April 6th

What a change in weather for us. We woke up to snow this morning. Yesterday we got back from a Caribbean cruise. We earned a trip through my job and were fortunate enough to work with a travel agent that specialized in wheelchair accessible itineraries. Originally we settled on a hotel in Puerto Rico that had wheelchair access right up to the beach. We did stay there the night before our cruise and it was perfect. The photo below is the beach at that hotel. It was a bit breezy that morning, but Ashley enjoyed getting her feet in the ocean, the first of several times.

In the end we took the travel agent’s advice and booked a Royal Caribbean cruise out of San Juan. We had a wheelchair accessible cabin that provided us with plenty of room. All the public areas of the ship called the Serenade of the Seas were accessible.

One highpoint for us was that they prepared each evening’s meal for Ashley so she could dine with us and eat what she wanted. The food was great and while the rest of us have pledged to drop the weight we gained Ashley ate better than ever. Although we only went to the main dining room for dinner Ashley ate pureed foods for every meal. She did so well we are going to adopt the strategy of preparing full meals three times a day for Ashley from now on.

We took Ashley’s collapsible wheelchair so we could get out and about on the different islands. We assumed we would have to get help carrying Ashley to a beach lounge chair, but to our delightful surprise we were able to pull Ashley backward in that chair across the sand. As such we visited beaches on...

St. Thomas (Megan’s Bay)

St. Maarten (Great Bay on the Dutch side)

Antigua (Dickenson Bay)

Barbados (Malibu Beach).

We were blessed with beautiful sunny weather every day. We did a pretty good job of managing our sun exposure so no one had a painful sunburn.

As we cruised along the west coast of St. Lucia we saw the Pitons at sunset.

The staff on the ship was very accommodating and we met so many friendly and helpful people both on the ship and on the islands.

On deck prior to formal night dinner.

Kicking back on deck.