Island State of Mind
?NP Roadtrip – Days 62 – 68 – St. John, US Virgin Islands National Park
I am so grateful that in 1956, 75% of St. John was donated to the U.S. park service to protect it from future development, which in turn created Virgin Islands National Park. This fact sweetened the deal when we talked about doing this trip in the first place. Would we take a cruise to St. Thomas and go over to St. John for a day? Or would we fly there and spend some significant time on the island? We decided on door #2 and booked airline tickets to St. Thomas from Ft. Lauderdale. We ended up parking our trailer in the Flamingo Campground in Everglades National Park while we did this trip. At $34 a night, it was the most affordable place to store our trailer, and it had an electric hookup so we could run the AC and fridge while we were gone. Since my cousin works in the park, we felt comfortable enough that if anything were to happen, she would hear if a little yellow trailer erupted in flames or was towed out of the park. We hoped.
As we pull into the campground, literally the very first thing we see are two rangers in full mosquito bug suits and hats with netting covering their faces. It was then that I realized what “Severe” mosquito levels meant. We have tons of bug spray, thermacell packs, and repellent bracelets, but nothing could have prepared us for what we were about to encounter. G was outside for less than 20 seconds filling our water tank and was severely attacked. I ran out of the car like a crazed lunatic and sprayed him from head to toe with bug spray, which seemed to help. This is not an exaggeration. Nothing about this description is stretching the truth. We spent the rest of the night inside, hiding from the bugs, and packed for our trip to St. John. In the morning, we put our bikes inside the trailer (which was a feat in and of itself) and said goodbye to Woodstock for a week.
We dropped the dogs off at Camp Canine in Fort Lauderdale. They were incredibly sweet in answering all my questions and said we could call and check on them anytime. Then we headed over to the airport where we took a Spirit Airlines flight to St. Thomas. I have to say, I swore I would never take Spirit after my first debacle with them, but with all the other airlines in the 4 figure price range, we opted for the economy ticket. And we upgraded to first class, which gets you absolutely nothing except a bigger seat in the front of the airline. They have an interesting drink selection (see below), to say the very least, but we opted to bring our own waters on the flight. I shouldn’t complain, because we got there safely, but I just don’t love their format, their planes, or their service levels.
I’ve been to St. Thomas on a cruise before, but that was something like 16 years ago. We ended up arriving on the 100 year anniversary of the Dutch transfer to US control and there was a lot of fanfare associated with the celebration, most important to us was the traffic. There are two ferries to St. John from St. Thomas. One is closer to the airport, but longer and less frequent, and the other is longer and further away from the airport, but a short trip and very frequent. The times for the ferry close to the airport didn’t work out with our arrival so we needed to get over to the other end of the island to take the Red Hook Ferry. The taxi stand will stuff you into 10 passenger vans until they are full and make many stops along the way dropping off and picking people up. I hate to admit this, but we just ended up getting in a private taxi to get to the ferry building so we could have a more roomy and cooler ride. It was $100 bucks but well worth it when talking about my husband’s comfort and state of mind. It was a WILD ride going through all the back roads (since the main roads were closed for the centennial) but we made it safe and sound, despite being $100 lighter.
Drinks at the ferry terminal. Worth the wait!
Following the suggestions of my cousin, we got a drink at the bar at the terminal and started to ease into the island state of mind. They don’t call it an “attitude adjustment” for nothing! The ride over to St. John was easy and scenic. We easily found our jeep rental spot, hopped in a cherry red jeep, and headed for Cinnamon Bay. Cinnamon Bay is located within the boundaries of Virgin Islands National Park. They have cottage accommodations as well as eco-tents on a beautiful tree covered property right on one of the most beautiful beaches in the Caribbean. The eco-tents are brand new, and from what I hear they are much nicer than what they used to be. The old tents were described to us as “army surplus style with cot beds”. Our eco-tent was absolutely fabulous, built on a huge platform where the tent is set toward the back providing a “veranda” area out front. We could hear the ocean from our beds and walked just 40 steps to the water. There are deers and donkeys roaming the property, along with hermit crabs and tons of birds. They have a restaurant and bar right next to the “lobby” and we hung out there all night that first night, enjoying a wonderful meal of Orange Chicken and an Ahi Stack.
In the morning, we went back to the restaurant for breakfast then headed over to Trunk Bay, securing a prime spot near the underwater snorkel trail. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe this is the only underwater trail in all of the national park system. There are signs underwater leading you along the path, pointing out marine life to look at as well as information about your surroundings. While at Trunk Bay, we rented a few chairs and fins (we have our own masks and breathing tubes), but had also purchased two hammocks at the shop at Cinnamon Bay. G strung one of the hammocks up for me and I proceeded to spend the next few hours taking turns lounging in my hammock with a view of the Bay and taking dips in the water. Not a bad first day on the island and just what we needed after the harried travel day the day before.
No bad days...
We headed back to the beach at Cinnamon Bay for sunset and ate at the restaurant again for dinner. It’s then that we found out they were changing the style of their menu on Monday. It was Saturday. The restaurant at Cinnamon Bay changes their menu daily, depending on what they get in that particular day. For the most part, they offer two hot breakfast items, maybe 3-4 appetizers during happy hour, then 2 entrees at dinner. On Monday, they would be changing to a set menu where they offer more choices, but it will be the same every day. I imagine this would get old if you were staying there for a week and never leaving the resort. The eco-tents provide everything you need in order to make your own meals, except for the food. The little onsite store sells all kinds of food, though, in the event you didn’t stop at the grocery store in town. We were only there for two nights so we didn’t want to mess with cooking in our tent so we opted for the restaurant. However, cooking on your own is a nice (cheaper) option, and you could eat with an ocean view right on the beach, or on your own picnic table outside your tent. Either way, the eco-tents were an experience I’ll never forget. We both thoroughly enjoyed ourselves and said we would do it again in a heartbeat given the chance.
One more thing about Cinnamon Bay that I haven’t mentioned yet are the showers. Some friends and family were in awe of where we were staying and getting a little jealous of the social media postings we were sending them. I brought them quickly back down to reality when I told them about the showers. First of all, if you need to go the bathroom you better be waving your hands all about you to make it hard for the mosquitos to land on you. This activity could nearly be considered exercise. I’m serious. Then, you need to take a shower at some point. So you go in there, thinking how nice it’s going to feel to get clean. But you quickly find out that you need to pull on a chain in order to get water to come out of the shower head, and keep pulling if you want the water to keep dispensing. Let go of the chain and the water cuts off. AND the real doozie? The water is frigid cold. So family and friends, it’s not all peaches and cream, but I’m not complaining either!
On Sunday, we decided to explore the other areas of the island. Our first stop was Maho Bay where we were told we would see some turtles. We snorkeled for about 45 minutes just off the beach and saw a few turtles, some schools of fish, but decided to leave since there wasn’t really a large beach to hang out. It was also quite crowded and the visibility poor. We drove over to Annaberg, which was an absolute zoo. There wasn’t a whole lot of parking so we decided to venture on to our most anticipated stop of the day, Princess Bay in the Virgin Islands Coral Reef National Monument.
Maho Bay
This area outside of Coral Bay on the East End of St. John is the only way you can access this reef from land. The snorkeling is done at the edge of the mangroves and was absolutely incredible. At first it was a little worrisome since it was so shallow, but I had already researched this place so I knew this was what someone snorkeling should expect. You are in about 12-16 inches of water the entire time. Fish hide within the mangroves, there are crabs crawling around, huge conch, sea cucumbers, and I even saw a barracuda hiding in there. If you are into snorkeling, this is a must visit spot on the island and my favorite so far of our entire National Park roadtrip.
Cactus on the East End
After snorkeling, we wanted to see if we could find a place to grab a bite to eat. In a brief moment of perfect cell service, I found a place called Miss Lucy’s that looked amazing. Using google maps, I navigated to it, but we couldn’t find it. We drove past the area it said it was no less than 3 times, but just couldn’t seem to find it, and at this time were out of cell service. We ended up at Shipwreck Landing. We had a fine meal and the people watching and eavesdropping opportunities were wonderful. But after lunch, and 5 minutes down the road right on the water sat Miss Lucy’s. And they were having a Sunday Brunch. In Portland, brunch is practically a religion, and we definitely miss our brunch spots at home. It’s ok, though. It just gives us a reason to go back!
My cousin had suggested we go to Salt Pond Bay which is just beyond Miss Lucy’s, because we like more remote places with not a lot of people. It’s in the National Park boundaries so we wanted to check it out. I’m guessing the word is out, because we had to park fairly far down the street to hike down to the beach. When we got there, it was filled with people both on the beach and in the water, including 3 or 4 private boats anchored in the bay. I’m going to go on a little bit of a soapbox here, so skip to the next paragraph if you don’t care about protecting our national parks or if you don’t care about people destroying reefs or if you don’t care about animals and marine life. Please don’t touch coral reefs. Touching destroys reefs. Please don’t touch marine life. Touching can transfer bacteria and harm or even kill marine life. Please don’t fly drones in national parks. Drones inhibit the enjoyment of others and could disturb wildlife. In a matter of 3 minutes I saw (and heard) a man touch a turtle and then scream about the fact that he “just touched a turtle, oh my god, AWESOME!”, a drone flying and bobbing close to the water where we were standing, and lastly a man pick up a conch out of the water and place him on the beach telling his young, impressionable daughter (that he is building into an adult), “Let’s put him on the beach and see if he can get back to the water.” There are signs everywhere that talk about the fact that these three things are illegal. All are federal offenses. If you look from a distance like the rest of us, you can rest assured that these resources will be here for the rest of our lives and hopefully for the rest of that 3 year old’s life and beyond. There, I’ll step down now, I’ve said my peace.
Car off the side of the road near Salt Pond Bay.
Since neither of us had ever been to St. John, we thought it would be fun to not only get a park service experience in the eco-tents, but also an in-town experience of staying at a hotel. We only found one with availability that was in our price-range at St. John Inn. At $278 a night, it was also the cheapest option! The inn is walking distance to the town (but not too close), has an unlimited free happy hour with spiked punch from 5-7 every night, offers complimentary snorkel gear and beach chairs for day use, AND has air conditioning – the latter being the most important to us! Our room was on the bottom level of this multi-story, perfectly quaint hotel. Though it was one of the most secluded rooms, it was also directly behind the hang out spot for the cleaning staff, which meant early wake up calls to the sound of chattering ladies getting ready to start their work day. We had everything we needed, though, a shower (with hot water, Yay!), a kitchenette, a bed, and AC.
We hadn’t made any plans for dinner that first night, but got a recommendation (and coupon) from the co-manager of the hotel to go to The Longboard. There was a little bit of a wait so we got a few drinks at the bar while waiting for our table. Longboard specializes in 2 frozen drinks, one is a Frozen Painkiller and the other is the Passion Fruit Frosé. I don’t know what it is about St. John, but the bartenders like to light drinks on fire, so our frozen painkillers came with a dark rum floater that they lit on fire. It was really yummy, but I don’t drink hard alcohol, barely ever, and I did not know what was coming for me that night. I should have stopped there. We shared an amazing meal of sushi burrito, poke, and some ceviche, and a few more drinks. Needless to say, I had one too many cocktails and woke up the following morning with a heck of a headache. Honestly, I felt horrible the next day. I didn’t feel like snorkeling. I didn’t really want to eat. I just felt like crap. Poor G. He was a trooper and tried to cheer me up all day. We took a nice long nap in the middle of the day, something I NEVER do. Like, ever. It was glorious. Finally, after snorkeling back at Princess Bay and Maho Bay, I worked up an appetite for dinner. We had a few recommendations for Extra Virgin Bistro from various people on the island. It was our last night in St. John so we decided to do it up a little. Extra Virgin is fairly pricey, but the food. Man oh man was this a great meal. We ordered way too much food, but it was worth it. Our server was incredible and he actually runs a company on the side called, Lost Boy Creations (@lostboycreations), where their motto is “Live Like a Lost Boy”. If you follow us on Instagram or Facebook, you might see some pictures of G in his Lost Boy hat, which we bought the next day in a local shop in Cruz Bay.
Stupid flaming drinks. Hmmm. No Bueno.
Before leaving the island the following morning, we got to-go sandwiches at Sam and Jack’s Deli, returned the jeep, and waited for the Charlotte Amalie ferry. This ferry is the longer one that drops you right in town. The boat goes around the other side of St. Thomas so you can see all the fancy houses right on the water as well as some nice hotels. Once on St. Thomas, we had two hours before we needed to head to the airport, so G sat with our bags at Greengo’s and I shopped a little bit. I found lots of jewelry that I liked, of course, but decided to go home mostly empty handed. I settled on another St. John hook bracelet (I have one from my first trip to St. Thomas with my girlfriends 16 years ago) and a tea towel. The ring I liked was $1000 and the tea towel was $10. This trip has taught me that I don’t need the ring. What I need is another tea towel so I can dry my dishes in my trailer. To use my mother’s words (that constantly haunt me every-single-day), I need the ring “like I need a hole in my head”. Don’t ever say I don’t listen to you mom.
After braving another Spirit Airlines flight back to Fort Lauderdale we waited about an hour for our bags to depart the flight. This provided ample opportunity to see Spirit Airline’s target demographic killing time at baggage claim. Here is exhibit A, posing for no less than 50 pictures while his little brother obediently shot the camera. You’re welcome.
We got to pick up the doggies after staying the night in a hotel in Ft. Lauderdale. They celebrated their 6th birthday while we were in St. John. We had a celebratory meal at Su-viche where doggies are allowed on the front patio then slowly made our way back to mosquito central. In honor of their birthday, I’ll leave you with a little note to @theyappycampers
To Murphy & Scarlett:
Happy 6th birthday little babies! You make us laugh each and every day and we love you ever so much. Now will you please stop eating loaves of bread while we aren’t looking? Thanks.
Love,
Mommy & Daddy
Our scruffy doggies taken the first day we adopted them.
