01 June 2003 - Good news: We found our photos! Rigging up a makeshift scanner by using the digital camera (Canon G2) on a tripod, I scanned in the best (or representative) photos from the trip. (approximately half of our prints) After reading the introduction below, you can view the photos here. Note: Because of quality loss of transferring the prints to digital images this way, I'm not going to bother cropping each picture. Some day when we get a scanner I'll re-grab them and the quality should improve. If anyone would like a copy of any of the prints (or a high quality scan), let us know, we do have the negatives. --- Doug
Our trip to the Cayman Islands, 28 Dec 1997 to 04 Jan 1998
Breaking with our usual tradition of gathering everyone together at one of the friend's houses for New Year's, Chris, Katy, Jon, Jenn, and I (Doug) traveled south to the Cayman Islands to visit Peter who was working down there. It was a fantastic holiday for us, we had a great time, did all the appropriate touristy stuff, including my first ocean snorkeling, visiting Stingray City, tried our first Mudslides on the beach followed by Kayaking lessons. We saw bat caves, beaches, waves, animals (well, birds) and sampled the local cuisine (jerk chicken, conc, etc.). Burning the fire retardant Christmas Tree brings back memories of the house, the beach, and the dog. A grand time was had by all.
Jenn and I have been pretty good about keeping trip diaries on some of our trips, including our honeymoon in Jamaica (1998), and our Australia (2001) trip, of course. In the few minutes that I've spent putting this page up, a flood of images and feelings have returned about our trip to Grand Cayman, which I hadn't thought about in years. Jenn, was largely responsible for keeping the diary on this trip (our first trip diary, I believe). It really fleshes out the details which otherwise might have been lost.
It's funny, the trip was only five and a half years ago (from when I type this in June 2003), but we were so much younger then. Everybody is a bit thinner, a bit more youthful. Nobody in our group was married yet, although 1998 was the year with the first batch of marriages. Chris & Katy, and Jenn & I (Doug) have kids now. Even the thought of kids was scary back then. We don't see Peter as much as we'd like these days, maybe once a year when he pops in from England to see his folks.
The aforementioned diary is at the end of the photo album. Page 1 starts here. I considered typing in the text of the diary, but part of what makes it interesting is the character that exists in the handwritten text, largely in pencil, on a pad a paper. That and it would take a while to type it all in. (Humm... I notice a few of the pages are slightly fuzzy. I think re-scan is in order.)
And now that you've read the introduction, please enjoy the collection of photos.
A few final thoughts before I throw this up on the website:
- Trips with friends are excellent adventures. Why haven't we done more of them?
- Making a photo album five years after an event gives you a odd perspective, and really underscores how important it is to record your thoughts at the time of the event.
- A trip diary is a wonderful thing, especially several years later.
- I hope you (Jon, Chris, Katy, and Jenn) get as much enjoyment out of these photos as I've gained by posting and annotating them today.
- Post first, spell check later. (I predict humerous use of words and creative spelling, let me know where and I'll fix it!)
Back to the Friends Page.