Friday, August 3rd -- Our twelfth and thirteenth days on the island:

Goodbye from Mont Vernon. This has been a wonderful trip, and all too quickly it has come to an end. As I am writing this, it is about 9:pm, on Friday, and tomorrow we must leave our island paradise and return the real world. We have a 1:30 pm departure, so there won’t be much time to do anything in the morning. Once we are airborn, it will be nearly a six out flight back to Chicago. After we get our bags, clear customs, catch the shuttle back to the hotel, load our bags in the car. We will have another 3 hours of driving to get back to our home in Decatur. It’s going to a long day...

Yesterday, and again today we spent our time on the beach. The wind both days was pretty strong, and we got sandblasted pretty good both days. But, we endured it, and let the sunshine warm our bodies and our souls. We met several nice folks on the beach, and renewed acquaintances with some we have met on previous visits.

One fellow we met several years ago during a visit via a cruise ship, George is his name, and he used to work at Pedros renting chairs, is always a pleasure for us to see. He is such a nice, hard working guy, and a talented sand sculptor. Anyway, George has a dog this year, and every time we would see George his dog would wander over to our chairs, and gently nudge us until we would pet him. He would stay planted right next to us until George would leave, and then his dog (we never get his name) would reluctantly trod of after his master.

In talking to George, we found out that he is taking passage on a container ship out of Guadalupe to France for a vacation. The crossing will take two weeks, and his dog will be going with him. We wish him safe travels, and hope he has an enjoyable, and well deserved, vacation, and we look forward to hearing about his experiences, when we return to the island in November, for a one day visit on either the Carnival Dream, or the Carnival Breeze.

Well, we are all packed, the dishes are cleaned, the trash is sitting by the door waiting for me take it to the dumpster in the morning. and soon we’ll leaving the studio here at Mont Vernon for the last time. This time, I can leave the keys on the counter, and not worry about it.

Yes, it’s time to go home, but we’ll be back. In fact we are starting to plan our next extended vist now.

So goodbye for now, It’s been fun...