Blue Planet Journey

  Visiting an alien planet... I don't know how else to describe the experience of exploring underwater. "Alien" can be defined as "coming from another world." To a terrestrial, air-breathing, homeothermic bipedal hominin , being underwater can only seem like being, well, on a different planet. There's a reason astronauts train in a pool to experience " neutral-buoyancy" diving to simulate the weightlessness of space travel. And creatures have been evolving in Earth's seas for a LONG time. Complex life appeared in the Earth's history about a half billion years ago. "The basic body plans of all modern animals were set during the Cambrian Period, 542 - 488 million years ago." Since then, species have come and gone (mostly gone), but if you visit a thriving reef environment, you won't even think about what has disappeared, because there is just so much still there! This week we (Caroline, Wes and Mignon) went on a dive trip in t...

Everyone has their coronavirus pandemic story for 2020, and this is mine. The uniqueness of it is that Caroline and I lived out of a suitcase, away from Utah, for at least half of it. Dancing and drumming at Nokomis Beach Park on January 1. The year started with us in Venice, Florida, visiting family and celebrating the New Year. We kayaked to Don Pedro Island State Park, rode bikes and ran along the beach in Manasota Key, danced at the drum circle at Nokomis Beach Park, toured a rum distillery, explored the Mote Aquarium in Sarasota,  and played with our grand kiddo. It was a great celebration, welcoming a new year of mystery, love, and adventure. Green sea turtle egg fragments on a Florida beach. We were honored to be trusted with transporting grand kiddo back to DC, and we were met by our number one daughter in the baggage area at National Airport. We spent the next 2 weeks being grandparents, walking with kiddo to the National Zoo to watch the marine mammals and the lions, go...