Vacation!

We have always gone out west to visit each summer, but decided this was our year to just focus our own little family. We were trying to decide between doing a Florida or an island vacation, and I'm glad we chose the latter. We were totally low-tech -- no cell phones or computers either. We mainly snorkeled and did some sight-seeing. When it rained we played board games or read aloud. Good family bonding time was what we were after, and what we got.
I wouldn't recommend Grand Cayman in August though -- too hot and muggy. I was expecting it to be like Hawaii, where the temperature is perfect all year. Now I know why their big tourist season is in the winter. But the water temperature of 87 degrees made it so we never got cold in the ocean! And the snorkeling was fabulous -- better than Hawaii. Just 30 yards off shore in chest-deep water was a beautiful reef with huge staghorn coral and brain coral and every kind of coral you can imagine and zillions of fish of all sizes and colors. We saw squid that continually changed colors and patterns, pufferfish, nudibranchs, a stingray, a peacock flounder, a barracuda, a moray eel, a scorpionfish, a huge spiny lobster, and several kinds of sea urchins. My favorite was a tiny black fish covered in a pattern of tiny circles of the brightest neon, sparkling blue you can imagine. They were very shy and live in holes in the coral, but when we learned where to look for them we could always find them.
We also enjoyed attending church in the branch there, everyone was super friendly. We liked visiting the Queen Elizabeth II Botanical Park with it's amazingly beautiful and strange plants, and the rare blue iguanas. And though we liked the touristy shopping, our favorite store was the antique shop with lots of ancient coins and maps. They had silver and gold coins recovered from shipwrecks, and Adri bought a tiny coin from the reign of Emperor Diocletian (AD 275 - it wasn't from a shipwreck). The Brit who runs the shop had lots of fascinating stories to tell -- I could have listened to him all day.

And speaking of Brits, driving on the wrong side of the road was a trip in itself. Paul did most of the driving, and by the end of the week had it down pretty good -- our mantra was "A right turn is a left turn and a left turn is a right turn." But the funny thing was how bad it messed up everyone's (but especially my) ability to tell right from left. Paul would say "Which way?" and after a while I would just point and say "That way" so I didn't have to think through the double negatives with my befuddled brain.

Lindy's Home!

We've got our girl back, and we get to keep her for six weeks! We've been enjoying her mature-yet-randomly-silly personality a lot this past week. We went on an outing to Harper's Ferry -- yes, we were just there in June but it's one of our favorite places. We love to walk around the town and up the Appalachian Trail -- which runs right through here -- to an old cemetery that dates back to the 1740s. Walking through some of the steep, narrow alleys, with the crumbling buildings and outcroppings of stone may be the closest we ever get to touring the Mediterranean coast as a family. Paul has been to Italy (work-related) and has promised to take me, but the chances that we can all go together some time are not great, so we enjoy what we have.
We also went to Westmoreland State Park on the Potomac River (but it's so wide there that the opposite shore is hazy in the distance.) Last time we went there we didn't have the girls with us, and we enjoyed being all together as a family this time. Lindy had a class on fossils last semester, and we had a great time searching for them at Fossil Beach. We found some fossilized ray teeth and some pieces of the bone that is always washing out of the cliffs there -- but didn't find any fossil shark teeth like last time.