Our Inaugural Bus Trip (2006) Part 2
Tuesday March 8, 2016
Well, Pat and I (and others) had fun with the first travelogue post from our inaugural bus trip in the bus (2006) that I decided to post more of the posts of that trip.
Here is some background information. This was a major trip with several planned events. The first event was a Cruise to western Mexico that Pat had earned. To date she has earned 10 trips/cruises as a demonstrator with Stampin’ UP! We will be going on the tenth cruise in a couple of months – obviously we will blog about that trip when the time comes.
The other planned events for the 2006 trip were being vendors at the FMCA convention in Pomona, Sightseeing in Death Valley and attending a National NHRA drag race in Las Vegas.
So, over the next few days I will fill the electronic highway with several more posts from this amazing trip.
Hello from aboard the USS Oosterdam
Sunday morning March 12, 2006. Second travelogue of this trip.
We made it to San Diego without problems. We got to our friend’s house about 1:00 PM on Thursday. His road is fairly steep and has some curves in it. Going up was not a problem, but I have to back down the same road (about ¼ mile). I don’t think that will be a problem.
Jim Stewart is such a nice person and great host. It is very comforting to have a good place to leave the bus. He has a great looking Prevost bus that he is working on. It is kind of fun to see the two side by side. Unfortunately, I left that camera in the bus, so I don’t have a photo with me to show you. His house in on fairly steep hillside, with some great views of the surrounding area.
We were surprised to learn that San Diego (at least inland a bit) is somewhat arid. They only get about 11 inches of rain a year. You could not tell that from when we were there, since it rained most of the time and was rather cool (warmer than Denver, however).
Friday we went over to another bus nut’s place. This was quite an experience!! This person clearly qualifies as an eccentric genius. He lives on site of about 1 acre that is covered by STUFF!!! Most of you think I have too much stuff, but he has 100 times as much STUFF as I do much of it stored in huge shipping containers. He has lived there over 20 years. When he moved there, it was out in the country, but now is completely surrounded by multi-million dollar houses. His property has quite a number of big trees that hide his STUFF from view of his neighbors.
His best skill is designing very unique electronic circuits, but he makes his living fabricating stills that extract “essential oils” from various plants. This oil is used for healing purposes primarily. He has perfected these stills and makes both glass and stainless versions. We watched him make parts for the glass still and he is truly an artisan. Later that evening we went to a great fresh fish restaurant.
Part of Friday was spent loading our suitcases and getting ready for the cruise. We frantically finished up Saturday morning. We drove to the harbor and unloaded all of the luggage and I then went to park the car in a parking garage. We had to wait about 2hours for the gates to open (we were first in line). Just as they opened the gates, we discovered that we had left the passports in the copy/printer in the bus! We panicked, but were able to work things out to where they would let us board the ship. At the present time you do not need to have a passport to enter Mexico (going to change next year), but you do need two forms of photo ID that shows you are a US citizen. Pat had a birth certificate plus her driver’s license and they let me sign some sort of waver. They said we would not have a problem getting back into the country, since we had copies of our passports in our luggage (the reason the passports were in the copy machine in the first place).
We were able to board the ship yesterday about noon. Our room was ready about 1:30. While waiting for the room to be available, we went to the SPA and took a tour. We signed up for the therapeutic pool which also includes other services such as several versions of saunas and some unique heated ceramic “recliners”. This should help both of our tired and aching bodies. Speaking of that, Pat encouraged me to get a special “healing session” which included being covered with a special mixture of “essential oils”, wrapped in a very flexible tin foil and submerged horizontally in a very warm water bed. This was followed by a full body massage. It really seemed to relax me and did a great job of loosening up the horrible back spasm that has had me in terrible pain for the past few weeks. Now that the spasm is loosened up, I think I can manage it with the warm water and exercises from my physical therapy sessions from a couple of months ago. The SPA services are very expensive, but we are not doing as many shore excursions this trip, so maybe the net cost of the trip will be about the same. Besides that, we need to get our bodies back to feeling better.
The first two days of the cruise are at sea. That is great, as it not so hectic. Stampin’ UP! has some activities those two days, but it is not too bad. Our first port of call is Puerto Vallarta. I am scheduled to do a two tank dive. Our next port is Mazatlan. We do not have a shore excursion scheduled at that port. Our final port is Cabo San Lucas, where we have scheduled a whale watching tour and hope to see some Blue Whales.