Sitting in the Seoul airport 3/16 with some time to kill and thought I would finally try to do a little write-up about the trip to the DR that Kelly and I made a couple weeks ago. I’m going to fudge the date on this post so it matches the DR trip end (2/26) and so it lines up correctly in the navigation menu in blogger. A full set of pictures are online but a few are below…

Sister Robin, besieged in upstate NY with cold and snow,  has been pushing hard for a family reunion on a beach for too long to say no. With a recommendation to a resort in hand – we all descended on Bahai Principe San Juan, about an hour east of Puerta Plata on the northern coast. Kelly and I took the red eye to Miami, Robin and her daughters Kate and Claire flew from Montreal, and Mom and Rafael flew from Havana. On the way home we over-nighted in Miami and it was great to see cousin Danny Wolpin (first time in 20+ years!) and his wife Gloria.

The resort was a new experience for me. All you can eat and drink and unfortunately filled with Canadian college students who were enjoying a spring break (apparently it comes early in Canada). Lots of cigarette smoke and scary people but it was great to see family and we had some really nice days on the beach, family games with Kelly teaching us ‘pass the pigs’ and ‘hoopla’, and a couple days tooling around to a nearby lagoon and beaches.  I’ll leave the food poisoning details out of this post – suffice to say we made it back to Seattle and I will be staying clear of large cruise ships and resorts for a long time to come. And I will always carry Cipro 🙂

Aside from seeing family – maybe the best part was the guard stationed at the eastern beach border of the resort who happily let us sign ourselves out.

From there, Kelly and I discovered a really rough dirt track through the palm trees that was perfect for running. It hugged the water and at times we found ourselves running on the beach. We were able to run about 2 miles out and another two back without seeing another person. Perfect tropical running.

Kelly on some single track

What a run!

Taking a break at some mangroves during a run

Mom and Rafael

Cliff jumping!

Rafael enjoying a laugh and maybe a beer