Today, Cliff and I went out to brunch with my family in the area - my Uncle Mike, his wife Pam, their sons Philip (and wife Mindy) and Patrick. It was a nice little restaurant that tried a turn of the century wild west theme, but with class. They had a nice variety of food, including a tuna martini that Philip ordered. After we came back, we went straight to the Museum of Natural History. We walked around for a couple hours, sticking mostly to the animals section. We saw all of our pets on display (lizard, chinchilla, flying squirrel) and [View Full Entry]

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Today, Theresa had to submit some paperwork for her job, so we walked into Silver Spring so she could get that done. While we were waiting for her, we went to the Discovery Channel's headquarters and checked out the fossils they had on display. We went to a bagel place while we were waiting for Theresa to finish up and took the subway into the city. We got off at Federal Triangle and went to the National Aquarium. There were a large variety of tanks with lots of interesting fish, frogs, lizards, snakes, and alligators. In one of the biggest tanks, [View Full Entry]

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After leaving the pet squirrel with Cliff's parents, we hit the road a little before 12 for DC. The trip takes about 5 hours straight through. We stopped in a small town in PA for lunch and saw a super-high elevated highway. We continued on and got to Theresa's apartment shortly after 5. Didn't get lost thanks to my new GPS unit! We went out to eat at a Mexican restaurant. Theresa had a chile relleno, Erin had tacos and Cliff had a burrito. We watched the movie "I, Robot" when we returned and went to bed about midnight. Theresa's cats, [View Full Entry]

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Thankfully, there was only one minor setback coming back today, unlike our departure day! We left at 8am to get to the airport in San Juan. We did the agricultural inspection (no plants or raw food) and got through without a problem. We landed in Newark early and had just over an hour until our flight to Rochester. The plane came in a little late, but we ended up leaving only a half hour late at 7pm. Not bad! We landed safely, found our rides home, and went our separate ways. We had a great time on the trip, and have [View Full Entry]

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In the morning, the group headed down to Cabo Rojo - the cliffs not the town. The cliffs are at the Southwestern most point of the island. supposedly, as you enter the bay from the Caribbean, when the sun hits them just right, the cliffs shine a ruby red. There is a lighthouse up there that was used for quite a while but not any more. There were tons of hermit crabs and lizards that Brady and Cliff loved playing with. The beach in the bay is white sand, but super salty, since as you head more inland, there are salt [View Full Entry]

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Today, 4 of us went up to San Juan to walk around and enjoy the old city. Brady had bad memories of last year (2nd degree sunburn compounded by 95 degree weather) and Megan had her foot stung by a wasp a couple days before and decided that walking around all day would not be the best action to take. They stayed at the house, walked into town (slowly) and ate at Galloway's again, and found a shallow area where hundreds of tiny, quarter sized crabs were hanging out. They also swam in the pool and did some laundry. Jerid, Krystal, [View Full Entry]

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Today we woke up and headed out to La Parguera again. We rented snorkel equipment for Megan and Cliff and headed out to rent a boat. The first place we went was quite shallow, and a lot of other boats were there for swimming. There was a decent sized mangrove island that the group snorkeled around for about 40 minutes. There was a path in the underwater sea life which the group followed. At the end, there was more coral and as you passed the coral, it drops off and you are in the sea. They saw jellyfish, all different coral, [View Full Entry]

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The group spent time in two different ways today. Each had fun in their own right. Jerid, Krystal, Brady and Megan went to the beach in the neighborhood that they found the day before and the girls got their first taste of snorkeling. They saw a starfish and a few fish. They were out for about 2 hours and came home to clean up. They intended to go to Wal-Mart to get a few essentials, but ended up stopping for lunch at a Mexican restaurant in town, and then going straight to the town of La Parguera. Following the GPS system, [View Full Entry]

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Today, we got up a little earlier to get to the Caribbean National Forest, or El Yunque, the only tropical rain forest protected by the USDA Forest System. We took our time getting there, including making a 30 minute stop in San German, a small college town half an hour from where we are staying. After walking around a bit, we continued on, stopping for lunch just outside of San Juan. Once we got into the Forest, we went to El Portal Visitor center, where they had information on hiking, a video about the rain forest, and a simulated walkway through [View Full Entry]

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Brady woke up to a phone call - He's an uncle!!! Baby Ava arrived early this morning! Everyone was awake by 10:30 and the first thing they did was swim in the pool for a while. We got out, had breakfast, took showers, and headed out to the grocery store Pueblo to get a few days food supply. We spent an hour there and got a variety of meals, snacks, and drinks. As we left, the store had a food vendor set up outside the entry. Soda and chicken on a stick were being sold. For $2, you could get 6-8 [View Full Entry]

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