Big Ole Hairy Friday

Yes it is once again that time of the week that we all look foreword to, when we can take time to cease the labors for the week and take a little bit of needed time out to enjoy the fruits of those labors. It is once again the dawn of another weekend and a Big Ole Hairy Friday.

Looking for a little High School Football action? Morgantown High is once again on the road this week (three weeks in a row) when they travel to Brooke. University High is home and plays host to Wheeling Park and Clay Battelle is on the road and will take on Valley (Wetzel). You can check and see the scores from this evening on the WV Metronews High School Scoreboard. 

Well the big news is this is my last day of work before I start my vacation. Starting tomorrow and up until the 23rd, all of my blogs have been pre-written to cover our cruise and where we are at and what we are going to be doing that day. I will have Facebook available to me at Sea and will be posting most of my pictures on that platform.

Have yourselves a great day and let's get this day started.

Hi ho hi ho

Freeport

As Michelle and I embark upon our fifth Cruise and enjoy our vacation, I will also be taking a little break as a blogger and writing some pre-written canned blogs. You can check more of what we are into on mine or Michelle's Facebook Page.

You can follow us on either the Front Web Cam, the Aft Webcam or just simply be tracking our location.

Today Michelle and I will be visiting our third and final port of call, Freeport the Bahamas. This year we will definately stop by the shops right outside of the port. We always go there and buy a new hand made Christmas ornament every year to add to our Christmas Tree. This wonderful woman here with my wife is the woman we buy our ornament from every year.

We are going to switch it up a little in Freeport this year. In years passed we have traveled to Port Lucia, spent time around the local shops shopping and this year we are are going to do a little catamaran snorkeling in Freeport for the first time. This will be the first excursion that we will have went on other than the Faster to the Fun we purchase every year for priority boarding and tendering.

Hope it'll be a great day, I'm excited about exploring new waters to snorkel for the first time.

Half Moon Cay

As Michelle and I embark upon our fifth Cruise and enjoy our vacation, I will also be taking a little break as a blogger and writing some pre-written canned blogs. You can check more of what we are into on mine or Michelle's Facebook Page.

You can follow us on either the Front Web Cam, the Aft Webcam or just simply be tracking our location.

Today we will once again be snorkeling, but today it will be at our second port of call Half Moon Cay, which is Carnival's private island that they own. We'll have to tender on and off of the island, as the waters are too shallow to stick a pier, but I'm hearing that may be in the future plans. I have to say of anyplace on this earth that I have ever been, that Half Moon Cay is my favorite. Michelle and I both love it here. We will be treated to a nice luncheon on the island prepared by our wonderful culinary staff and I'm sure there will be a photo op or two today.

I'll be snorkeling in the Caribbean today at my favorite spot, today is not going to suck...lol

Grand Turk

As Michelle and I embark upon our fifth Cruise and enjoy our vacation, I will also be taking a little break as a blogger and writing some pre-written canned blogs. You can check more of what we are into on mine or Michelle's Facebook Page.

You can follow us on either the Front Web Cam, the Aft Webcam or just simply be tracking our location.

Today Michelle and I land in our first port of call, Grand Turk. This is a place where there is a Margaritaville on the Island, but Michelle and I will go and visit Topher today and maybe even get our pictures taken with him once again.

One thing Michelle and I love to do is Snorkel and this year is going to be no different than before when we stopped here. The water is absolutely crystal clear and beautiful, snorkeling in these waters is almost surreal.

That'll be our day.

Second Day at Sea

As Michelle and I embark upon our fifth Cruise and enjoy our vacation, I will also be taking a little break as a blogger and writing some pre-written canned blogs. You can check more of what we are into on mine or Michelle's Facebook Page.

You can follow us on either the Front Web Cam, the Aft Webcam or just simply be tracking our location.

The image you see was from last years cruise, but this is what I will be waking up to every morning this week, hopefully it will be a little bit less cloudy.

We are once again at seas in transit to our destination. Today will be a fun day on the ship as they will probably do the Hasbro Game Show or the Couples Test on the stage today. There will be no shortness of any activities as we start to prepare for tomorrow and our first port of call.

Enjoy yourselves today, I will be.

First Day at Sea

As Michelle and I embark upon our fifth Cruise and enjoy our vacation, I will also be taking a little break as a blogger and writing some pre-written canned blogs. You can check more of what we are into on mine or Michelle's Facebook Page.

You can follow us on either the Front Web Cam, the Aft Webcam or just simply be tracking our location.

Well we are well underway on our way to Grand Turk, but it will take us a couple of days to get there. We'll be entering the deepest part of the ocean today for our trip today and tomorrow as we leave the continental shelf. We'll be in waters that range from 20,000 ft to 25,000 feet as make our way to Grand Turk.

Tonight will be the first Formal Night of the cruise, this is when we get all dressed up to eat lobster and take pictures. The picture that you see here is me and my lovely wife last year on the first formal night.

Time to go soak up the sun.

Debarkation Day and Returning Home

As Michelle and I are on Vacation this week aboard the Carnival Pride, you can track our Ship Location and watch for us on the Ships two cameras in the Aft or in the Forward Cameras. I am obviously absentee and will be writing my blogs absentee as even bloggers need a vacation.

Well here we are, by the time that this starts to post I will probably be available by phone as we will be entering the Chesapeake Bay and docking this morning at the Port of Baltimore early this morning.

Today is the end of our cruise and time for the next set of cruisers to enjoy their time on the Carnival Pride as we have.

We will be Debarking hopefully mid morning and going through customs with our luggage and everything else that we will be bringing back.  Hopefully we can get out of downtown Baltimore early this morning, but that really doesn't matter. Last year we were leaving right as everyone was trying to get to Baltimore's M&T Stadium which is right by the port.

Fortunately jumping on I-95 to return home is a very easy task for us and it should not take us too long to get out of here. I think last year we were eating lunch in Hagerstown around Noon, we'll probably be carrying our luggage off once again plus we have "Faster to the Fun" which pretty much gives us priority getting off the boat today and getting through customs.

Hopefully we should be getting home some time this afternoon.

I hope you have had as much fun following our vacation as we have had on it. We are both off of work tomorrow as well to get all of our chores done, hopefully I will put the rest of my pictures up on Facebook of this years vacation for all to enjoy.

By estimate, we have covered about 400 miles by car and about 2,600 by ship for a Grand total of around 3,000 miles during this vacation.

Wish us a safe trip home, enjoy your day and tomorrow's blog should be the first live blog that I will have written in a while.

A Return Day at Sea

As Michelle and I are on Vacation this week aboard the Carnival Pride, you can track our Ship Location and watch for us on the Ships two cameras in the Aft or in the Forward Cameras. I am obviously absentee and will be writing my blogs absentee as even bloggers need a vacation.

Well our three ports of call are now complete and we are traveling up the Atlantic Coast on our return home, we will be hugging the Atlantic Shelf unlike our trip down when we went into the deepest parts of the ocean.

This is the day when all the shops on the boat have their best deals. They are wanting to unload everything so that they can restock it again when it arrives in Port tomorrow. It's usually Bella Perlina merchandise that Michelle ends up fighting a mob of women for, but she lives for this stuff and I want to stay as far away from it as possible, especially when all the women start fighting over sale items..lol

For me, my day will probably be in the Sports Bar watching as much College Football as possible and passing the time away. The Mountaineers will be at home today playing Maryland, I'm hoping one of the stations on the boat carries the game. I've missed the game the last three cruises because it has been unavailable to the networks we had available.

Tonight will be our final dinner on the ship and we will get our little send off that they always sing at the end of every cruise.

Have yourselves a great day, we're on our way home.

Freeport Bahamas

As Michelle and I are on Vacation this week aboard the Carnival Pride, you can track our Ship Location and watch for us on the Ships two cameras in the Aft or in the Forward Cameras. I am obviously absentee and will be writing my blogs absentee as even bloggers need a vacation.

Today will be our third and final port of call before he start heading back north to Baltimore.

We are in Freeport the Bahamas and all we usually do here is a little bit of shopping. A couple of years ago we headed into Port Lucia, but they had the same shops there that we had here and they opened much later.

There are a number of small shops around Freeport, one of which is a place that makes hand made Christmas decorations that we have one made every year. Each and every one of them are different, and when we hang these on our tree as we do with many of our special place and moments and recall where we got that particular ornament as we hang it. That however is Christmas and I'm in the Bahamas right now.

One thing that everyone always seemed to ask me for was a tour of the Carnival Pride. Mind you this years Video Blog was done a year ago, a couple months prior to the Carnival Pride going into dry dock last November and getting all the new upgrades to Funship 2.0 that we are enjoying this year.

This is my second attempt to publish the video, the initial attempt was nearly 60 minutes long and somewhere there was some corruption in the file, so this is part of the tour.

As always, have yourselves a great day, a relaxing Friday and enjoy yourselves, because you know we are and we will be.

Half Moon Cay

As Michelle and I are on Vacation this week aboard the Carnival Pride, you can track our Ship Location and watch for us on the Ships two cameras in the Aft or in the Forward Cameras. I am obviously absentee and will be writing my blogs absentee as even bloggers need a vacation.

Today we are in Port at my favorite place in the whole wide world, we will be at Carnival's Private Island Half Moon Cay.

Water around the Port is very shallow, so we will have to tender (boat) out way from the ship to the island and back. Michelle and I have dined with one of our dinner companions from last year again this week, Cheryl McCann (in white) and her Husband have been dining with us all year. We would have loved to have seen Donata (Purple) make it this year, hopefully she will make it next year.

One of the highlights of Half Moon Cay is that you basically spend the entire day on the island, Carnival even sets up lunch on the island since there are no real restaurants and you don't want to keep tendering back and forth to the ship.

Once again I have prepared a video blog of our day and journey last year, so you can have a little sneak peak into the day we will have today.

Enjoy your day, because you know we are going to be enjoying ours.

Grand Turk

As Michelle and I are on Vacation this week aboard the Carnival Pride, you can track our Ship Location and watch for us on the Ships two cameras in the Aft or in the Forward Cameras. I am obviously absentee and will be writing my blogs absentee as even bloggers need a vacation.

Today we enter our first Port of Call in Grand Turk. A place that we will do a little bit of snorkeling and a little bit of site seeing. Last year we ventured to the other side of the walkway to see what was over there, and we found this NASA Exhibit over there. Amazing what you can find when you go to places other than that wonderful beach and Margaritaville.

There are always amazing things to see in the waters there. There is the Canon as pictured there as well as a huge anchor and a few other lost treasures that lie beneath those beautiful crystal clear and calm waters.

We will be taking our underwater camera with us as well today, maybe we can find a special shot or two or three to talk about next year.

Have yourselves a great day and know that we are. =)

Another Day at Sea

Michelle working Cryptogram

As Michelle and I are on Vacation this week aboard the Carnival Pride, you can track our Ship Location and watch for us on the Ships two cameras in the Aft or in the Forward Cameras. I am obviously absentee and will be writing my blogs absentee as even bloggers need a vacation.

Well here we are on our second day at Sea today, this is the last day we have before we start to arrive at our Ports of Call, Tomorrow is Grand Turk, but that is tomorrows blog.

Usually on the second day at Sea they run a lot of the fun stuff in the evenings, as all of the entertainment is concentrated on board as we are not in any port of call. Last year (see Video) Jeff the Juggler was the featured entertainment for the night, but that was last year, I'm sure there will be someone different this year.

As I did in yesterday's blog, here is the video blog that we recorded last year on the second day at sea for our cruise.

Have a Great Day, we will.

Day at Sea #1

As Michelle and I are on Vacation this week aboard the Carnival Pride, you can track our Ship Location and watch for us on the Ships two cameras in the Aft or in the Forward Cameras. I am obviously absentee and will be writing my blogs absentee as even bloggers need a vacation.

One thing I have always wanted to capture and have to date failed to each time I have attempted, was to capture a sunrise on the ocean. In 21 attempts we are 0 for 21 when it comes for clear weather to see this, well how about this picture that I took on last years cruise of the moon.

Anyways, this is our first full day at Sea, we'll be in waters as deep as 21,000' as we leave the Atlantic Shelf and enter into the deeper parts of the Ocean. By the time this blog posts we should be going around Cape Hatteras, which is probably the roughest water that we typically see. If you are going to get seas sick, this is where it typically occurs. Our first cruise we were in the AFT (Back) and right above the engines, so yours truly managed to get a little bit seas sick.

Tonight will be the first of two formal dinners, that is when we get all cleaned up and they serve us Lobster Tails and Prime Rib. We will once again be all dressed up and will have a series of professional pictures taken of us as we are dressed up. We printed those pictures out last year and handed them out to everyone. We're planning on doing the same thing again this year.

The following video is from our first day at sea and formal dinner last year, please enjoy it and make sure you have yourselves a great day today. We definitely will.

Embarkation Day

As Michelle and I are on Vacation this week aboard the Carnival Pride, you can track our Ship Location and watch for us on the Ships two cameras in the Aft or in the Forward Cameras. I am obviously absentee and will be writing my blogs absentee as even bloggers need a vacation.

Well it is Embarkation Day for Michelle and I. We will be leaving the hotel later this morning and driving right past MT Stadium when the Baltimore Ravens Play and giving our one finger salute once again as we make our way to the Port of Baltimore to embark upon the Carnival Pride.

We will be moved to the Gold Level VIFP this year, we will pass our 25th day at sea on this trip and they always advance you to the next level if you achieve that level on the cruise you are on like us this year. It's the next level where all the real perks kick in for free, but this year we purchased Faster to the Fun as we did last year and bypassed all of those long and absolutely ridiculous lines that people have to wait in.

Once we are on the boat we will be enjoying lunch somewhere on the Carnival Pride, I personally want to hit up Guys Burger Joint, but there are a number of other options for us to choose from.

One thing we will be excited to see today is the new and revamped Carnival Pride. It went to dry dock last fall and was upgraded to a Funship 2.0 since our last cruise. We are already very familiar with this ship, even though everything has changed. There will be very little time spent figuring out where everything is located.

We will be dining with one of the ladies we dined with last year. She and her husband will also be taking this cruise and we are already booked as dinner companions again. The couple we dined with two years ago are also on this cruise, but are traveling in a large group of people and we will not be dining with them, but are looking forward to seeing them.

Enjoy yourselves today, we intend to.

We Are Off to Baltimore

As Michelle and I are on Vacation this week aboard the Carnival Pride, you can track our Ship Location and watch for us on the Ships two cameras in the Aft or in the Forward Cameras. I am obviously absentee and will be writing my blogs absentee as even bloggers need a vacation.

Well today starts our 2015 Cruise and Vacation. Like we have done in years past, I would imagine our day will start with a trip to the IHOP here in Morgantown before we start our Journey to Baltimore Maryland this morning.

Along the way there will probably be stops at Sidling Hill for a rest and of course we can't go through the area without visiting the Hagerstown Premium Outlets for a little shopping. Both stops break up the monotony and give us a nice little break during the trip. The Outlet stop is a nice break before you have to start dealing with all the traffic in Downtown Baltimore.

We will once again be staying at the Holiday Inn at the Inner Harbor, which is right across the street from Camden Yards and about three blocks away from the Inner Harbor itself. We love to go down there and eat dinner, the last couple years we have eaten at Bubba Gumps.

Having been there the past three years, we are very familiar with the Inner Harbor and all the shops and stores there. It will be a nice relaxing start to our vacation and preparing for tomorrows embarkation process.

Have yourselves a great day because we intend to.

We're Coming Home

We have had a great time here at Niagara Falls, I'll probably go into a little more detail in another blog as well as post up a number of stories and pictures to share.

I usually do my weekend blogs live, but I will confess that this one is one that I have pre-written just in case we have had internet troubles.

We'll be heading back out on the road this morning and heading on down the highway back to the Country Roads that we call home in West Virginia.

We have made some memories together and we will share all of them with everyone once we actually get home and know I have a solid internet connection. '

Wish us safe travels, it's back to the good ole U S of A and West Virginia.

It's a Big Ole Niagara Falls Kind of Day

Well it's a different kind of Friday for Michelle and I as we are on a mini-vacation. We are here at Niagara Falls and we are staying on the Canadian side for this trip.

We traveled up yesterday and plan on returning home tomorrow, but for today it is going to be a day of seeing one of natures most marvelous beauties for Michelle and I as we explore Niagara Fall for the first time together up close.

This is the first time either one of us has been here and we are both pretty excited about being here. We may take a trip on Maid of the Mist or one of the other charters, but something tells me whether it be by rain or mist from the falls that we are not going to stay completely dry today.

I'll be sure to share my pictures if I am able to with everyone, depending on what kind of an internet connection that we have.

Enjoy your day at work and prepare for your weekend as we are already enjoying ours.

Vacation Day 9, Back in Baltimore and Back Home

Well this is my last pre-written blog that I am writing for the 2014 vacation. The next blog that you read will in all likelihood be a live blog from me as we are now heading back into Baltimore and getting ready to get back in pearl and head back home to Morgantown.

Our 2013 vacation was a whole lot of fun for us, the only problem is I am not paying for internet fees out in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean and I had to pre-write all of these before we left (yes I wrote them in August). I shared our vacation from last year with everyone, and hopefully you the reader were able to share with us what we were going to see each day based on our 2013 experience.

One thing that we will get to experience this morning is kind of an unexpected honor. Francis Scott Key wrote our Nations National Anthem on the night of September 13-14, 1814 by what he witnessed at the Battle of Fort McHenry in Baltimore. This is the Bi-Centennial of the authoring of that song and there will be a big celebration this morning at Fort McHenry. We will have a prime view as our balcony will be facing Fort McHenry as we pull back into Port.

We will be debarking and going through customs one final time this morning, before packing pearl up one last time to make our return trip back home to Morgantown. I hope we had as much fun on this years cruise as we had last year, we are already planning next years.

Next blog today will be a live one.

Vacation Day 8, the Day at Sea on the Return Home

During our 2013 vacation we did a video log each day. This year instead of writing about where we are or what we are doing, I thought I would share with you our previous years experience. I am on vacation this week and since we are doing the same trip and are staying in almost (next to it) the same room, I'm going to post the previous years video blog. Enjoy.

Vacation Day 7, Freeport Bahamas

During our 2013 vacation we did a video log each day. This year instead of writing about where we are or what we are doing, I thought I would share with you our previous years experience. I am on vacation this week and since we are doing the same trip and are staying in almost (next to it) the same room, I'm going to post the previous years video blog. Enjoy.