St John Pictures

Once we finally made it to St. Thomas we were lucky enough to stay in Blackbeard's Castle! The locks on the doors and the decor reminded me of "Pirates of the Caribbean"! We had a little balcony that looked out to the ocean. We LOVED this place!

Can you believe we were lucky enough to stay here??!

Blackbeard's Castle had TONS of pirate statues and pirate histories. We had a lot of fun walking around reading about the pirates and taking pictures of what we thought it would be like to be a part of their crew!
We were lucky enough to get to climb to the top of Blackbeard's Tower (which used to be a look-out tower back in the Dutch/Pirate days of St. Thomas history). This is the view from the top of the tower over looking Charlotte Amalie, St. Thomas.
St. Thomas is a busy, rich island with lots of fun (and EXPENSIVE) shops and stores. We loved walking around looking at the old buildings with their fun colors and alleyways. I loved the shudders on the building doors and windows... at night the stores would actually CLOSE the shudders and then re-open them again in the morning when the shops open for business! I loved that they actually use their shudders!!

Here are some pictures of Charlotte Amalie, St. Thomas (and Brent walking up the famous 99 Steps)

We stayed only one day on St. Thomas and then caught a ferry to St. John just a few miles from St. Thomas. Most of St. John is a national park, which makes St. John a quiet, "sleepy" island which was beautiful beyond belief!

We rented a jeep on St. John... and we quickly found EVERYONE on the island is driving a Jeep or a Kawasaki. It was just like being in the movie "Jurassic Park"... it would totally crack us up to see all the parking lots full of Jeeps and to see nothing but Jeeps on the roads!

Our first afternoon on St. John we drove around the North Shore of the island looking at the shoreline and enjoying the sights of the beautiful beaches. Unfortunately we learned quickly that apparently the Jeep overheats if you drive in 4-Wheel-Drive ALL the time! After a bunch of warning lights flashed on our dashboard we pulled over and spent about 45 minutes waiting for the Jeep to cool down. We were nervous that we were going to have to call our rental car company and tell them we had ruined our Jeep on our first afternoon!

As the passenger I tried to be the navigator... These were my tools: Our GPS, a tourist book with maps, a tourist map from our rental car agency, and a book of maps we had luckily printed before we left home. The island is only like 8 miles long... and there are only 2 main roads around the island... but it was really tricky to find unlabeled hiking trails without our million different maps!

Brent waiting for our Jeep to cool down... don't you love his nervous smile?

The first hike we did on the island was Ram Head. It was a really pretty hike that went through a cobblestone beach and a sand beach and through lots of trees to a rocky lookout point. As we began our hike a ranger stopped us and asked if we had water and warned that the hike was "exposed" to the sun and was quite rocky. He made it sound as if we would be hiking across the Sahara and scrambling up cliffs! Luckily we were pleasantly surprised to find the hike was quite easy, very well covered by trees and involved no scrambling or rock climbing. It was nice of the ranger to be so nice and concerned about us.

Ram Head hike pictures

The cobblestone beach was my FAVORITE part of the hike... I had never seen a cobblestone beach! It was SO, SO pretty so see the mixture of different blue rocks and white coral on the beach. Brent had fun skipping rocks out into the ocean.
I can't look at these pictures of Brent without laughing! These pictures were taken on another hike through an old leprosy colony that used to be on the island.
These are pictures of our villa in St. John. We were lucky enough to find this AWESOME little cottage to rent for the week. It had a fun porch, a beautiful view of Coral Bay, a hot tub... and an outdoor shower! I can say that was for sure my first time ever showering outside!
The island of St. John is filled with ruins from the Dutch days on the island. The Dutch used the island to grow sugar... and produce both sugar and LOTS AND LOTS of Rum! Most of the houses and factories were made from rocks and sand from the island... because they used SALTY sand as concrete most of the buildings quickly decayed and are in ruins now. (There were also some crazy plants that don't need soil to grow and were growing up ON the old ruins!)