shore just like the shells do.

Now I have to pause for a sappy moment. When everyone started walking back toward the car, Matt pulled me aside. He took me to where no one could see and asked me to dance. I didn't know what was going on, but I said yes, and we danced on the beach. He reminded me it was the anniversary of "No day" - or the day we met and I said no when he asked if I would dance with him. Very sweet!

So we walked back toward the cars and hung out for a while on the beach. There were these gazebos set up with picnic tables. They were all painted bright colors. Very nice. Daxton went chasing after a chicken (they were all over the place) and then the kids found a swing to play on and a large colored iguana statue. They were having fun.

It started to get dark so we headed home. Our car (the one without little kids in it) stopped at the small grocery store to get our last set of groceries of the trip. My Brother-in-law had the brilliant idea that we would grill chicken for dinner that night. He also suggested that we get the stuff for smores.

We got home to the blue house and realized we should have picked up some charcoal, since there were only 9 in the bag - not enough to cook chicken for everyone. Instead we cooked it up in the pan, but kept the grill going for dessert.

After the kids went to bed (haha) we broke out the marshmallows and chocolate and graham crackers and made some ooey gooey sticky yummy s'mores. It was fun and really tasty!

Since the trip report is wrapping up now, I thought I would add a small discussion about what we did after dark in the blue house. We were lucky enough to have cable, and a couple of the nights the Jazz were playing, though the games started at 9:30 local time, which was pretty late. We often went out onto the screened porch and played cards until late in the night. I learned how to play phase 10.

One of the nights, after everyone else went to bed, Val stayed up and went to look at the stars. While she was out on the dock she noticed something glowing in the water. At first she thought it was a bright fish, but she then realized it was the water itself that was glowing. The next night she had us all out on the dock throwing rocks and coconuts into the water to see the splash glow. It was one of the most amazing things I have ever seen. We tried (really hard) to catch it on camera, but it wasn't bright enough for any of our cameras to pick up. We went into the shallow part of the water and it would glow around our feet and where we kicked. It was totally amazing. I think it was described by one of our group as fireworks in the water. AMAZING!

Coming Soon - Day 8: Scuba (or where is Val?)