Wide Open Spaces: Our 2009 Caribbean Cruise!

Here are 6 of the 8 of us as we embarked onto the Crown Princess in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida on Sunday, January 11, 2009. Deb, Kieth, Becky, Neal, Melanie, Wayne. Here we GO!!!

This was early Saturday morning as we flew out of Rapid City at 6:40 AM. Here we are going over Oahe at Pierre.

Then here we are Saturday afternoon as we fly into Ft. Lauderdale, Florida! Big city!

You can see the everglades off to the top of this photo of coming into Ft. Lauderdale.

Welcome to sunny Florida! This was at the airport waiting for our bus to the hotel.

On board the ship Sunday afternoon - Modrick's hosted a welcome aboard party in their suite. Here we see our local weatherman being the bartender. He & Lisa were great hosts & were so helpful at all times during the trip! Fun people!

You gotta have the safety seminar before you set sale ya know! Don't we look smashing in our life jackets?

This was taken on the first night of the cruise - the big light above the middle of the ship is the moon. We all took a walk around the top of the boat to familiarize ourselves with what was where. There was a huge movie screen on this deck that played outdoor movies! We went up there & watched one one night as we sat in reclining sun chairs with a little blanket over us! Fun!

Here we are the first night in the formal dining room. Most nights the dress code was 'Smart Casual' which is what this night was.

Here is our ship - the Crown Princess - as we were speeding away from it to our first island adventure on the Princess Cays. We loaded into the lifeboats to shuttle to the island.

Here we are on the island of Princess Cays - where we spent the day relaxing on the beach. That is our ship behind us in the background.

Kieth & Neal look pretty relaxed here as they were still on the beach but not in the sun!

The 2nd night was our first 'formal' night. Here we are in the dining room.

Then we went to our nightly show in the theater. I really enjoyed all of them. My favorites were the ones that the singers & dancers did a musical - they did 3 of those.

Here was my favorite dancer - she is carrying Africa on her head!

This is the island of St. Maarten of the Virgin Islands - look at the color of the water!

This is the catamaran that we rode on at St. Maarten. They took us out & we climbed out of the boat into the ocean & snorkeled! This place the water was pretty churned up so we couldn't see alot, but the guide gave us some food to feed the fish & when you were holding the food you sure saw alot of fish! It was pretty cool! I couldn't see the bottom of the ocean here.

Each evening the 8 of us would gather in the Wheelhouse bar on the ship before we went to the evening meal. I guess here we are missing Bob & Jodi. We are all drinking the drink of the day here - I think it was a Bahama Baby.

On Princess Cays island we stopped for a pose by one of the many palm trees after we had our lunch on the island.

Here are Kieth & I at the dinner table on the 2nd formal night.

This was by the theater on the first formal night as we left the show.

The 6 of us on the pretty staircase on the 2nd formal night.

Bob, Neal, Kieth, Deb, Wayne, Jodi, Becky, & Melanie on the first formal night.

The ocean water at St. Maarten - wow! What a color!!!

This is at the Grand Turk island. The 6 of us went power snorkeling here & this was afterwards as we had a couple drinks on the beach before we had to head back to the ship.

This is boat that we rode out to the snorkeling destination. They took us out a ways & we got out of the boat in 30 ft. deep water over a corral reef. It was AWESOME snorkeling!!! Then we went out a little farther to where the reef dropped off - there was a 7,000 foot drop there! So we swam out over that (not for long mind you!!! I went a ways but that 7,000 feet was not a comfortable feeling for me!!!) The power snorkeling was really fun - I would sure do that again!

After the snorkeling on Grand Turk us ladies did a little shopping. We had a lot of fun! Here are some visors that we wore around town & onto the ship! We got some looks!!!