Our final day on the ship, and we’re up early again. We got up, got dressed, put the last of our stuff in the suitcases, and went up to the buffet for a final breakfast while the ship docked at the Galveston Cruise Terminal. It was a little hectic in the hallways, which is understandable as everyone’s getting ready to get off and the crew is trying to turn everything around for the next group of passengers. After eating we got a few more pictures of the ship and then headed back to the cabin. So, with full bellies, and a cup of coffee in me, we grabbed our luggage and headed for the elevators. Bad idea. They were completely packed and we didn’t have a prayer of catching one that could fit our bags. So I grabbed each one and ferried them down the two flights of stairs to our staging area for self disembarkation. When we got there, staff told us to just head off the ship, that there was no need to wait, so we did. It was more hurry up and wait, since we had to get in line to clear customs. That was a breeze, other than the wait in line, which really wasn’t that bad.

After a short wait for Darleen and Mitch to meet us, we loaded the luggage in the truck and headed for the house to do a little unpacking, sorting, and repacking so that we could ship some of our stuff back and still make the airline’s weight limits. Thankfully we’re flying Southwest, so there’s no checked bag fees. After that we headed out to get some lunch and stop by a UPS Store to ship the extras home, including the robes, picture frames, hot sauces, and chocolates. Once that was done, we ran a few errands and then met up with my sister-in-law and my niece and nephew for dinner. It was good seeing them, it’s been too long. They’re both great kids, and I’m hoping to get Reese down here this summer to spend some time with them. I think they’d all like that.

After a nice dinner, we headed back to the house to hang out for a little while before turning it. The flight home is tomorrow…

One last picture before we got off the ship.

Heather and I took half days at work today and headed out for some lunch and then to the airport to catch our flight to Houston. Darleen and Mitch picked us up from the airport and will be taking us down to the Galveston Cruise Terminal in the morning. We’ve been looking forward to this for a while now. It’s going to be a good opportunity to unplug and spend some quality time together. As we’re going to be away from Internet access, these updates will be posted after we get back. I’m not going to be using the ship’s Internet, or looking for WiFi at any of the ports of call.

We’re going to be on the Crown Princess, heading for Roatan, Honduras; Belize City, Belize; and Cozumel, Mexico. We’ve got some pretty interesting excursions planned, including exploring some Mayan ruins. But like I said, updates to follow after we’re back.

Reese, Heather, and I went in to Pigeon Forge to ride some go-carts. Thanks to Aunt Sandy, we had some free passes to use up, enough for two races for each of us. Reese smoked us totally on the first one, which he really enjoyed. He then wanted to do one of the other rides, a trampoline like thing where he was hooked up to rubber bands to help him jump even higher. He caught some really good air, but didn’t quite have the concept of flips down. He could do them, but couldn’t quite get himself straightened out before landing. The guy running the ride was great, he really worked with Reese and kept him up there for a lot longer than I expected. We both shot some video of him, and I’ll get around to posting it at some point. After that, we did our second race on the go-carts and then went inside to enjoy some air conditioning and play some skee ball. Between the three of us we got enough tickets for Reese to bring home a hackey sack.

We then headed back to the lake, had some great food for dinner, set off the last of our fireworks, and packed up to head out in the morning.

Reese and I headed back in to Pigeon Forge to play some putt-putt before running some other errands. We got two rounds in before the heat made us give up and seek some air conditioning and lunch. After that we stopped off to pick up a birthday gift for Heather and some birthday cake for Reese. Then it was back to the lake to hang out and enjoy some steak. We had some excitement before dinner was ready. One of the worst wind storms hit the area. There’s apparently lots of damage in town with lots of trees down and power outages all over the place. We lost a few pieces of skirting around the trailer and the jet skis and floats drifted away, but other than that it was just really windy here.