The Holidays and a Trip to the States

Our Thanksgiving was unconventional at best. The tradition at Bocas Marina is to get together with the other cruisers and everyone brings a dish to share. The marina is responsible for purchasing and preparing the turkeys. This year, Thanksgiving fell on a Panamanian holiday. This meant that the restaurant staff would be off. Who would cook the turkeys?! No problem, said Dale, I have cooked many turkeys before. Her friend, Laura from Nilaya agreed to help. What they did not know is that there would be three turkeys and an oven that would only accommodate one at a time! Plus there were also dressing, potatoes and gravy to prepare. A couple of days before the big event, the four of us rode the water taxi into Bocas to purchase 20 pounds of potatoes plus all of the other ingredients. The day before our big event, we began cooking turkeys. We cooked around the clock with the 3rd turkey finishing about an hour before dinner time. Ken and Jim peeled the 20 lbs of potatoes and cooked them. Between the four of us, we pulled it off as well as each brought our contributing dish. All went well and we enjoyed a great Thanksgiving meal with around 40 cruisers.

A week later we left to visit family and friends in the states. We checked in to the Bocas airport. The airline that we were flying on is very small and the check in counter was more like a closet. The agent weighed not only our luggage, but us! We were a bit apprehensive when we saw how small our plane was. The 16 seater was not even pressurized! So we had a low flying trip into San Jose, Costa Rica for an overnight before flying into San Francisco. We spent 5 days visiting with Dale's Mom, Brother and Sister-in-Law.

From San Francisco we flew to Seattle where we experienced an unplanned lay over because of freezing fog in Pullman, our destination. On Monday, December 16, we were finally able to fly into Pullman where we were met by granddaughter, Tyler for our ride to Clarkston. The next two weeks were spent in Lewiston, Clarkston, McCall, ID (skiing) and Tri-Cities visiting with family and friends.

On January 2, 2020, we began our three day, four flight trek back to Bocas del Toro Panama. We're ready for our next destination and more adventures in this new year!