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Yup, that’s my beautiful princess….could you tell I’m thinking of home right now?

I only have one more four day trip left on my rotation, then another couple days working on projects around the boat. This is a pretty good deal, I’m ready to go see some different places and faces.

Utah is starting to sound pretty good now. My boy is getting so big, I’m afraid that I won’t even hardly recognize him when I see him. He was barely walking and talking then, now I know he is entering into his terrible twos. I got to talk to him today, it made me pretty happy! I also got to talk to my daughter today as well. The first time since before Christmas. She’s been real sick with the flu, but she’s sounding pretty good now. It was real nice to hear her voice as well. We are going to have our own little Christmas when I get back there. That should be pretty fun!

All I have been thinking about lately is going on a road trip. Maybe, a trip down to Bodega Bay or the Lost Coast somewhere. Camping other than that is probably not going to be all that dry, so I’ll have to come up with something good. I also want to take my daughter somewhere cool, and the ocean is always good for her.

I’m still not quite sure what to do about living arrangements when I get back to California. I’ll be there for 4 weeks or so. I’m hoping to find a one month rental of some sort, but I’m not sure how that will turn out. Oddly enough, I’m not real worried about it, I have a good feeling things will work out.

The last couple of days we’ve been cruising around the Loreto Marine Park. This group of Islands off the coast of Loreto, BCS is a fantastic hiking spot. The coolest thing about the islands is that they all have a pretty good elevation to them, so you can hike up to the top and then get an “around the world” view of everything. Some of the islands are bigger than others, but all are worth a stop if you ever get a chance. The most notable of the islands is Danzante and Monserrate in the southern end of the park. To make things even better, there was a hurricane in October that dumped quite a bit of water on the region, so we got to see it greener that in had been in many years.

I only have about 9 more days of work left, and I’m getting ready to go mentally. sometimes it hard to adapt to boat life, then have to turn around and re-adapt to the outside world. The two lifestyles are so different. I’m not sure which I like better, but as time goes on I see work more as work, and play more as play. This may or may not be good for me in the long run.

I’ve been working on figuring out my schedule compared to the schedule of the NG Explorer lately. I really want to take my free trip on the new ship, but unfortunately there’s quite a bit of scheduling conflicts between me and it. The one trip I could hop on would be the leg of their voyage from Tanzania around Madagascar. This would be quite a trip, I’m trying to figure out if it’s feasible. See the thing is, we get a free trip every year for ourselves and one other person, but the thing is the “free” part only pertains to the cruise. I still have to pay all expenses to get there and back. I know that this is still an amazing deal, but times are rough and money is tight. Coming up with $2k to fly to Africa is a whole lot of money that could be spent on other things. On the other hand…..how many opportunities am I going to have to take a $20K cruise for two thousand dollars? It’s not something I want to pass up, if I can help it. I do still need to find someone to go with me too!

New Years on the boat, we had some pretty good times. Me and a couple of the officers went over to the shore that we were anchored at and lit off some smoke signals, then some rocket flares for the celebration. It was a pretty good show! Not quite the ball dropping in Times Square, but this is Baja. Much better in my opinion. Looking back I’d say that it was as good a day as any other I’ve had in the past.

Speaking of looking back, I’ve decided that the new year tradition of setting goals for the coming year is something that I’m not going to take part in any more. Last year I made a bunch of resolutions and didn’t do one of them, but the good thing about it is that I did a bunch of things I never thought that I would do. I’m just fine with that. This year I’m just going to say that I hope to have a good attitude, see things in as many ways as possible and be positive as much as I can. Other than that, what more can we really do?

I’m holding up pretty good, I got my flight arrangements to head back to the states today. I’ll be heading up to Utah on the 10th, then back to La Paz on the 20th of February. I plan on staying in Utah for a week, then riding a train over to California for the remainder of my vacation. I’ve just recently realized how cool it is to ride by train, and going west over the Sierras in the winter is supposedly quite a sight to see. I’m looking forward to the voyage, but I’m looking forward to spending some time with my kids even more. I miss them both and can’t wait to see them.