The Kathryn Abbey Hanna Campground is really like a jungle with paths through it just large enough to drive an RV, and sites carved out big enough to park one.  They are enough apart that you can imagine you are alone in the jungle (well, almost).  Our kind of campground! There are miles of hiking trails and biking trails through all this vegetation.

I saw this ring, like a caldera of tree roots.  It was obviously the remains of a palm tree – the trunk dies, falls over, and the ring of roots is stronger so lasts a while longer.  So after I took pictures, thinking this was so cool, we saw another, and another…  they are everywhere.  I still think they’re cool.

 

A short walk takes you to the beach.  This time of year there were no crowds!

 

 

We saw this HUGE machine, called an Extractor 3300.  I wasn’t sure what it does, but was pretty sure it didn’t do third molar extractions.  A little research showed that it is a sand reclamation tool – a slurry of sand, water and rocks is pumped from the bottom by a barge a ways off shore, through some huge pipes, and into the back of the extractor.  Then it acts like a huge sieve, separating the rocks and whatever else out, spits them into a waiting truck, and then pours water and clean sand out the big wide end.  So beachgoer friendly sand is pumped out and the beach replenished.

It seems here they are building a large berm to protect the wild dunes and the houses behind them, but it looks like they might have gotten a bit carried away.  These beach access stairs look like they are buried in snow, like half the country is right now!

 

 

We’ve been working on a possible trip to Saipan to help while the SDA Clinic there is short a couple of dentists.  The paperwork to get my license for the Mariana Islands takes a while, so we weren’t sure if it would work out, or when we’d go if it did.  By Sunday night it looked like we might get it finished, and leave soon.  We figured we could have everything stored away in a couple of days, so told them we could leave on Wednesday if the paperwork came through.  Well, we found out Monday midnight that we were good to go, and had tickets for Wednesday at 7am!  So Tuesday we put the car and trailer in storage, took our luggage to a hotel near the airport, and flew off in the morning!

My oldest grandson is playing the ukulele, and the night before we left performed a famous Disney tune for us via FaceTime.  He is doing an amazing job of playing – but the tune is a fallacy… It’s NOT a Small World when you fly half way around it at one time!!

We flew from Jacksonville, Florida to Houston, had about half an hour to trek across that huge airport, and catch the flight to Honolulu.  That flight left about 30 minutes late, so after our 9 hour flight we arrived in Hawaii at the exact time the next flight to Guam was supposed to depart.  But since there were 55 people on our plane that were connecting to Guam, United politely held that flight till we arrived.  As we walked out from our plane, gate agents routed us right on to the plane at the next gate.  I doubt we spent three minutes on the ground in Honolulu!  Probably five minutes after the doors were opened on our arriving flight, the doors were closed on the next flight, and we were off for another 8 hours of flying.  We skipped Thursday altogether, thanks to crossing the date line.  We did have about 9 hours of nighttime layover in Guam, so we got a room and slept for a bit, before our 7am flight to Saipan.

This is all we saw of Houston:

And then a few minutes of Hawaii…

It was dark the whole time we were in Guam, but we had a nice view from the hotel balcony.

 

So this morning, basically after 38 hours of travel, we arrived in Saipan!  It’s beautiful, and everyone has been very welcoming!  They have given us a nice apartment, some starter food, keys to a car, and taken us around to do some more food shopping.

Here’s a little overview of the clinic, church and some housing in the back.  By next week I hope to go into some of the interesting history of Saipan, including some with my family.  But now I’m falling asleep!    ZZZZZZZZZZZ

 

 

 

Music by Bensound.com