DAY 6: Tuesday morning dawned somewhat orange and purple, and the water was very still.
I stepped outside to take a picture and was surprised to see that Jerod was on the cot by the still smoking fire, and Jamie was on his mattress there, too. They previously had slept on the top deck or the back deck of the houseboat. They looked so peaceful, I took their picture!
I don't think I could sleep on the beach that way for worrying about what might be crawling over me or under the covers with me!!
We had to pack up all our stuff, so I started with my own room and then started on the kitchen stuff. Everybody gradually woke up and started working, too. It was hard not to be a little sad that it was over. We swam a little and then headed for the marina.
They've made loading and unloading the boat very easy now, as there are porters to do all the hard work of lifting and transporting everything. That certainly makes it more pleasant than it used to be when we had to do all that work ourselves! We got Jamie and Jerod's stuff loaded into Jamie's car -- he also took the left over foods so they wouldn't spoil while we were in Las Vegas -- like a whole lasagna, a whole meatloaf, a pound of bacon, 2 packages of breakfast sausage and some grapes! Boy, did i bring too much food!!! We packed up our truck, and then we all went to McDonald's for a bite of lunch before leaving. Jerod and Jamie left about 1:30 to begin their drive back to Phoenix, because Jerod's flight left at about 8:45, and he had to be there 2 hours early, and it took about 5 1/2 hours to do the drive, what with some construction that slowed things down. Jerod got back to Seattle by 11:00 pm, and was able to take a taxi home.
We headed out about the same time but in the other direction toward Las Vegas. So much of that country is so beautiful, with rock formations and red cliffs and green bushes . . . and then some of it is extremely boring and quite dreadful! We were so happy to finally get there. We stayed at the Palms, which is not on the strip, but we were in a brand new tower that they were offering at a drastically reduced rate, just to draw people to it.
I think we may well have been the first people to stay in the room we were in.
It was the most plush room we've ever stayed in! We weren't very hungry so just got a plate of fast food Chinese to split and went back to go to sleep.
