Lots of green photos of the reef

Hello, all! It's Sunday night here and we're getting ready to get everyone to bed so that we can resume life as normal tomorrow. Normal for now, anyway. Most of you are still sleeping and only halfway through your weekend, lucky dogs!!

So I wasn't going to post any of the reef photos because sadly, they're just sub-par, but honestly, how often does a person get to visit the Great Barrier Reef?? So I really feel like I should put at least a few of them up. I hope that each and every one of you gets to see this in person at some point in your lives. It was an excellent experience. Spiritual and all that jazz.

It took about an hour to get from Cairns out to the reef. We went to the inner reef as honestly I was a bit nervous about all of us going to the outer part and being on just a dive pontoon and swimming over 1000s of feet of water. As it turned out, I'm sure it would've been fine, but we went to a very small island covered with rainforest and it was good, too, to have a beach and a restroom and food and all. A bit easier (more comfortable and scared-y cat) way to do it.

Every boat we were on had an abundance of seasickness bags and I hadn't paid much attention to them, but on the second trip out we had 6 foot seas and 40 mph winds, and we actually got to see them used. Hooray!

Most of the people there with us were Asian, from China and Japan, I gathered. A lot of people seemed to just go out there to go, but not to snorkel or dive. I thought that was a bit odd, but some were older and some maybe just didn't like swimming (and gosh, there were sharks and stingrays and stuff, so who can blame them?), but you could take a glass-bottom boat tour, so I guess that was enough for them.

I thought it sounded kinda hokey (embarrassingly touristy!) when Dennis told me he'd signed up for it, but it was awesome!! I'm sorry I laughed at him and I did apologize and admit it was worth it.

♪  ♫ He was in a jam -- in a GIANT CLAM!!! (Name that song...) ♪  ♫

Nobody has yet submitted their answers about New Caledonia, by the way. Just sayin'...

We saw TONS of giant clams. I wasn't aware that they even exisited. Very cool.

As I said already, the biggest excitement came from spotting some sea turtles. This is possibly the only decent shot I got on both trips to the reef, but it was a good time to have luck with the light! They were just the coolest things ever. So beautiful.

We also saw some good sized rays, a 6 foot shark (eeek!), and tons more fish and coral. The water was a beautiful and warm light green, the sand was white, and it was like nothing we've ever done before. Like I said, I hope you all can go there some day. That is my wish for you tonight.

xo, K.