The hikes

Some of our hikes in the Virgin Islands included this one near Cinnamon Bay. It was only about a 4.2 mile hike, but it was steep,...in fact with dad's watch he determined that we climbed 700 ft. (It was kind of difficult at the time, but maybe we're just out of shape.)

It was quite beautiful and very humid.

Starting in the 1600's these islands had numerous sugar plantations that were worked by slaves. This rock wall is believed to have been created when slaves cleared sugar cane fields and stacked the rocks.

We were able to view these petroglyphs and pool of water as a reward for our climb.

We were able to see our boat from the trail.

One day we met a couple who were probably in their 70s who are from New York. They do volunteer work for 3 months a year here at a camp called VIERS. (Virgin Island Environmental Resource Station.)
It was started by General Electric and NASA in 1966.
It was here that the first astronauts came and were sumerged in a tank in this bay for 90 days. Now the camp is used for students and there is a small museum which we were able to go through.

This is an old sugar cane mill.

This was in the BVI and we hiked from "Little Harbor" to "Big Harbor".

Sunrise/Sunset

I realized after uploading all our photos of the sunrises and sunsets that we were a little obsessed with the beauty of them. Maybe I'll delete some as I write, but if not, hope you enjoy just scanning through them.

At 5am, this is what the sky looked like as we left Redlands. This was the last time I saw the moon until we got back to Redlands.These pictures are in order of when we saw them although I can't remember at exactly which bay we were at at the times they were taken.

Our flight home started at 5pm and we traveled all night with a delayed plane in Atlanta, arriving in Redlands at 6am. These pictures were on the freeway entering Redlands. That was after having to call AAA for a dead battery at LAX.

The Animals!

On the first day of our trip on St. Thomas Island, we decided to go for a hike. As we were leaving our hotel room, we started down the path that led to the road and THIS iguana was in our path!! I could hardly believe it! It was about 4 to 5 feet long and although they seem to travel by themselves, we saw several of them. One time I was sitting out on our balcony reading and heard a noise in the tree right next to me. I look up expecting to see a bird and another hugh iguana was up in the tree eating the leaves! That one was green, so I'm thinking that they can change their color to match their surroundings.

On this same hike while walking by the water, this beautiful bird seemed to say hello to us. We were so close, I don't think I even zoomed in.On another day, on another island, we were hiking and this deer was right near our path and didn't seemed to be bothered much by us just walking by.

We had sailed over to the BVI (British Virgin Islands) and after checking into immigration, we saw a chicken with her baby chicks. We were making oooos, and ahhhs, and then after walking around the island, learned that chicken are everywhere!!

Goats are in a lot of places too...yes, wild goats. The hills on one islands seemed to be filled with them. I'm surprised that we didn't see any on the menus, but then again, we didn't eat out much.

I honestly thought this little one had JUST been born when we walked by.

There were a lot of pelicans diving for fish.

#2. The Bays

Here are just some of the bays we were at.

All were so beautiful! Lameshur Bay

Little Harbor on Jost VanDyke

Sopers Hole on Tortola Island

Our boat in the distance on Lameshur Bay

The Adventure of a Life Time!

We're back from the high seas, although my body doesn't know it yet...jet lagged, and the house keeps swaying back and forth, back and forth. It was a great vacation filled with fun and adventure, danger, pirates, a shark, flying fish, turtles, mongoose, high winds and more. We took lots of pictures. Too many to post in one blog entry so I've decided to break them up into catagories.

#1. Sailing