50th Anniversary trip, post-trip thoughts
Well we're back in the States at a cute little nudist club called Sunnier Palms, on New Years morn. We'd reserved an RV site here for New Years Eve since the club is close to our favorite beach, Blind Creek in Ft. Pierce and it is on the way back to Cypress from Miami. Really friendly folks here, went out of their way to squeeze us in on a busy holiday. They had a party but we just wanted to relax in our Pleasureway!
Monday was our last day on Grand Turk and it involved packing, schlepping all of us to the airport (1 mile away!) and then waiting 2 hours for our late-to-arrive puddle jumper to Provo where the big planes land. At least check in was easy in Grand Turk, they have a beautiful little airport, all decorated for Christmas and totally air conditioned. Of course we got to Provo way late and AGAIN had to run around just to make the flight. Lesson no. 101, NEVER allow less than 2 hours for an international connection in an island airport (or anywhere overseas I suppose)! Lessons no. 102 and 103, no you can't use a kiosk less than an hour before departure to get your boarding passes and no you can't use the emailed boarding pass by just showing it on your phone! We ran back and forth from security (once to find our laptop and tablets) what seems like 5 times- really only twice- and only made it on our plane by seconds before they closed the doors. They must have known that we were in that airport somewhere, just look for the frenzied looking gringos zig-zagging back and forth among the various stations! Yep those 2, the ones with the guy limping barefoot and dangling a sore arm.
Enough of that, we made our short fight to MIA, and followed the hordes to Passport Control. Am pretty sure that they designed the 1-2 mile trek to Passport Control to weed out the weak and incompetent among the sad returning citizens, immigrants and visitors. Phew! Luckily, this time we noticed that there was a Passport Control Sky Train that we had missed after our St. Martin flight! That took maybe 15 min out of the walk. And thank God for Global Entry! If you want to travel outside the US, GE is a must! Probably saved us hours of waiting in line. After that we were good, waiting less than 10 min or so for the hotel shuttle to the Hampton Inn, our sanctuary! Just 5 min from the airport, they seem to know what people need to be comforted and to want to come back. Made believers out of us, no more Motel 6's in our lives!
Everything was fine in our RV (well maybe a few damp spots) parked in the back lot so we hopped in and headed- yes, hard to believe- to the beach! Gotta punctuate a 3 week long 50th Anniversary beach trek with a bit more Floridian sand, eh? Blind Creek was beautiful as usual except for the 10 ft dropoff due to erosion, it was high tide and there was a strong, cool NE wind. Being veterans of iffy beach conditions, we whipped out our SportBrella and were fine for a couple of hours. But that was enough, let good things lie, Joni had time for a quick sketch and then we were officially beached out. For now.
We'll probably add some more Turks photos to earlier posts as they dribble in from the family, but for now, will sign off on this blog thing. Has been a lot of fun, we do appreciate all the nice comments and are sure that we'll treasure being able to look back at our trip of a lifetime so easily.
Just one more piece of philosophy that I noticed this AM while waiting for Joni to wake up. Kinda summarizes my feelings about this naturism thing pretty well, written by a woman touring New Zealand at the moment:
https://nakedkate.travel.blog/2019/12/17/midnight-bath/
Monday was our last day on Grand Turk and it involved packing, schlepping all of us to the airport (1 mile away!) and then waiting 2 hours for our late-to-arrive puddle jumper to Provo where the big planes land. At least check in was easy in Grand Turk, they have a beautiful little airport, all decorated for Christmas and totally air conditioned. Of course we got to Provo way late and AGAIN had to run around just to make the flight. Lesson no. 101, NEVER allow less than 2 hours for an international connection in an island airport (or anywhere overseas I suppose)! Lessons no. 102 and 103, no you can't use a kiosk less than an hour before departure to get your boarding passes and no you can't use the emailed boarding pass by just showing it on your phone! We ran back and forth from security (once to find our laptop and tablets) what seems like 5 times- really only twice- and only made it on our plane by seconds before they closed the doors. They must have known that we were in that airport somewhere, just look for the frenzied looking gringos zig-zagging back and forth among the various stations! Yep those 2, the ones with the guy limping barefoot and dangling a sore arm.
Enough of that, we made our short fight to MIA, and followed the hordes to Passport Control. Am pretty sure that they designed the 1-2 mile trek to Passport Control to weed out the weak and incompetent among the sad returning citizens, immigrants and visitors. Phew! Luckily, this time we noticed that there was a Passport Control Sky Train that we had missed after our St. Martin flight! That took maybe 15 min out of the walk. And thank God for Global Entry! If you want to travel outside the US, GE is a must! Probably saved us hours of waiting in line. After that we were good, waiting less than 10 min or so for the hotel shuttle to the Hampton Inn, our sanctuary! Just 5 min from the airport, they seem to know what people need to be comforted and to want to come back. Made believers out of us, no more Motel 6's in our lives!
Everything was fine in our RV (well maybe a few damp spots) parked in the back lot so we hopped in and headed- yes, hard to believe- to the beach! Gotta punctuate a 3 week long 50th Anniversary beach trek with a bit more Floridian sand, eh? Blind Creek was beautiful as usual except for the 10 ft dropoff due to erosion, it was high tide and there was a strong, cool NE wind. Being veterans of iffy beach conditions, we whipped out our SportBrella and were fine for a couple of hours. But that was enough, let good things lie, Joni had time for a quick sketch and then we were officially beached out. For now.
We'll probably add some more Turks photos to earlier posts as they dribble in from the family, but for now, will sign off on this blog thing. Has been a lot of fun, we do appreciate all the nice comments and are sure that we'll treasure being able to look back at our trip of a lifetime so easily.
Just one more piece of philosophy that I noticed this AM while waiting for Joni to wake up. Kinda summarizes my feelings about this naturism thing pretty well, written by a woman touring New Zealand at the moment:
https://nakedkate.travel.blog/2019/12/17/midnight-bath/
"I don’t believe we should have to hide away in the dark when we want to skinny dip. I am not trying to encourage you to go to your local pool and jump in without your swimsuit on. I’m not a crazy lady! But, to maybe find a nice outdoor spot where there’s not people around, and enjoy the freedom of being in your natural state in nature. Why should it have to be in the dark and why for the love of god can we not let our friends or family see us in the buff? We trust our close friends and family with our secrets, and yet we cannot trust them to see our true natural form. If we really love each other, surely we don’t care what each other looks like?"
Agreed. Thanks for coming on our trip with us, goodbye and hope to see "all of you" on the beach sometime!
Chuck and Joni
Excellent blog and finale!!! Looking forward to seeing you in March!!!
ReplyDeleteMore beach maybe? dates?
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