Eclipse Plan

My not-especially-well-formulated plan for seeing the April 8 eclipse fell through back in October. After a bit of pondering I did what a good Gen X, Millennial or Zoomer would do, namely started poking around the internet for ideas. What about....perhaps....maybe....hmm, here's a cruise. Eyes bulge. Random thought. Hmm, worth pursuing? 

So I pick up my phone and call my friend June who I explored Ireland with and roomed with on our Danube cruise back in 2022. What do you think? We agreed to get a price quote. When the quote came in, it was reasonable, so we decided to do it. Today's Washington Post even referred to our cruise in an article today about eclipse tourism (https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2024/03/27/total-solar-eclipse-spending-boom/). Yes, that will be us, 22 days on an eclipse cruise. 

The cruise starts in San Diego, goes south to Mexico where we will visit a couple of ports and get to see the eclipse before it reaches land. Then a few sea days en route to Hawaii, finally a few more sea days before stopping in Victoria and ending in Vancouver. So, as I shared with the travel agent, I'll only be flying south for this cruise. 

Since the cruise starts in San Diego, I will be spending 8 nights in Southern California -- 4 with my friend Marla (she called me today to finalize a few details and we both laughed after I answered the phone ,"Hi Marla" and she replied, "Hi Marla."), 2 in Los Angeles, and the last 2 in San Diego with June. I'm looking forward to visiting with several college friends, at least one high school friend, and (surprise) some other geocachers. 

My bags are packed and I've already checked in for tomorrow's flight. I will be blogging a bit during this trip, not sure how often, it will depend on when interesting or otherwise memorable events happen. This is the first long trip since the pandemic that I'm actually bringing a computer with me, I suspect I may be doing a bit of other writing as well as the blog.