Enjoying family and friends while taking care of business

Arriving back in the States just before the long Fourth of July weekend we spent it in Chicago at a family barbecue hosted by Linda's niece and her husband before we started our first road trip with a trip to Champaign, IL to visit with son Seth. Then back to Chicago to see the World Champion Chicago Cubs play the Tampa Rays and win at Wrigley Field. Then on to the long road trip.

At Wrigley Field.

Home of the World Champion Chicago Cubs.

While visiting Seth we made chocolate from scratch. We brought a pound of cacao beans back with us from Guatemala and we roasted the beans and then worked them into raw chocolate making a pure natural chocolate where some had coconut and some had nuts and dried fruit. What a treat! Real chocolate! Now that we know how to do it we plan to do it back on the boat. 

Making chocolate.

The cocoa powder.

The liquid chocolate.

Although we had visited for a short time in March we were now back in the States for an extended period for the first time after being gone for about 9 months, Unlike the snowbirds who cruise for 5 or 6 months and then return to their homes for 6 months we have no base to which we could return and so needed to organize for our time here and stage what we needed for our next season adventures.

We have several key objectives to accomplish during our visit. Foremost among our objectives is to visit family who we don’t get to see enough; we need to do our annual wellness visits to doctors; get material we needed to take or ship back to Guatemala and around all that reunite with good friends. As much time as it seemed we would have the time is flying by quickly.

We scheduled our primary medical appointments several months ago so we could get them aligned over 2 weeks although the period grew with follow-ups, additional tests and trying to buy new glasses. and contacts.  The good thing is that even after another year us old people are still ok and not in need of too much work this year.

After leaving the Chicago area on Thursday 6 July our first stop was outside Terre Haute, IN to visit with sailing friends we knew from 2 winters in Marathon and the Bahamas. We stopped for a night at Bob and Kat Lyons's beautiful farm home for a pleasant evening and got to catch up with them and encourage them to expand their sailing horizons. We all went out to dinner with Kat's sister and her husband who we also knew from sharing some wonderful evenings in Marathon. Though our visit was short it was a great time that we hope to repeat at some point in the future when we all meet up in the Caribbean.

Bob and Kat Lyon.

From Indiana we drove to Knoxville, TN to spend some time with son Jeremy and his family while they were enroute from his former duty station at Cherry Point, NC to San Antonio, TX. We spent most of the weekend together on Sunday we spent the afternoon visiting the Ijams Nature Center hiking and enjoying the beautiful natural setting. It's too bad we only had a weekend but it's really great to see my kids and grandkids.

Son Jeremy with his wife Regina, son Jared and daughter Abby.

Me with the kids.

Linda and I with the grandkids.

From Knoxville we drove to our former home area in Virginia to visit all our regular doctors having made appointments months earlier. We find it easier dealing with the same medical practitioners that we have known for years for many reasons including the difficulty of finding new doctors that take new medicare patients who will provide the same level of care we have enjoyed. Generally, everything went well although Linda learned she will need another back surgery next year which may have some impact on our plans for this winter. Additionally, we finally got the immunizations we should have gotten last year before heading to Central America although getting them proved to be more difficult than we expected.

Apparently, immunizations for the hazards of the third world aren't generally available by most medical resources. Our doctors pointed us to an organization called Passport Health who routinely provide these immunizations at a rather high cost. We then asked the local Safeway pharmacy where we used to live and found they would give the shots at a much lower cost.  We got our immunizations and are now good for the places we want to visit to the greatest extent we can be. We also got malaria medicine that we should start taking before we leave to go back to Guatemala,

Wellness is a key issue of concern as cruisers. Many cruisers have found medical support from local providers. Several of our friends have used medical services in Guatemala at very low cost although it requires a trip to Guatemala City. We need to decide if we want to adopt the use of indigenous medical care in the future to avoid our time-intensive medical visits while back in the US.

Over the past several months we found ourselves eating much less healthy than we had been and had less opportunity to exercise than over the past several years. This is a really critical issue for us and had many causes but we have to work to find lasting solutions. When we got back to the states we joined Planet Fitness on a monthly basis but more importantly we have to focus and work hard to maintain a healthy diet. Everyone knows that weight control involves diet and exercise but diet is more important since you can't work off enough calories to lose weight.

With grandson Alex.

We found an excellent plan with Planet Fitness where we were able to join for $20/mo that gave us both access to all Clubs around the country. We used about 8 different PF gyms during our visit and had a chance to regain a decent level of fitness which we will have to maintain once we go back to Guatemala. Looking at the usual daytime heat any strenuous cardio exercise will have to occur early in the morning.

With Jim and Jeanne Upson.

During our stay in NoVa we were hosted by several of our old sailing friends. Skipp Maiden and Maryanne hosted us in their lovely home in Annandale one week and Jim and Jeanne Upson hosted us the second week. We also got to spend a weekend on their boats with them and enjoy some fun social events.

Son Justin.

After we completed 2 weeks in northern Virginia we headed north. Our first stop was in Lancaster, PA to visit with my sister and son Justin. Then we traveled further north to Wilkes-Barre, PA to visit with oldest grandson who is working as an intern this summer for a professor at Wilkes University. After that short visit we traveled to Hull, MA where we spent 2 lovely nights with our good friends Ed and Diane O'Brien in their beautiful waterfront townhome before heading up to Boothbay Harbor for Norm Pierce's IP rendezvous.

Lunch with college classmate Stan Greenwood in Boston.

View from our room in Hull.

With Ed and Diane O'Brien in Hull, Ma.

View of Boothbay Harbor.

Norm Pierce is one of the most knowledgeable people about boating and IP's in particular. His gatherings are always a source of great insight along with the opportunity to meet many other IP owners. The chance to get lots of Maine lobster also helps justify going that far north for this meeting. As usual we got some maintenance insight and had the chance to meet the new owners of Island Packet making this a worthwhile investment of time in our tight schedule.

More view of Boothbay and Norm Pierce's Rendezvous site.

Our leaving Boothbay represented a major turn in our trip. We traveled over 1,000 miles from Chicago, through Indiana, Tennessee, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts and up to Maine.  After being in summer for most of the past 3 years it was cold from Virginia north and we were looking forward to getting warm again. 

So on Sunday, 30 July we made our first major turn and began our trip south that would end up in Miami.