No Pictures but an Update

This post comes with no pictures because I am writing an update while working on a laptop in our condo in SLC and it doesn't have a port to put the camera card in. We left Goodyear in rather a hurry twelve days ago after Cheryl had surgery on her leg for infection so we could help her for a few days while she was "down." Last week we drove up to Idaho for a reunion with Fred's siblings, to check out a lodge as a possible location for a family reunion next summer, and for Fred's 55 high school graduation reunion. Our gathering with Fred's siblings was low key due to ages. Fred's oldest sister, Nona, is a spry 88. Joel is 87, Audra is 86, Barbara is 79, Fred is 73, Brent and June are both 70. In their company I feel downright young at 66. We did drive up to Island Park for a dinner theater and stayed overnight in Brent's cabin.

The reunion lodge was fantastic. More about that later. Going to a high school reunion where I knew absolutely no one was interesting. Of course, Fred had a hard time recognizing most after 55 years. Now we are spending a week in the condo in SLC basically just relaxing. We have done some Family History work while here.

Costa Rica. . .Wow!

We spent 8 days in Costa Rica with our grandson, Samuel Berry (Laura and Jonathan's son). This was a typical boat dock and home along the river as we rode one and a half hours up the river to Tortuguero National Park. There are no roads into this part of Costa Rica. Our accommodations were rustic but adequate--screens instead of glass windows but who wanted windows with no air-conditioning besides the electricity was unreliable. We just went to bed early and woke up at day-break to take walks along the Caribbean Sea. These are the beaches the sea turtles come up on to dig holes in the sand and lay eggs. The nests are marked and you are not allowed to walk on the beaches at night.

During the day we took several small boat cruises up various tributaries of the river looking for wildlife. It was a surprise to find palm trees growing half-way into the water.
We saw troops of all four kinds of monkeys found in Costa Rica--howler, white-faced, squirrel and spider. This is a spider monkey. The howler monkeys would wake you up in the mornings with their calling.

Iguanas (this one was about eight feet long) were abundant as well as many other kinds of lizards including one that walked on water. What a sight that was!

There were hundreds of birds from tiny hummingbirds to the four-foot Jabiru which is on the endangered list (of the estimated 75 that are left we were fortunate to see a pair of them). Many of the 882 species of birds found in Costa Rica are brilliant in color like the above bird. Toucans were common as well as many kinds of water birds.

Can you believe it? Water buffalo!

When we were not riding boats through the jungle we walked on trails cut through the underbrush and onto hanging bridges such as these. Some of the bridges were in the canopies of the trees which could be hundreds of feet from the ground. It was exciting when they started to sway just from walking on them.

This great Kapok tree is 250 years old and about 200 feet tall. The seed pods from this tree were used in life vests. We saw the famous poisonous red dart frog with brilliant blue legs in the crevices on this tree trunk.

Costa Rica has seven active volcanoes in a land area the size of West Virginia. We hiked up to the look-out on the edge of the crater of the Poas Volcano.

Samuel and I then hiked further up through rain forest to a second crater. We felt very fortunate that we didn't feel any of the 2000 per year earthquakes they normally experience nor was any of our excursions spoiled with the average 300 inches of rainfall a year.
If we were to enumerate the highlights of this trip it would have to be:

1. Quality time spent with a grandson.

2. Appreciate for the beauty of the jungle found in plant life, flowers and animals.

3. Wonderful, abundant, cheap and delicious fruit such as pineapple, bananas, mangos and papayas. There is just nothing to beat a fresh pineapple.

4. Appreciation for the "youth" of the geology of this area of the world. We visited three of the seven active volcanoes.

5. Traveling from the Atlantic to the Pacific oceans in just a manner of hours.

6. Watching Fred and Samuel go down a four-story waterslide into a hot pool on the side of a volcano. They swear they were going about 20-30 miles per hour. All I know is that Fred got a standing ovation from the on-lookers!

7. Appreciation for the all that we have as citizens of the United States of America!