Cruising Time

Finally, it is time to move this boat.  Graduations are all over, I am back from safari and Dwight, who feels like he's been in Liege since 'nineteen-ought-four', is anxious to see new sights.  With any luck at all, we will be saying goodbye to the Liege Marina on Friday morning, July 15.

Yes, you read that word correctly - safari.  Not what it used to be though.  I think I saw more tourists than animals.  These days, at least in Tanzania, you ride through national parks while standing in the back of a Land Rover hoping to catch a glimpse of "the big 5": lion, rhino, elephant, leopard and cheetah. Seems like the people are caged not the animals.  But we saw every one of them roaming free (plus a few more) and traffic, traffic, traffic.  I never imagined that I would be stuck in a traffic jam in the Serengeti.  Guides don't have to search for game anymore, they just have to be good at spotting a group of Land Rovers on the horizon.

Looking through traffic at a leopard lazing in a tree (we did get closer)

Very glad I got to go to Africa though.  All the things I expected to see are still there; hundreds of wildebeest and fat-bottomed zebra, giraffes chomping on the tops of trees, elephants strolling ponderously through the bush, and in early July, adorable babies of every kind from baboons to buffalo.  Plus in 11 African days, I was only bug-bitten 27 times.  Not bad for me.

The graduations were worth waiting for; my nephew, written up in the local newspaper as a young man with the ability to go his own way, will be studying film making in college; my 6'1" 14 year old grandson is out of middle school and on his way to an exciting high school basketball career; my 18 year old granddaughter, senior class president and prom queen, is on her way to UC Davis to study molecular biology (she thinks), and our double major university graduate, my oldest granddaughter, is working with autistic children changing their lives for the better. Bragging? You betcha'! To all those old cranks complaining about this younger generation....you don't know what you're talking about.

  The 3 graduates in the middle of family

Now it's back to doing what we do best...canal cruising.