St. John Vacation

(Note: Clicking on any image in this travelogue will bring up a full screen version of the image.)

Wednesday, April 3:
St. John

Today's plan was to meander back along the North Shore Road and sample more of the beaches and sites. Our first stop was Cinnamon Bay. There were the ruins of the America Hill Guest House overlooking Cinnamon Bay and Maho Bay. And also the remains of a sugar factory of the 19th Century. And then, of course, the beach itself.

America Hill Great House

We drove out to Cinnamon Beach, parked, and then crossed the road to the trailhead of the path up to the America Hill Great House (Photo 100). According to NewsOfStJohn.com,

In the early 1900s, America Hill served as a guesthouse where travelers could rent rooms. One of the last tenants was rumored to be Rafael Trujillo, former dictator of the Dominican Republic. Some older St. Johnians say that the estate house was also used as a headquarters for rum-runners during the prohibition days.

The path, like the one to Honeymoon Beach was steep and rocky (Photo 110). And hot and sweaty, too. I marveled at how they were able to bring all the bricks, cement, and other building materials to the site. Probably the ancestors of the donkey we encountered yesterday. And probably not along the trail we had hiked, but rather via some now nonexistent road due south towards what is now Highway 10. The trail switchbacked up almost 500 feet to the ruins shown in Photos 140, 150, and 160. At least it was cooler up there, and with a nice breeze. There were some nice views of Cinnamon Bay (Photo 180) and Maho Bay (Photo 190). It must have been a beautiful place to stay. It was sad to see the decrepit state of the place. Half buried in the undergrowth was an ornamental piece of brain coral mounted on a cement pedestal (Photo 170). I can only imagine that in the Great House's heyday, it occupied a place of honor in a formal garden. I noted with irony that while I was drawn to photographing the brick and mortar remains of the structure, Jenny wanted pictures of the foliage along the footpath (Photos 120 & 130). Like Jack Spratt and his wife, we got it all.

We headed back down the trail. They say it's just as hard on the legs going down a rough incline like that as going up. I'm here to tell you that 'taint so. Nonetheless it was still a welcome relief when the sky clouded over and rained on us briefly on the way down.

Sugar Factory Ruins

At the base of the Great House trail was another much smaller and easier (A.D.A. compliant) trail through the remains of a 19th Century sugar factory. The engineer in me found them fascinating. (So did the deer in Photo 250.) I particularly admired the decorative stonework in the mortar. Photo 260 is an enlargement of the rectangle in Photo 250, and typical throughout the masonry. It all looks so crisp and new that it leads me to conclude it was done in a recent repointing of the masonry. But if you look at the unrestored portion of the wall in the upper right hand corner of Photo 260, you'll see that the original was decorated in that fashion as well.

Maho Beach

We were getting hungry, so we crossed over the road and headed out to Cinnamon Bay Beach, where we could find a beach bar with some food. Alas, Hurricane Irma's damage at this location had yet to be repaired, and there were no facilities except the water and the sand. So we got back in the car and drove a little ways further west to Maho Beach (Photos 270 & 280). It was much like the others, except that it had a food truck, and a car in the parking lot whose burglar alarm went off every five minutes. It was also a known habitat for sea turtles, which excited Jenny. She had brought loaner snorkel gear from Estate Lindholm, and eagerly swam out to the sea grass in search of some (Photo 290). Alas, she found none. But we swam around together for a while, and then headed back.

I wanted to catch up on some email correspondence, but Jenny did not have her fill of the water. So I dropped her off at the trailhead to Honeymoon Beach for a last dip, while I went back to Estate Lindholm.

Evening falls on Estate Lindholm

As sunset darkened, I was struck again with the beauty of the place, and took a few photos to try to capture it. When darkness fell, we took to the road again and headed back east on the North Shore Road to Peace Hill, where a Park Ranger gave a lecture on astronomy. He had brought a reflecting telescope, which he set up and gave the 20 or so people who attended views of Mars, and some named stars, and nebulae, and other heavenly bodies. He had a laser pointer that would produce a narrow line of light, apparently about 30 or 40 feet long, (Star Wars light saber?), to clearly identify the particular star he was talking about. Very cool. I came to realize that my eyesight simply isn't as keen as that of most people. I could not distinguish the "red" color of Mars from that of the stars and other planets. I do not perceive stars to twinkle, so I am unable to distinguish them from planets by that characteristic. And with the naked eye, I simply do not see as many stars as other people do.

When that was over, we celebrated our last night with 9:30 dinner at Morgan's Mango near Mongoose Junction. We split a portion of mahi-mahi. (We're both light eaters.) I even went so far as to indulge in a glass of wine, which is something I rarely do. And Jenny had a rum punch for dessert, which is something I've never seen her do. We're both turning into lushes in our dotage.

Thursday, April 4:
St. John to home

What?? Is it over already? We just got here! I just got comfortable driving on the left! There's not even enough remaining to warrant its own page on this travelogue!

Cruz Bay to Charlotte Amalie Ferry

OK, pack up. Do the idiot-check to see what stuff I forgot to pack. Don't forget to look in the shower. Said good bye to Dabne, as well as the owner (whose name I forgot) whom we met at breakfast. We loaded the car, and went down to the ferry dock. On advice of some other travelers, we decided to take a different ferry from the one on which we arrived. This one sailed a longer route directly to Charlotte Amalie, rather than to nearby Red Hook on the east end of St. Thomas. But it spared us the bumpy bus ride from Red Hook to Charlotte Amalie. The ferry sailed at 11:00, but we were advised to get there at least by 10:00, because it tended to fill up. We arrived at the dock at 9:30, and I dropped off Jenny, along with both of our luggage, and went to return the Jeep.

Everything went smoothly. I got back in plenty of time to get our ferry tickets and board. It wasn't even full. The ride was indeed a lot more pleasant than the bus, and we got to see some fancy villas perched on the shore of St. Thomas, and yet another cruise ship in port. A taxi/van hauled us and about a dozen other passengers the short hop to the airport. As I had mentioned at the beginning of this report, the Fickle Finger of Fate bestowed "TSA Pre-Check" status on Jenny for the security charade on the return flight, but not to me. So once again, we both took the long line. (Not nearly so long as in Newark, however.) No wings came off in mid-flight. Hurricane Donald did not divert our flight to Cincinnati. Nobody hijacked the plane to Galveston. The worst that happened was a half hour delay in takeoff due to some mechanical difficulty, but they made up the time in flight. I said good bye to Jenny at Newark airport as she went off to find a bus to Grand Central Station in NYC, where she boarded a train to New Haven where her friend and her car awaited. Bill Henderson's timing was perfect, picking me up outside the terminal at Newark a mere 5 minutes after I picked up my bag from the carousel.

That was fun. Let's do it again sometime.