Summer Vacation IV, The Search for Spock

I actually have 2 more posts about summer vacation, including this one that is. So I guess I have one more post after this one. I know, It's been a week since my last post, but I can't help it, school has been really busy. I have 13 credits this block. Slightly stressed.

But back to the trip. We did a lot of snorkeling. And some kayaking. We actually kayaked across the bay seen here:

Sunset over Whistling Cay.

In order to do some more snorkeling in a different area. I have no pictures of that because we decided not to take the camera across the wet and choppy bay. It's water resistant and all, but that's just begging for trouble.

Instead I have pictures from snorkeling next to camp, taken from though above the water, no farther out than mid-chest deep.

PEKALIN!
I know that's not how it is spelled, it's just more fun to say.

Some yellow fish, What, you can't see them?

Urchins.
Not the kind that sell matches on corners of Old London.

Gull.
'nough said.

Us, all snorkled up. Turns out we are both left handed snorklers.
Not that that means anything.

My big problem with snorkling is that corral is hard, and salt water numbs things really quick. This Corral-brasion was worse than it looks. And you can't prove otherwise.

The view from our deck

That Island to the left is Britain. Not Great Britain. More like a lesser Britain. At least Virgin Britain. Or rather the British Virgin Islands. Not to be confused with the British Virginian Islands like I just typed.
Those don't exist.

The view from our Deck at 1 in the morning. I don't sleep any better in the Caribbean than I do at home. That "sunlight" on Whistling Cay is from the moon. This was a 3 minute exposure.

A nice rock formation next to the camps.
I liked the beach to the left of it, it was cut off from the rest of the beach and rather quite most of the time.

This is what you get when, after traveling all night you're to tired to remember to check your cameras color balance before taking pictures. It was either black and white, or an unalterable blue tint.

I kept meaning to go down to the beach at night and get pictures off St. Thomas at night. It was just across the way and all lit up. It either rained or I just plain forgot EVERY night. Mostly it rained. One night we walked in the surf at night. It was cool, everywhere you walked you would get something in the water that would light up green in your wake just briefly. I forgot my camera that night, but it would not have showed up anyway. It was still cool.

Summer Vacation III, But WHY is the Rum Gone?

BAY RUM!

I think.
The little placards off the side of this trail were kind of old and not very precise about how or why any tree in the forest was any different from any other. All I know, is that If I were the type of person who followed after toxic drink, and was in the habit of trying to extract it from random objects around me, old red bark here would probably be near the top of my list.

So this and all the pics that follow are from the ruins of a dutch built sugar mill on St. John island. One of many. They were built between the 16th and 18th century, mostly in the later. The sugar industry in the Virgin Islands began to dwindle when the slave trade was abolished.

These useful tidbits of information along with a couple of others can be found on the official map for the US Virgin Islands St John National park produced by the United States Forest Service. The map, gives you a nice little useless history. After starting with the aforementioned, it continues on about the slave revolt in the 1830-1860 range, telling of how the French came and subdued the slave population around the same time. It then continues with the fact that about 1913 the Rockefeller foundation deeded the land over to the US Forest service as a preserve. It conveniently neglects to tell you how it went from the French to the Rockefellers, both of whom were decent countries in their own respect at the time.

It's kind of like those "cleaned up for TV" movies, where suddenly the plot inexplicably shifts. You know you just missed a crucial plot point, but it was probably messy, and in the long run, you don't REALLY want to know.

These first few pictures are of the sugar mill itself, grown over by a jungle Indiana Jones would be proud of.

This next little set is what's left of the "Estate House" this one was rather crumbly and had a fun air to it.



Just off a trail that ran into the woods away from the Estate house we found an old Dutch Cemetery.
Caution: The following images may be disturbing to Genealogists.

That's right, Graves, with no headmarkers, and probably no record of who is in them. The world may never know who lies inside.

This one is actually not long for this world AGAIN, as there is a tree growing in the cracks of the poor fellows crypt.

There were many really cool looking trees. I tried to get pictures of the ones with the cooles lighting.

The thing that surprised me most was that there were Deer on the island. I actually scared the Bejeebers out of one as I was coming out of the restroom one night. On this hike we actually ran into to small buck. They were pretty tame, it's a small Island with lots of people after all. As long as you did not try to get closer than 15 feet they were pretty cool having you around.

Summer Vacation

So the place we stayed bills itself as an eco friendly campground. This "Campground" has a restaurant overlooking the bay, communal showers and restrooms, and "tents". The tents were wood frame huts with a plastic/fabric covering, 360 degree screen windows, and more fabric to roll down over the screens at night. They also had electricity, lights, gas stoves and a deck. They were built to keep out the rain, and nothing else as I still have the mosquito bites to prove. They did not even keep out the lizards. Though the lighting for photography was better outside than in.

The whole campground, which is built on a hillside of respectable slope, is interconnected with boardwalks, so as not to damage the forest. There were stairs taking you up or down to your tent, the beach, the restroom, the restaurant, the on site store, and everywhere else that was not beach. The wood on the boardwalk is untreated, in keeping with whatever eco friendly rules determine such things and consequently were in various stages from new to near thurough decomposition, depending on when they were last replaced. I found it somewhat amusing to try and mentally set up a time line as to how old individual boards must be.

This is Us on our little deck.

I learned from this campground that "eco friendly" means cold water showers. Which when it's hot and humid is not, technically, a bad thing. "Eco friendlily" also means that the mosquitoes were here first, deal with it. Additionally "eco friendly" means you will reacquire all the sand you just washed off in the twenty foot walk back to your tent, despite the boardwalks.

The primary enticement for the trip was of course, family. Paige's siblings are spread so far across country that it is rare that I get to spend time around them. The family for this trip was Paige's older sister Kristie, her husband Alex, and their son Max.

Max, between snorkling sessions

Kristie, Max and Alex

Paige, anjoying the water with Kristie and Alex

Ah, Candid shots.

The Sand Castle Max and I made.
Overall it was better than the one I made later.

I'm always nervous about meeting with the family. Mainly due to the distance and lack of contact. It went really well. I even found it easy to get to know Alex's friends and family who had come down as well. That I was REALLY nervous about, but they were all very easy going. Besides, try staying wound up on a beach, It ain't easy.

I have more to post on this trip, but a week off school made things a bit tight. I'll add more when I can.

Summer Vacation. Intro.

We embarked a week ago last Saturday on a trip we have been anticipating for quite some time. The day after our wedding, we were having a quite little get together with the immediate family. One of Paige's sisters invited us to go with them on their biennial trip to St. John's island in the US Virgin Islands.

At the time we said we would love to, but that it would be determined by life in general at that time.

Well, as time has gotten into the habit of rolling around, (it has had all the time in the world to perfect that habit) we suddenly found ourselves staring at the short end of the decision window. It was a tough decision. We had enough to afford it, but being in school and all was a challenge. Additionally so since summer classes at UVU are all block, and it made the trip the second to last week of a seven week course.

Obviously we went for it, or I would not be bothering you with it now. I crammed in homework where I could and got just far enough ahead that I would not have to panic to much today going back into classes with homework due.

Our trip out was a long one. Our first flight left at 5 pm from SLC and took us into JFK in New York. We opted to make a real journey out of it, and at JFK we traveled from terminal 1 to terminal 8 by way of Manhattan. This was cool, though it probably would have been even cooler if it had not been 1 in the morning.

Why, you ask me, did we go to Manhattan at 1 in the morning? Well, our layover was 7 hours, for one. That and the fact that I had never been to the Manhattan Temple.









We took a cab in, my first time in a cab by the way, and went straight to the temple. There is only so much you can do with ambient light from street lamps at just after midnight. From there we wandered over to Central Park, down to Columbus Circle, and caught a subway train at a station just north of the very bright Times Square (Subway trip was also a first for me.) I have pictures of none of that. This is due to two things: first, we were rather tired and most of our brain was geared towards a nap back at the air terminal. second, you look me straight in the eye and tell me that you would feel comfortable carrying an expansive camera around the outskirts of Central Park at 2 in the morning in Manhattan.

So began our trip.

Catching up

Thanks for all the concern about our little mouse friends. No worries. We not only kept the original traps but more than doubled the number. Unfortunately, those diabolical mickeys have been able to get the peanut butter without tripping the traps. Any ideas?

Congratulations to Lindsay, Aaron, and Rocco. We are looking forward to meeting the little guy.

We are back in the country...so glad to be back. We'll post more on our adventures later.

Infiltration

Always Wear Your Helmet.
Artist Unknown

So I walked into the kitchen the other afternoon (after a strenuous 15 minutes of strawberry picking, we have hundreds of them.) just in time to scare the bejeebers out of one of these little guys as he hauled his daring little hind end from one side of the kitchen to the other. (Under cover of mid-day, in the largest car in the county.)

Prior to this, the only thing I thought we had to risk from leaving the door open a couple of minutes was flys and wasps getting in. Now I know better. At least, I hope that's how he/she/it got in. So we did a thorough investigation of our foodstuffs. At this point, the healthy little guy seems to only have the stomach for flour. He has attacked EVERY un-canned bag in the house. Including one in the storage room, on a shelf 4 feet off the floor in the middle of the room. Your guess is as good as the president's as to how he got up there. For my part I imagine it looked sorta like this:

Mission Impossible
Artist Unknown

We immediately bought some traps. Contrary to popular belief, mice don't like cheese, so we loaded them up with peanut butter. (Mice are more likely to find nuts than cheese in the wild, cheese plants being rare and all.) That very same night, about an hour after not any other creature was stirring, we heard a distinctive snap in the kitchen. Peanut butter had been his down fall. Yep, greed and peanut butter. They'll get you everytime.