Ralph said: "Brayden kept a journal during our trip.

Following is what he wrote. Please keep in mind that his facts might be a little off from time to time as there was a lot to keep track of. It is an interesting view of the trip from the eyes of a 14 year old. I am also not sure that he actually saw the event where the bird attacked the chick. He may have been relating what he was told by one of the expedition staff who saw it.

Keeping the journal was a lot of work and Brayden spent quite a bit of time keeping it. He also took a lot of notes from the various briefings and lectures that were given.
I am very proud of my grandson."

Brayden's Journal
antarctica journal- 2012 day 3

We were in Ushuaia it is extremely green, vibrant in colors, and diverse in the terrain. there is an airstrip located on a natural peninsula, where we landed, there are rivers, electronics assembly plants, abandoned saw mills, an old jail, and even a ski lodge. the weather here is so easily changeable that our guide informed us that this morning it was raining heavily all morning and overcast until about eleven but now it is sunny, warm, and windy. theres also a large diversity of trees, beautifully colored flowers, and streams.

in the 80's there was a jail put in Ushuaia where the worst prisoners from the capitol city of buenos aires argentina were sent to work and also populate the small city which ended up not working well because of the fact that it was too cold for the women so they were sent back to buenos aires but the men remained and worked. the jail was located in "downtown" but the men rode a train every day to the worksite of a large dome shaped mountain where today half of the dome is bare as the other half is the opposite,covered in greenery and large trees. the bare side is like that because of the work of the prisoners who chopped wood to make the small airport where we arrive today. Ushuaia and the entire area was all formed entirely by large glaciers that carved out the many valleys near,in,and surrounding Ushuaia. these glaciers are obviously not still here today due to the fact that it is too hot and they receded west much earlier. there is a population of around 16,000 people and there are plenty of houses. many of the people that came here due to the fact there were very good opportunities being presented by the electronics companies that were put into place here, so many people decided to move here in pursuit of a job in that department.


Day 4

sea day~


Day 5

Today we explored the falkland islands above the antarctic peninsula and saw a variety of new and exciting wildlife we had not yet encountered on the trip. There are 18 known species of penguin to inhabit the earth to this day, so far on this trip we have seen four of these types of penguins just in one group of islands.

on the north end of the island we saw the rockhopper penguins. but along with them we also saw other different birds and wildlife such as native geese, skuas, and black-browed albatross which are similar to sea gulls and we have seen from the ship on the ocean since we first left port.

this island in the falkland islands was called "new island" and the one we visited later was called "Saunders island". Once in Saunders island this is about as far south as you can see the Magellantic penguin. this type of penguin is similar to the Gentoo's and similar in height and body structure to both the Gentoo and the rockhopper penguins.

the most stunning and completely different penguin from all the others that we saw here today was the king penguin. this penguin is tall, "classy", beautifully colored, large, and majestic compared to the other species of penguin around them on Saunders island. also an interesting sight to see was the many baby chicks in the rookeries of penguins among the many islands but also the fact that in the small colony of king penguins a few of these birds had their eggs under there skin flap and on their feet to keep the egg warm, which is first priority, an interesting fact is that most of the penguins that have chicks almost starve to death. this happens because the chicks need so much food to grow that the adult has to spend so much time gathering the food then feeding it to its chick by the time its done feeding the adult has hardly any energy left to hunt for itself and often times has barely enough food in its tummy left over to keep it alive.

lastly id like to talk about the amazing weather in this barren area. this morning when we landed in the first island it was about 40 degrees and clear skies nice and calm, this was around 6:30 this morning and when we got to the other island around two o clock it was similar weather. once we had started going over to the penguins around 3 o clock there were around 35 nought winds gusting by and churning up the waves and throwing sand in all directions.


day 6 - recap

in todays recap and briefing i learned about- the influence of squid fisheries in the falkland islands, jellyfish, and one of the most important plants to the falkland islands called tussock grass. What i learned about the squid fisheries in the falklands nowadays was how they work, how much they can catch, their importance, their impact, and their role in- economies, food supplies [both human and animals alike], and populations. as for how much squid these fleets can catch can be entirely up to the squid but there are two main types of squid here in the antarctic falklands region one of them is argentinian squid and the other is a squid more native to the antarctic regions. The squid based out of argentina is one that actually "migrates" to the antarctic area and is usually then fished by all of the local fisheries around the falklands areas. The entire process of fishing for squids around the falkland islands was all started by research started all, of course, by money. the russians were the first to start looking and decide that it would be a good way to make money to fish for squid here where there was an abundance. then some other countries decided to come start doing the same such as korea, taiwan, and japan etc.

next we talked about something very ordinary looking but yet so extremely important it could devastate species if it was nonexistent. this is the plant species of the tussock grass in the falkland islands. these mounds of grass can be home to many species of birds in the falklands including the several of the petrel species and even a penguin species called the Maggelantic penguins. it also can serve as a nice mid day napping pillow to a weary fur seal is some cases. in the center of this "bush" there a mound that is above ground where these bird species will dig burrows underneath these mounds and build their nests inside the burrows.

The island in the olden days was mainly used by the people who lived there as a large sheep pasture that actually worked rather well until the farmers decided to remove a lot of the tussock grass to make room for more sheep or other types of grass or other things, but in the long run other studies have been shown that the tussock grass actually is growing most of the year even in such bad conditions so it is abundant all year which is actually a must better alternative food source to the sheep they raised then the grass they thought would be what they'd eat. the fact that the farmers removed so much of these tussock grass tussocks that the species actually had become rather scarce in the falklands. the farmers actually removed these plants at a reasonably slow rate but because they take so long to grow an mature it takes a while for it to create a sustainable offspring which made it so less than half the plants left could actually send out seeds and of those its unclear how many of those grew and you can see how you would see a steady decline as they removed more and more of these tussocks. But, once the farmers realized this was a much better food source for their sheep they started to try to help them survive and help to make sure they could have plenty of these plants on the islands from now on and today there are not quite as many as originally but are much more than there were when they were at their lowest point.

now we move onto the talk of jellyfish by the ships marine biologist. jelly fish do not have a brain a stomach or even a pancreas or spleen. the reason jelly fish tie into the trip to Antarctica is because there are actually a lot of jelly fish around here that actually like the cold water a lot and when they are in the cold water they grow much more and much larger in cold water compared to in warmer water. you would think that the biggest economic benefit coming from fishing so much squid would come from thee ships fishing it but actually the falklands are the most economically beneficial to this fishing because they sell a lot of fishing licenses to the water area they own and also because it can attract a ton of tourism which is obviously very beneficial to them.


Day 7 recap and briefing (sea day #2)


will-

seabirds landing on ships-

the smaller ones coming in after dark nesting...

disorienting fly to bright lights

the main reason is they have a tough time walking or "waddling"

and they hide on cold metal on ships which causes them to lose body heat very fast

storm petrels and diving petrels the most common birds that land on ships at night and also antarctic prions


Aiello-

whales

the sea shelf and plateau where nutrients are pushed up from the deep area and pushed up the "cliff" of the shelf where the whales get easy feeding


Minke- 9m (one of the smallest of the whale species)

humpback and right-15m

blues and fins-30m and 25m


blue whale scientific name means winged mouse

largest animal ever

solitary animals

3 school buses 17 scuba divers or 1 space shuttle

weighs around 180 tons 2667 humans 83 great white sharks 40 elephants 5 humpback whales

9m blows spray

take in 5000 liters in a single breath

fin of the tail is 25 ft wide

can go 25 meters per hour

gives birth to 25 ft baby

drinks 380 liters per day

live 80-100 years

spout goes up up to 9m


peter-

Scott Vs. Amundsen


Amundsen-

first people on the trip to deliberately stay through the winter

went from atlantic to pacific through canada

scott-

had been on the discovery a political figure and both men had experience in expeditions


Amundsen-

philosophy-

wants whoever to come to come but whoever gets there first gets there first

scott- wanted people to stay away until he got there


Amundsen's team Vs Scotts' team


communal society vs class structure


dogs Vs horses


in the end Amundsen gets there first and doesn't lose any men and lives to go back from antarctica where as scott does not


Day 8 South Georgia island- (Salisbury Plains and Prion Island and Fortuna bay [South Georgia Island]


Salisbury plains, there is only one word to describe it, indescribable. which is exactly what it is. When you first get on the beach you are warmly "welcomed" by a beach covered in mostly female fur seals and their many tiny fuzzy black pups. Then once you travel over a small dirt ridge you lose your breath as you gaze at a sea of black. This "sea" is actually over 250,000 pairs of king penguins. its a king penguin colony, the second biggest king penguin colony in all of South Georgia Island. it is an amazing sight to see. there are so many penguins that they had to expand the edges of their colony because there were too many. there were even many king penguin chicks in the colony as well. the chicks are large brown and puffy.

Even with the introduction of some non-native species like the rat which are having bad effects on the bird species they still have such great numbers there which is amazing. then we went to a place called Prion Island which is a pretty great place, especially if you like birds. on this island there is a beach with tons of seals, of course, but thats not all theres also a skinny wooden trail up the side of a hill. this skinny trail leads to a large section of albatross nests. Albatross are a species of birds there are very common around this area. The albatross with the longest wing span is the wandering albatross with a wingspan of 11 feet. the second largest albatross is the royal albatross which is only fractionally smaller than the wandering albatross but the royal albatross actually live in new zealand. Its very interesting to hear of the lives that these huge birds live. When they are born they live and grow very close to the nest as you would expect. It takes them one year to leave the nest for good, but when they do wandering albatross and most species of albatross live in the ocean for years and years at a time before return in back to the nest after age 13 to breed. this doesn't necessarily mean they are in the ocean for 13 years they could periodically go to land after every few years or so but they don't usually breed until at least the age of 10-13 years. When you see one of these huge birds getting up off its nest and preparing to take flight its incredible how difficult it is for them to get back in flight once they are on land and how much energy it must take to flap those giant wings which is why they don't flap them one bit when they are in the air because they just glide on them which is why they need to be so large in order to just be able to coast on them for ever and ever.

We also saw some giant petrels on this island living amongst the albatross as well. As you could have guessed the giant petrels is the biggest of all the petrel bird species. One of the most interesting things about both of these birds is that the reasons they can live on just the ocean for so long is all based on adaptations they have to do this. Such as the way that they don't need to drink fresh water like mammals and other animals and that they consume so much salt water through their food and drinking out of the ocean that they can actually release a high salt water solute that drips out their beak releasing all the salt water in their system. last i want to talk about their amazing tube shaped beaks this is yet another one of their great adaptations. The tubed noses as their called is an adaptation that actually amplifies their sense of smell greatly which is another thing to help them out in the wild like webbed flippers and large wings.

Fortuna bay is a place where we say first hand one of the main introduced species that is only one of the two species that actually flourished here and still remains today, that is the reindeer. We saw three herds of reindeer in the valley behind Fortuna bay. We also saw of course lots of fur seals, and king penguins. In the backdrop of this bay was a very large blue-white glacier that was a very beautiful sight among the reindeer seals and penguins as well as the snowcapped peaks surrounding them all. This was a very fun, exciting, crazy, tiring, magical, awe inspiring, mystical day.


Day 9 Grytviken [South Georgia Island]


Today we visited the resting place of the great antarctic explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton. Today after we came ashore visited the grave of Shackleton and his right hand man Frank Wild whom wanted to be buried next to his best friend who was sir ernest Shackleton.

This town of Grytviken was actually a very old whaling station but was a major stop for all explorers coming and going to and from antarctica like Shackleton. In the town there are many building you can identify on the shore line such as the whaling station where they put the whales after they were brought ashore the mill where they sawed the whales, the blubbery where all the whale fat was put in large pots to extract the oil from them and then of course the small houses where all the people working there would sleep.

There was also a whaling and history of Grytviken museum there too. Inside the museum was a large amount of information on things like the tools the whalers used and all the way down to the things that were left there and are now on historic display. some of the items included were giant blubber pots, whale claws, harpoon guns, whaling knives, display cabin, what kind of wildlife is still in the oceans today, and many other things included.

At this museum they also had a replica of the ship that Shackleton and his men used during their voyage and its amazing to see how small it was and imagine what it must been like to share between 5 people and somehow take it over very rough waters. it even talked about the species devastation during these times because there was so much hunting of marine mammals during this time period such as the fur seal who was down to a little over a thousand but has somehow made a remarkable recovery as their are now way to many to count.

Another species almost killed off by hunters of their time was the whale population there is still a very scarce population of blue whales in the world because so many were killed.


Day 10 Gold Harbor and Cooper Island/Bay


Gold harbor is a very beautiful place, especially when you have pretty good weather. Gold harbor is home to one of the largest glaciers in all of South Georgia and also home to a ton of wildlife such as the Fur Seals of course, Gentoo Penguins, and of course King Penguins and you cant forget one of my favorites the huge mighty and nasty Elephant Seal. A female Elephant Seal can grow to more than a Walrus in weight and size and can weigh up to TWO TONS. But on the other hand the male Elephant Seal or the "Bull" can weigh up to FOUR TONS! these animals are so massive when their laying on the beach it looks like a huge brown boulder rather than any sort of mammal.

One of the funnest things to watch so far has been watching two young male elephant seals battle each other for practice in the breeding season. When you see these huge blobs get up from their nap and start to go at it you get an entirely new respect for them completely and quickly. It may seem like their all fat but when you think about how much muscle it must take to hoist up 2/3 of its weight in the air and keep it their while attacking another elephant its insane how buff they must really be.

Another really interesting thing about the elephant seals are their ocean patterns they can actually dive to a mile or more down into the ocean which is almost as far as a sperm whale! They also have a tendency to go extremely far out when they go out for food, as well as extremely deep to catch things like squid mostly. When you think of how heavy an animal is you must of course also think about how much food it must have to eat to become so heavy, maintain that weight, and to have enough reserve weight to make it through the entire breeding season without being able to get more food for themselves. Even the pups that come out of these giant beasts are already huge at a little less than a ton. One of the other amazing features of these creatures is the fact that they can hold their breath for almost two hours at a time and can actually control their own heart rate as to use less oxygen and be down in the deeps for longer.

There was also some more bird life here such as the giant petrel and the wandering albatross with almost equally as huge of wingspans around 11 foot each, both a member of the tube nose family. After that we traveled a small distance over to Cooper Island and Cooper Bay.

After we docked in cooper bay we traveled in the zodiacs a small distance to cooper island which was a very interesting spot to see a brand new species of penguins to our trip so far. We say Macaroni penguins, these penguins are not huge or tiny but is a nice dependable size most of the time. these little guys are pretty interesting, they have a beautiful yellow "macaroni" crest on their forehead! These penguins are some of the most fun to see in the water because they porpoise in the water as they need breaths of air. We also saw the chinstrap penguin which has a very odd looking black line under its beak which looks like a little chinstrap which gives them their name. There were also the good old gentoo penguins and all of these penguins porpoise as well which means when they need breath they actually shoot out of the water and get a breath as this happens. which is very fun to watch as they fly under the water then literally fly out of the water too and it makes them look like dolphins as well. the reasons for why these penguins porpoise are rather interesting, one is that they don't lose any speed as they fly through the air and back into the water the second is that if their being chased by a predator as they fly out of the water it will momentarily confuse them and make it that much easier for them to escape, the last one is that it take less energy for them to go through the air rather then the water so when they do this very often and it saves a little energy each time it ends up saving a rather large amount of energy total. we also saw a few more elephant seals as well but they were extremely lazy compared to the ones we had seen on the beaches of gold harbor.

We even spotted a new species of bird to us which was the snowy white sheathe bill. a tiny white bird that roams the beaches looking for small bits of food much like the antarctic turn we've seen a few times that actually scoops up small plankton from the water and then eats them.


Day 11 sea day

We've been experiencing some bad weather right now there is over thirty foot swells outside rocking the ship all because of a huge wind coming the antarctic continent and we have to head straight into it.


Day 12 sea day


Day 13 elephant island-


Today we visited an island very close the tip of the Antarctic peninsula called elephant island. There is actually a rather interesting reason for being called that as well.
Some of the original people to discover this island was Shackleton and his men which they ended up landing at twice on two separate occasions. One of the times they landed there was when Shackleton dropped off his men in lifeboats then left in search of help and the men were left to fend for themselves for some long period of time and Shackleton actually named one of the rock formations near where they originally landed point wild after his right hand man frank wild.
But anyways the original reason for being named elephant island was because of the humongous population of elephant seals that populated the small island. Later on with better technology we actually the island has an exact resemblance to the head and trunk of an elephant! This was one of the most memorable stops so far because this exact ship and crew have been attempting to land zodiacs on point wild for ten years but had never been successful because of such awful weather but for the first time in ten years they were able to land us on the shore and get a team photo with the statue that in further up on the same small land mass.

Before actually doing all of these things we did what is called a zodiac tour where you drive around in the small boats but don't actually go on land anywhere. Today was our best zodiac tour so far, we came to a large angled flat topped ice berg and it was amazing just by itself of course but with the added hilarity and beauty of a ton of Gentoo penguins leaping out of the water on the side of the ice berg and climbing up with their claws a fantastic sight! If that wasn't enough to see before even noon while watching penguins and the ice berg we spotted a mother and calf humpback whale and were able to drive as close as 10 feet from them and you can at that point appreciate how massive these animals are especially when your in a small inflated boat looking down on its majesticness. an interesting fact about humpback whales is there is a very easy way of identifying a humpback in the water, next to its body you see a huge white spot maybe two even this is their huge white fins, it has the largest fins in the entire animal kingdom. there was also a very large population of gentoo penguins in a rookery on the island by point wild as well.


day 14- brown bluff/ADELE PENGUINS!!


today we visited a unique spot on the actual antarctic peninsula where we had our first continental landing a celebration for those who this was their seventh continent. This was my fourth continent. This place is so unique on its own and especially because it was our ANTARCTICA continental landing is that it has huge cliffs next to the shore that look almost identical to those of thee grand canyon and the only hints that this is actual antarctica are; the penguins, ice bergs, and a glacier. Without these no one could tell it was the cold desert of antarctica.

My new favorite species of penguins is the Adele penguins because of their extremely odd and funny behavior on the beach. There were also some very interesting chicks on the beach but they were very curious Gentoo chicks not Adeles but one of the chicks did decide to try to attack every zipper on my jacket and pants. The Adele penguins are the funnest to watch by far, there are a couple groups of about 100 or so adele penguins that we like to call armies but there is a good reason. They will constantly, as a group, march up and down the beach for no apparent reason then suddenly will start squawking loudly and repeatedly then will all condense into a small pack of them and then all pile into the surf until about half of them are in the water then for no reason whatsoever will all back up and the rest that are left will march up and down the beach again until they pile in and so on. which is extremely entertaining to watch.

I also had the opportunity to walk up a very large glacier where there was an amazing view from the top of the harbor, our boat the silver explorer, and a ton of light blue colored ice bergs and of course the small little shapes of the porpoising Adele penguins in the water. One of the best parts of this stop on the trip besides all the rest was seeing the snake like head and figure of a leopard seal waiting by the shoreline for all the Adele penguins to hop in.


day 15-Lemaire Channel, Cape Renard, and Neko Harbour


Today was an absolutely amazing day, best day of the entire trip. Today starting around 6:30 this morning we entered a place on the antarctic peninsula known as the Lemaire Channel. This was a very scenic spot. IT was a rather narrow channel filled with some small pieces of ice and things but on both sides were huge snow covered peaks that formed the entire channel. At the "end" of the channel we actually had the opportunity to do whats called ice cruising. Which is where we took the ship through some loose ice to get to some crab eater seals we spotted sleeping on ice flows.
We saw about 5 or 6 crab eater seals on the ice during that. After ice cruising we head back up through the channel we had just come down back up toward Cape Renard.

Here we did a zodiac tour where we saw a lot of large ice bergs, glaciers and dramatic large mountains. I also spotted some crab eater seals resting on some ice bergs, then i spotted more swimming right next to our boat and you could really see how graceful they are compared to when they are on land similar to penguins and other landed sea creatures. We even saw some caving on some of the glaciers around the cape as well, which means we watched big giant chunks of ice fall off the face of the glacier then crash into the water and actually were so heavy they made large wakes that came under our zodiac as well. One of the interesting things about the crab eater seals is that they actually don't eat crabs at all their diet is composed of completely krill.

The best stop of the day was definitely a place called Neko Harbour. Here we Experienced a lot of different things such as the beauty of the destination a landing as well as a zodiac tour and some glacial caving a snowy hike and fun snow slides. Ill start with the zodiac tour previous to the landing on the shore of Neko Harbour.

The zodiac tour took place in the bay around Neko where there were some stunning ice berg gardens and lots of wildlife. We sarted out by looking a huge ice berg with a very interesting anomaly in it which was a huge tunnel where we saw another one of our zodiacs through it. Then once we made our way toward some of the other ice bergs we found there was another couple of crab eater seals resting on an ice flow like there had been in Cape Renard. A little later on we spotted a rare sight which was a Minke whale. These are the smallest whales but they really aren't small. After we looked at that for a bit it was gone in the open ocean but almost immediately after that we spotted TWO MORE humpback whales, a mom and her calf.

That pretty much concluded our zodiac tour so we headed back through the bay towards the beach where we landed. Our landing site today was a spot where there was a large gentoo colony and also a lot of beautiful scenery such as the HUGE mountain side where there was a huge snow drift on top of it appearing that it was going to fall at any time and also a large path up on top of another glacier with very thick snow on top of it where we hiked up to the top where the snow slides were.

Our group was the first to reach the top and i was right behind our guide the whole time. Then once we were at the top i decided to go down the biggest and steepest snow slide. This was actually formed by a natural water way where the snow melt on top of the mountain would drain causing small crevices where you could slide down. But sadly once you got down if you wanted to do it again you had to go all the way back up again which i did three times. After i was done doing that a few times i went on my way back to the ship but to our luck they had spotted a leopard seal sleeping on an ice flow. We then headed over there from the landing sight as fast as we could. once i got there wen couldn't see much until we got extremely close to the ice and the seal itself as well. Unfortunately the leopard seal was asleep so it wasn't extremely exciting, but we did get to see him yawn and see his amazing adapted teeth that were very cool.

After we had enough of this we went to another ice flow near the one we had just been at that had two sleeping crab-eater seals on it. But we eventually got back to the ship although our amazing day didn't stop there. Right after dinner we spotted three more humpback whales that were being hunted by a pod of killer whales. It was an amazing sight, we had the rare opportunity to watch the behavior of both animals and how they hunt and try to avoid being hunted. Humpbacks whales will stick together and hide near the ship usually to help keep from being eaten. but the way the killer whales hunt the humpbacks are extremely interesting they will circle them then force the smallest weakest one to separate from the others then they hunt that one down very quickly and eat only the tongue, no one knows why they only eat the tongue but for some reason thats how it works and that is what we witnessed here today.


Day 16 Deception Island- Telefon Bay and Baileys Head

Today was a very interesting and somewhat crazy day. First stop of the day was at a place called Telefon Bay in Deception Island. The island was named deception island because of its shape it appears from the outside to be a huge round island somewhat similar to some of the Hawaiian islands but it is deceptive because it is actually just a big circle around a naturally protected harbor.

What we did here on deception island was Hiking up to the rim of an active volcano and a real life caldera. At the top of the rim was a very interesting sight there was a huge crater that was very steep. At the bottom the entire beach was all composed of completely black volcanic rock minerals and were very interesting to look at. Telefon Bay was also where i participated in the polar plunge which is where you stand on the shore run into the ocean run back and grab a towel and get back to the ship as fast as you can. Unlike most of the other i went completely under-water and i was the first to go the few others that went didnt go all the way under the water.

After a very long very hot shower we headed over to a unique spot called Baileys Head, this is home to the largest chinstrap penguin colony in the world, an ESTIMATED 150,000 breeding pairs of chinstrap penguins. Here we had the chance to see something that very rarely happens, we watched as a weak molting chinstrap penguin is attacked by a giant petrel and a skua and is killed but not without a fight it fought off those birds for a solid couple minutes but in the end had no chance and was torn apart.

Great job, Brayden. You are really great at taking notes. You must do really well at school. It was wonderful meeting you. Stanley says Hi.

Great job Brayden!

Sounds like Brayden didn't miss out on anything in school but gained a lot on the cruise. Great job Brayden! I really enjoyed reading your journal.

What an observant young man! After I read his first paragraph I thought "how did I miss all that" His description of Salsbury Plain brought tears to my eyes. This was a fastenating read even for someone on the same trip!

What a great trip for him and a great way to learn so much. You have a lot to be proud of Ralph!

Yes, Marc is right! I thought I took good notes. Brayden puts me to shame.

Brayden what a fantastic journal! You and Andi are such fun descriptive writers - thanks for taking us along on your adventure. Glad you and your grandfather had a wonderful trip.

Wonderful job Brayden did reporting! I wonder if Ralph got a video of him sliding down the snow slide at Neko Harbor?

No I did not get a video. The walk was a bit more than I could handle. Brayden did do the slide three times. That of course means he did the walk up the hill ( maybe mountain would be a better word) three times. He was a tired boy when he got back to the ship.

OH Ralph to be young again? My "up a hill" days are over - and sounds like this was really strenuous - good for Brayden!

excellent. keep it up.

Brayden, I enjoyed reading your journal very much. You are a little younger than my two sons, but what you write and how you do it reminds me of them ( which is a good thing).

Brayden did a wonderful job on that write up and also was a wonderful LCT group member.

Sometimes it is hard to believe he is only 14 years old. He fits in with the group like an adult. I think he is 14 going on 50!

As I have said before I will take Brayden on any trip at any time and really enjoy his company.

Congratulations Brayden - what an excellent report! I'm very impressed with your journal.

Brayden:
I just found this thread and enjoyed reliving this fantastic cruise through your eyes! You did a wonderful job.
It was a pleasure traveling with you, and I hope to see you again!

Keep traveling, Doug