Launching out to St. Thomas
May 27, 2000
Saturday of Memorial Day weekend is a busy time at Hartsfield Airport, Atlanta. Marty Dye took Brenda, Rod and Mark out to the airport. We sat in a queue on the taxiway for quite a while as the airlines tried to get everybody off the ground to their holiday destinations. There were probably a dozen planes ahead of us on the taxiway.
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 | Our flight path took us offshore at about Savannah and we flew to the east of the Bahamas. The view at left is somewhere in the Bahamas. The flight distance to St. Thomas is about the same as from Atlanta to Phoenix, a good bit further than I had anticipated. The flight time was over three hours. |
 | Flying is always a reverie for me, and I enjoyed just watching the cloud formations over the blue water. I always remember the first time I ever saw the ocean when I headed out as a college sophomore over the Pacific Ocean from Los Angeles to Hawaii to spend the summer as a summer missionary with children on Kauai. That was a nine hour flight on an old multi-prop DC6B, but I enjoyed just watching the variety of cloud formations over the blue water. In the views below, I was interested in the appearance of the water and the shadow of the clouds on the water. |
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We flew across to the north of Puerto Rico and over some smaller islands as we approached St. Thomas. The views below are a sequence on our approach to the St. Thomas airport. At right is a small island off the south coast of St. Thomas.
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 | After landing in St. Thomas, Mark and I gathered all the luggage - tons of it - while Brenda checked on the rental car. We got a tiny Toyota Echo, and it was quite a puzzle to get all the luggage and us into it. Then we set out with minimal directions, on the wrong side of the road, to find the Bluebeard Resort. After a few circles, we found it and then started the process of trying to get checked in. Part of the "laid back" atmosphere of the island involves giving very brief directions and instructions, so we had multiple tries at most everything when we first got there. The resort was very nice, sitting on a hill overlooking the cruise ship port of Havensight. |
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Mark and I had the luxury of a look around all the balconies of the upper part of Bluebeard's Castle resort while Brenda was stuck in line downstairs checking us in. As usual, she did the most work to keep us all comfortable. The mountaintop view below shows our location relative to the cruise ship dock and the bay. Our balcony gave us as good a view of the cruise ship operation as anyone had. |  |
2000
St. Thomas