USVI Day 3

Many hours of sleep work their magic and we're up for another day of exploring. Today we're off to see one of many ruin sites found near the bays. 

As you can see I'm well prepared to bring some mid-western competitive athletics to the islands, though I saw very few bikes.

Cinnamon-bay ruins! This place looks cozy and friendly but it was an epic mosquito sanctuary. There were actually small clouds of them following us around! Lots of interesting cane/rum factory structures left here. The circular structure we're standing in is the horse mill for crushing sugar-cane. The little brick trough heading to the side is where the juice would run to the next processing area.

A small cemetery for the owners and/or their families.

Massive amounts of decay I thought, considering that production at some of these places ended less than 100 years ago and they are mostly masonry materials. It's probably all over when the roofs fall in I suppose.

We checked out Cinnamon bay itself to see if we could get some snorkeling in. The breaking waves were audible from a good distance away and there were even red warning signs about dangerous surf. Next time then.

We drove to Maho bay and snorkeled there instead. This was a super long beach right along the road with a thin grove of trees between. It was one of my favorite locations I think. I have a gopro video from the jeep, driving past here that I'll put up.

Evening plans involved going for a nice long hike to Ram's Head Point and catch a sunset.

Here we're a ways out on the trail and can see our house up on the hill. We're in the one at the center of the picture. This is what the lodging at Condordia looks like. I think they did a pretty good job of making it unobtrusive.

The is the beach below our resort.

I did not expect the large amount of cacti - lots of desert-like terrain.

There is a large cut in the rocks here which creates a strong wind tunnel. If I recall correctly, this is supposed to lie right on a fault-line.

We're getting a little color! Part of this pano is missing because it was accidental! It's just a bunch of pictures that happened to fit together when ICE loaded them in!?

Looking back toward "home" - the house should be on the left there and some British islands are on the right.

End of the world? There's nowhere to go from here, the island ran out.

Somebody else out looking for sunsets.

One of many, many cruise ships we'd see over the next week. It seemed like there was an almost constant parade of them in the evening. We could sometimes see three or four at the same time across the horizon.

Ultra clear water when viewed from far above.

Colors! This is about the best we got. I suspect there must be some difference with the elevation of clouds over the ocean compared to clouds at home, we never really got the brilliant blazing light we're used to. Certainly no complaints though, I'll gladly watch this while sitting in a nice 80° breeze with nowhere to be.

Lots of walking called for some good food so we tried out Shipwreck Landing. I think this place was a universal favorite and we came back several more times.

We ordered some fish (wahoo I believe?), steak, and pasta.

THIS is how you make pasta, I don't know why this is so hard for restaurants to figure out. Where is the pasta in this picture? I'm not really sure because there's so much grilled cheese on top. Perfect!

USVI Day 2

FYI - get used to the ridiculous turquoise water. That's just how it is. All the time. 

We saw St. Thomas in the daylight but this morning was the first time we really got to experience what St. John looks like - which is much different. Here we enjoy minimal population / development, just trees and water. 

So we woke up to this out the windows of our house:

Cruising through "town" past one of the marinas / mooring-bays.

I think this was taken at "Picture Point" - seems like it is appropriately named. We saw a max. elevation of roughly 1200-1300ft which seemed pretty decent to me considering how small the islands are. Lots of the roads are extremely steep.

A large portion of this island is a national park so we stopped in at the main NP office to check it out. It is next to a marina.

More really refreshing open-air architecture in a main wall of the park office.

Above the NP office was a trail which connected to a couple different beaches. We hiked out to Solomon beach which, fun fact, used to be the nude beach before the park service adopted new rules a few years back. 

Note: this "fern" did not curl up when touched. (Inside-joke warning - we were looking for this all week)

At Solomon beach, now wishing we had brought a change of swimming gear. The water looked great and it was on the warm side. The sun absolutely blazes down on you here.

After a hike back to the park office area, we stopped for a snack/lunch. There were a bunch of apparently wild chickens around who were happy to eat almost anything thrown to them.

Jeeps were everywhere. It was clearly the main rental vehicle in use. There were a few non-rentals that I saw (had body-color hard tops etc.) and a good chunk of the other vehicles were Grand Vitaras. 

We went to Trunk Bay for a first try at some snorkeling. Water quality here is great and there was a lot to see. I have some GoPro videos that I'll post up pretty soon. 

Trunk Bay itself is on the right side there. It is supposed to be one of the most used beaches as cruise-ship traffic homes in on it whenever they are nearby. I didn't think it was really busy at all, but we are still in the off-season yet. 

USVI day-1 (Traveling)

To the USVI! Picked up Nathan and Sarah at 4:00am, slightly bleary-eyed (I usually don't get up for work until 5:00). The airport was far less busy than expected and we were able to breeze through with plenty of time left to sit at the gate.

See what I meant earlier? This is over a week worth of clothes for me in a carry-on with room to spare. I even brought stuff for running as well as some long-sleeved shirts that I didn't wear. We did need a checked bag though for all the snorkeling gear as well as some food that we brought. 

All the people off to the right here were part of a wedding party heading to Sandals Jamaica. I couldn't help but wonder if they had only chosen the location because Michael makes a big deal about it on The Office tv-show. I also gathered that they had already started drinking a fair amount - hopefully that works out well?

Our first plane - a small connector heading to Charlotte, NC. There was a fair amount of caulking peeling off the seams. Nathan seems pleased.

Seems to have engine(s) installed well?

Time for a nap! (didn't happen:)

I don't have any pictures exiting the plane on St. Thomas, but that was truly an experience. Unloading (from a 767 keep in mind) was done out on the tarmac with portable stair-cases. Then everybody just wanders around toward the general direction of the airport, walking around other planes which are running - it was great! Then we make our way inside, where there are people handing out free rum shots while welcoming us to the island.

Here is the baggage claim. What you can't see is that this whole area is open-air. Behind me there is no wall - just a great view of outside. The check-in area for tickets was the same way. I was surprised how many buildings are made that way here, keeps everything nice and simple.

Waiting for Nathan to (hopefully) come back with the rental vehicle. The last time we saw him, he got into a gray minivan. While waiting here, we noticed how the traffic in general is very different. Almost every vehicle, even new ones, is side-swiped on one or both sides. The reason for this became apparent - they run three lanes of traffic in the same road space that we run two!

Rolling in the jeep, exploring side streets and back-lot neighborhoods. 

Here we are being loaded onto the car barge. I had no idea what to expect here. It worked really well - back on and drive off. There were several spotters directing everyone into the most efficient arrangement. 

Here we are "driving" in the Caribbean Sea, or so the Garmin thinks. Incredibly this unit understood the use of car barges and even had prompts like "load ferry".

After a bunch of driving and the car ferry, we've arrived on St. John. Finally time for some supper at one of many local places. Much more to come the next day after sleep.

Now to make a bed and catch about 12hrs of zzzs.

It begins!

Packing! Well, actually that began this past weekend but now only a strong day away from departure, we've got most of the ducks in a row. We will be headed to the USVI and I realized I've never packed for a trip to a location with zero temperature variation. All the clothing required for over a week can't even fill a carry-on size bag. Weird.

More to come as we travel (depending on wifi availability).

Thanksgiving

Thankfulness. Health? Opportunities? Special people in our lives? What about when they are all the same? Yes.

Lazy off-season?

Nope, just time for long gravel training rides. We had to bail off of this one due to time constraints, but it would be roughly a 25mile loop of surprising elevation gain if ridden completely. This day also included 15mph continuous wind for extra flavor.