We're Back!!

We spent six wonderful days in Rio Grand, Puerto Rico for Phil's 40th Birthday! Thank you honey for turning 40 so that we had a great reason to get away.....alone! It was wonderful, truly wonderful! We are already planning our get away for our 10th anniversary, which is in two years. We really want to go back to Hawaii!

Stateside, the kids and all the grandparents survived and did really well. No one even missed us, except maybe for Parkie. Chase and JuJu wouldn't even talk to us on the phone for the first few days we were gone because they were so excited to be doing new things. That was actually great news for me!

We spent our first full day in PR hiking in the rain forest. It was really cool, literally, and it did in fact rain on us.

There were two waterfalls that we saw. This one was just right off the road.

The trails were paved, so it sure wasn't as rustic as I had imagined. But it did make it much easier to walk on!
There were informative plaques along the way. One talked about the roots of these tress and how they grow like that on purpose to give the trees a stable base once the soil starts to erode on the sides of the mountains.
Look at these HUGE leaves!! I was playing peek-a-boo in these pictures for Parkie. He loves that game! Where's Mommy??
Peek-a-boo!
Second waterfall that we actually hiked to.
That water was freezing but there were lots of people in it.
After the second waterfall, we hiked to the top of the mountain. We went about 600 ft at a very steep incline in 30 minutes to reach 3100 ft altitude. This is when it started raining on us. It was not easy, for sure! I don't think Phil broke a sweat though.
As you can see, we are in the clouds. It was about 10 degrees cooler.
At the top of the mountain was a cool, stone fortress-like tower. It has an awesome view!
View from the top. If you look closely, you can see the ocean in the distance.
We think that this is our resort in the distance here.


We finally made it back to our resort, before heading out to dinner on the night of the first full day. This is a picture of the adult-only pool. There was another pool for families and whoever else with a water slide. We tried to stay at the adult pool and hot tub as much as possible, since we were sans kids!
We ate at the resort on the day we came in, but on our first full day, we left the resort, since we had our own car, and tried a local restaurant, Hacienda.
They were known for their Sangria, so we each had a glass...or two. It was good!
This restaurant also had horses and did horse back riding during the day. One of the horses came over to entertain us with some dancing. It was really cool! We took a video for the kids.
This restaurant had such a cool atmosphere! We sat outside, but even the inside of the restaurant was open-air. We arrived just before dusk.

PR is known for a dish called Mufongo, which is mashed plantains with some spices and peppers, along with meat of choice. I cannot say that I am very adventurous with food, but I really did want to eat as much local food as possible, so I went for it! I have never had plantains before, but they were good.

Another dish that was poplar in PR was a skirt steak, which is a beef steak. This particular one was marinated in apple juice for three days and was the most tender thing ever! Parker could have even eaten it!

Okay, that's all for now. It takes forever to go through these pictures, so hand tight!