Oh, Abaco

Where to even begin about my trip to the Bahamas? Well, it started of with a red eye from LA to Miami, where we arrived at bright and early 6am (which was actually 3am CA time). After 6 hrs. in the ice box of an airport, we hopped on a plane that was taking us to Marsh Harbor, located on the Island of Abaco. When we arrived, we waited for the rest of our family to arrive, who were coming in on a later flight. I had a very relaxing afternoon; I took a walk down to the beach, laid in the hammock and read a book. What beats that? The rest of our family finally arrived and we spent the evening out by the pool catching up, though it had only been what 3 weeks since we last saw them. The rest of the evening Betsy, Justin and I flipped through the tv channels, trying to find a movie to watch. We ended up watching Planet of the Apes...weird movie. Totally entertaining though.

The next day we just hung around the resort and walked down to the beach, where we decided it would be fun to take some kayaks out to this small island a little ways away. Jamie and Betsy take off towards the island, Justin and I follow and then my Uncle Jeff brings up the rear by himself. We got about half way out when Justin goes "Um, Danielley, we are takin' on a lot of water back here". I turned around and saw that he was almost up to his waist in water and that it was slowly filling up the front of the kayak as well. "Start bailing!" I yelled, and we began frantically bailing, but we were taking on water faster than we could bail it out. Eventually we were just sitting in the filled kayak with the top of the kayak just under the surface of the water. Justin hopped (or rather, swam) out, hoping it would float again, but by that time it was too full of water so his weight didn't even effect it. So, I got out too and we tried tipping it over and then flipping it back, but we couldn't get it to drain. The whole time we were laughing hysterically, while his dad was paddling around us, yelling directions at us and freaking out...just a little. We just thought it was hilarious. We began trying to swim in with it, Justin pulling it in front and me pushing it from behind, but the current was pretty strong. Finally some guy on a paddle board came out and took it from us, giving us his paddle board to get out to the island. However, we only had kayak paddles, so that made it interesting. Justin tried swimming behind it, "pushing it" (he was slowing it down more than anything), while I sat on top and paddled. Finally he let go and I just took off, leaving him to swim the last of the stretch. Quite a funny memory...I didn't even know it was possible to sink a kayak. haha



here are some pictures of us hanging out in town the third day we were there.

what can i say? we're hardcore

aw, see we do like each other

oh, kaite...

Izzy was our waitress at a restaurant called Mangos. She was hilarious! So great, in fact that we took a picture with her before leaving.

On the fourth morning, we went out to the fake clay tennis courts and played some pretty good tennis. We met some other people staying at the resort and got a few games going with them. It was really fun. While we were playing against Gary and my Aunt Julie, I missed a ball and Justin jokingly goes "damn it danielle". My aunt goes "Those two words are never to be used in the same sentence!" So, to spite my aunt for standing up for the person who gets made of the most in the family, for the rest of the trip, the ongoing joke was damn it danielle since it had such a nice ring to it. For example, I was in the other room and Jamie dropped something in the kitchen and expresses her frustration by saying "damn it danielle". Then Gary had to chime in and say that saying "damn it" was only okay if my name was after it. So i guess my name is the new family expletive...great haha.

After tennis, we returned to the house and since it was ridiculously hot outside, we wanted to get in the water. Justin and I went down to the beach and swam a bit. Have I talked at all about the beach yet? Well, I think it just might have been the most spectacular beach I have ever been to. There was no one else around (I think the entire week we were there we may have seen 10 people total on the beach...crazy!)

katie's model shotplaying in the sand...it was super soft!

Aunt Julie, Justin and my Mom

We also played croquet! I was terrible at it...Jamie kept laughing at how bad I was.

Here is Justin, Gary, Katie and I down to the clubhouse beach, where, as you can see in the background, there was a giant floating trampoline! One afternoon when Justin and I were jumping on it, he told me to try and do a flip off of it into the water. I did, but completely over-rotated and smacked on the water. So great haha. We eventually came back and played in the pool for a while.Then everyone thought it would be fun to drown me...yes, that shape under the water with legs sticking out is me.

I have such caring family members. :)

Well, that's all for now...more to come

Repelling!

Anyway, the other really fun thing we did in Zion was repelling. But, before I talk about that, I'll tell a little about my Aunt Julie's birthday, which was on Saturday.
We went out to dinner in town and then came back to where my parent's were staying to play cards for a bit. When it got dark, we decided we should head back to the campsite (also because Uncle Jeff was riding his bike back and when he left, Jamie realized she had forgotten to lock the car when she had gone to the campsite to get something. So, my mom was coming back with us to hang out for a while and so 6 of us piled in Jamie's 5 seater car (my Aunt and Jamie in the front and my mom, Betsy, Justin and I crammed in the back). We drive through the park entrance and try to pull over to the side of the road, having Justin lean out the window, trying to lock the car through the trees before Uncle Jeff gets back. As we pull back out on to the road, we see blue and red lights flashing behind us (great time to get pulled over when you have an illegal number of people in the back seat). Betsy immediately starts spazzing out saying "Oh my gosh! What are we going to do? Danielle, get down." Justin, my mom and I just gave her a look and I told her "that won't help. Maybe I should just push Justin out of the car and he can make a break for it through the woods." I think she honestly thought about it for a second haha...she doesn't do well under pressure. Anyway, the cop comes over to the car and begins flashing a light in at us, looking to see what Justin was doing hanging out the car window, probably. He showed him that all he had were keys and the cop proceeded to say that he pulled us over because the speed limit at the entrance to Zion is 15mph and we were going 25. He also commented on the fact that we were all squished in the back and after a while of him being back in his car, he let us go, giving us a warning. We had a few other infractions so this was pretty awesome. We all drove off cheering at the fact we didn't get any tickets. Of all the places for us to get pulled over...Zion. Pretty great.
After staying up late the night before, playing cards, we woke up and rode bikes down to the swimming hole. On the way over, we were ridding along the path, when all of the sudden Justin comes to a complete halt, causing me, Betsy and Jamie to crash into him and each other. Why he did this. "There was a lizard."
"Okay, but the path is wide enough for you to go around the lizard."
"I didn't know which way he was going to run though."
Wow...i cut my finger because he didn't swerve around the lizard. haha Anyway, swimming in the swimming hole was quite fun. It was a bit chilly, but it was a blast to jump off the rocks into the rapids and you were dry in minutes when you got out. After coming back from the swimming hole, we all got ready to go repelling in the canyon.

hiking up to the top so we could start the repel back down.

Love these guys! I guess that's a good thing, cause I kinda can't get rid of them even if i wanted to.

Betsy going around the rock face.

I'm ready to go! :)

and the repelling begins

Katie was not a big fan of it. But, Jamie was really good to her and once they got going she did fine.

Go Mamma, go!

Uncle Jeff is afraid of heights, so he wasn't a fan of this either...poor guy.

Aunt Julie's a natural

Into the cavern we go!

Looking up out of the canyon. At the end we could choose to climb through the walls of the canyon, where they came close together to get out...Justin, Gary and I tried it. It was not as easy as it looks. You have to kind of wedge yourself between the rocks to keep from having your shoes slip. Totally fun though.

Such a great trip! :)

Zion family camping trip 2010

Zion was absolutely amazing. Especially after the 7 hr drive that on which we discovered that Katie gets motion sick...yeah not fun. We arrived to the park and were welcomed by a temperature of 104 degrees. Our first stop? The river, which is where the rest of the family was. While we were down at the river, I was walking around on the side and ended up falling down flat on my butt. I got my clothes soaking wet without the help of Justin or Gary...that doesn't usually happen. Anyway, I was dry in like 30 mins so it didn't matter that much. We went and set up our tents and the helped Aunt Julie make dinner. After dinner, my parents left to go put Katie to bed at their hotel (yes we camped and they stayed in a hotel haha), the rest of us (Uncle Jeff, Aunt Julie, Justin, Betsy and I) decided to take the shuttle (you aren't actually allowed to drive through Zion) up to the lodge for some ice cream. It was 9:00pm but it was unbelievable how light out it was. The views were awesome driving up the canyon. I wish I had, had my camera. We got up the lodge and looked around for a bit, but the ice cream place was closed so we got on the next shuttle back down. By the time we got back on the shuttle the sun had gone down, meaning we got to drive through the canyon by moonlight...so cool! It was still a million degrees outside so we had the windows down on the bus. As we were driving and I was enjoying the scenery, Justin hits me on the arm, points to a light behind one of the mountains and enthusiastically says "It's a UFO! What's that thing we are near? Area 59?"
"You mean Area 51," I replied.
"Oh yeah that's it. You saw it thought didn't you?"
"Yes, I saw it. It was probably just a..."
"That was no helicopter. It was a UFO! Totally unidentifiable"
We then spent the next five mins debating whether "unidentifiable" is even a word (it is...we felt stupid).
Another couple of minutes pass by as the French people behind us jabbered away in their native tongue. And then I'm hit on the arm again, "What?" i said.
"Look at this!"
I leaned over towards the window and tried to look up where Justin was looking, but couldn't see anything. I told him this and he makes me "trade seats with him", which consisted of me moving over to his seat and then him sitting on top of me. I looked up to where he was frantically gesturing and saw not a bird, but a plane. "I'm being squished to look at an airplane in the sky?" I thought. But excuse me, this was no ordinary plane. It's little blinking lights indicated that it was not a commercial plane, according to my oh so aviation savvy cousin. At least the French people had a good laugh at us and a story to tell about crazy Americans. Such a fun bus ride haha.
Betsy, Justin, Aunt Julie and I played cards the rest of the evening and then headed off to bed although it was still way too hot to be comfortable enough to fall asleep. We finally drifted off to sleep only to be awakened by the hard winds blowing in the sides of our tents. The winds had stopped by the time the sun came up and I heard a car pull up and then my cousin, Jamie's voice (she had driven down early that morning and just gotten there) telling my Aunt and Uncle to have a nice hike. About an hour and a half later the zipper on our tent opening woke me up again and I was surprised to see Justin poke his head in and asked me if I wanted to get up since he couldn't sleep. I crawled out of the tent, leaving Betsy asleep and walked over to the table to join Justin for a pancake breakfast. A little while later Uncle Jeff and Aunt Julie returned and then Jamie and Betsy got up. We hung around camp for a while, playing frisbee and relaxing, then my parents came to meet up with us and we all headed to the tubing place to rent inter tubes so we could "blissfully float down the river" or so the sign said. Apparently they didn't factor in families like mine when they wrote their description. The float was only 2 miles, but it took about 2 hours because the water was so low. We also made a couple of stops along the way though. Swimming, trying to link all seven of our tubes together, Gary and Justin fulfilling their need to tip me over. They picked up my entire tube and flipped me over backwards. When I resurfaced, I grabbed hold of Justin's foot as he tried to paddle away and flipped him over as well. I then went for Gary, but couldn't lift the tube up...that was good enough payback for me haha. A ways down the river, we encountered some rapids and of course that was the time my uncle chose to get stuck. I crashed into him and then while I was trying to steer myself out from between the rocks, my tube got carried away right out from under me and I got swept along under the rapids, banging against the rocks...so fun...I got a great bruise on my hip.
Side note: you remember when you were a little kid and you would always have some scrape, bruise or cut? And then it seems as you get older you injure yourself a lot less. Well, I think I'm regressing. I mean, I had a good 5-6years there where I didn't get many injuries, but it seems like since I started college I always have some sort of scrape or bruise like back in the good ol' days. Hmmm...just a thought.
Anyway, at another point along the river we found out that it was pretty deep and saw that there was a rope tied to the tree on the bank. Of course we had to stop there and all try the rope. So great!

Here are some pictures from swimming in a swimming hole we found the next day. Narration to come.

The camping group: Betsy, Justin, Jeff, Me, Julie, Jamie

Justin wanted me to take a picture of him being "carried away by the river"

Us kids rode bikes to the swimming hole...sure wish I could do that on a regular basis.

how amazing is this?