Pappa Hardy's Musings on Life.

It was fun entertainment. Bonnie, Julie, Shirley and I went to the Shakespeare Festival in Cedar City. We saw two plays, The Music Man and Noises Off. They were both fun to watch. I wish we had been able to stay a few more days, take in more plays, and travel around in Southern Utah. However, it was just a quick trip.

Plays are fun. Family is better. It was a lot of fun talking with each other. The campus of Southern Utah University was also beautiful and it was a terrific place to be able to visit and experience some “culture”.

We are sitting on the beach. I think most of us always dream of waking up to a room with a view of the beach. Well, here we are and I love it. The water is gorgeous, the setting perfect. What better place to be than in Fort Lauderdale with the beautiful Atlantic Ocean out there. I love the surf. I love having a chance to recharge my batteries.

Whenever I have gone cruising now, I feel the strong call of the seaman. I think I could have taken to a life of travel and work upon ocean going vessels. One thing that I have decided is that there is so much that I want to see around these big oceans that mark our planet, and so little time to go and do it. I am in the later parts of my life now and feel that I have run out of time to do some of the exploring and things that I really wanted to do. I wanted to be able to travel and explorer, see new things, do new things, and not be trapped in a job that has robbed me of new things. Well, I have only myself to blame. I don’t feel bad about the people that I have come to know and the family that I have, I just wish I had followed my heart more.

I loved the movie Paint Your Wagon. It of course is about the gold rush times and about how a tent city sprung up at the near mention of gold. Well, recently I had the chance to pan for gold and decided in a hurry it wasn’t worth it, even though we found a few speckles of gold dust. I guess what was even more interesting was the kind of cities the sprung up around the near mention of gold. It was interesting recently to see Skagway, the entrance to the gold fields of the early 1900s and which had such things as general stores, brothels, bars, and associated stuff. What a different world.

Normally during a cruise stop I am part of the masses that rush off of the ship and crowd the stores and tours on the mainland or the island or wherever I may be. However, when we went to Juneau we were in port until very late and we were back on the ship relatively early. It was like someone had yelled abandon ship!!. No one was on the ship. We would go to an elevator, and we would never have to wait long for one to come, and the elevator didn’t stop on every deck. Moreover, wherever we went or whatever we wanted to do also had no body competing with us for attention. It was like someone had yelled Abandon Ship, and the ship was abandoned.

With the completion of my most recent cruise, I have now spent 28 days at sea. I think that is kind of cool. For one month of my life I have been upon the oceans of this planet. I have loved it. I love watching the ocean as we move upon it. I have loved the wildlife that I have seen. I have loved the movement of the boats in response to it. I am not sure that I will ever feel satisfied ever again to just be a landlubber, though what I have done would not be considered sea time by those who have done this for their life’s work.

Bonnie and I now have made 4 cruises. 3 of these cruises were on the Golden Princess. Two of those were to the same destination and one of those was with her mother Shirley and a cruising companion. The interesting thing is that there are some really different things on this cruise and some that are the same. For the most part, the ship is the same. They have renovated some things, moving the casino from the 6th deck to the 7th, making it bigger and opening it up to outside windows on the Promenade deck. They have taken some space away that was accessible to all passengers and made it a limited access and you have to pay extra (that sucks). They have added a movie under the stars movie screen which is nice. You can sit up on deck under the stars, which a wonderful movie, have a blanket to cover you and keep you warm, and have some popcorn. That is great. The biggest negative change is the entertainment. The original entertainment to me was world class. This trip, it is much harder to get new and different entertainers in to perform in the evenings, and the ones that are here are uninspiring and we have them every night. I have been disappointed in that, but that does give us more time in the evening to do what we want like read and wander the ship. All together, not a bad new ship. I probably will always follow where the Golden Princess is traveling around the world.

I love flying. I love being able to look out the window and look for Miles and Miles. This is such a grand and wonderful country. I love looking out and seeing miles and miles of clouds, each and every one different, unique, and in its own way beautiful. I like looking at sunsets as you glide over the clouds, the dark shades becoming unique and different.

I like being able to see the Vehicle Assembly Building at the Kennedy Space Center standing out for miles and miles away. I like the shape of the mountains, the shading on the hills, the haze, the clarity, the beauty of it all.

I love to fly, and one reason I love to fly is that you can see for miles and miles.

Tonight my whale watching finally paid off, and very much by accident. Whale watching is a hard job. When they say it is a whale of a job, that means it is hard work. Whale watching hasn’t been much different. I spent a lot of time trying to see them, and up till now have only been rewarded by a fin here, a blowing of air there, but nothing more than just a little bit of flesh.

Tonight we were sitting waiting to go to dinner on Deck 5 in a bar (now don’t think anything bad, I was drinking a Diet Coke) when I noticed everyone looking out the window. I looked out and saw not only one, but several whales surfacing and moving around. I immediately notified Bonnie and we saw them, and a lot of fish. It was really quite a site. Then, that was finished off by seeing another even bigger animal surface and show its stuff. It was really cool. It has been a long hard week and finally it has paid off. I have seen my whales. It has been a whale of a time.

This morning I went up on deck to find that it was raining quite hard. It was interesting to see that the horizon melted into gray and that the end of the ocean couldn’t be seen. It is a little disheartening to see rain on this trip, but then, this is the great Alaskan wildnerness we are going to see and rain may be part of it. I hope not, but we shall see.