Wow that's a great picture Scott, and very good info for anyone looking at a digital camera. (Just curious did you play with that picture on a computer? The blue looks too deep, I've never gotten colors quite that saturated with my Nikon 990).
Only thing I would add to Scott's comments is play with whatever camera you get. Pretty much any camera has the ability to push the shutter button half-way down to lock the exposure (how much light the camera determines the picture will need) and the focus, then you can hold the button there until the perfect time comes along then just push the button the rest of the way down and it takes a picture almost instantly. That little trick/feature has not been grasped by everyone and so they are mad at their camera for being too slow. My old (5 yrs old actually) Nikon 990 is slow, no doubt about it, but it still has great features and brilliant clairity and color, and as long as you know how to use it (shutter btn feature, when to force to inifiniti focus/landscape mode, when to force a flash, when to turn off a flash, etc, you can get great pictures with pretty much any camera) you'll do great. Oh and you can't blame a camera for composition of a picture, having a picture framed correctly so it's visually appealing starts when you take it, you can play with it later on a computer, but always easiest if you have a well composed photo to start.
I have a Nikon 990, which could be bought used cheap, friend has a Canon 10D (digital SLR), stepbro has a Nikon 5000 (point/shoot) and a D100 (digital SLR), all are good/great cameras. Personally I would not buy an Olympus/Pentax/Minolta, etc. Minolta maybe, but the other two I have seen major sensor problems later...I'd personally stick to Canon and Nikon.
