Revisiting Our Park And Meeting Friends For Dinner

Cinnamon Bay in Virgin Islands N.P.

We awoke the next morning to a fairly steady rain. It doesn’t rain much here this time of year, but one will see frequent, light, short showers from cloud convection.  But this was a little different and could possibly alter our plans. Today we wanted to return to St. John and do some more extensive touring and exploring the park prior to meeting up with Diane Pick and her niece for dinner. Hoping to spend almost the entire day there, we were disappointed when the weather didn’t clear until almost noon. We had some lunch, gathered our things, and headed to the ferry terminal to salvage what we could. Arriving on the island, Jane wanted to return to a shop she was in the other day to pick up an item she spotted, while Capt. Larry purchased our return tickets to save time, if dinner with Diane ran long.

Cinnamon Bay Beach

Meeting up again, we hailed a taxi that would take us to Cinnamon Bay where the park’s campground and Diane’s cabin were. The ride was a short 4.5 miles, but the scenery of the bays and beaches were magnificent, to say nothing of the ride. It had also rained in St. John that morning and the roads were still wet.

Beach and gift shop

Twice our driver slid the rear end of the vehicle into the other lane with rear tires spinning as he struggled to ascend hairpin turns on the tortuous, twisted, precipitous road (get the picture- it wasn’t flat and straight!). Only one other road that we had ever traveled on came close to matching this.

Cinnamon Bay

We arrived at our destination, slightly nauseated, and paid our driver. We walked down the bay’s beautiful beach and found the campground. We weren’t scheduled to meet Diane until 1700, so we decided to head across the road and explore the ruins of an old sugar mill.

The sugar mill boiling house

This mill ruins were interesting and provided an image as to how the cane was processed. The Danes were the first white inhabitants of St. John, arriving in 1717. They quickly started to process sugar cane (mostly to make rum!) and eventually planted the entire island in cane.

Boiler ovens

Production started to decline by the early 1800’s and virtually ceased by the 1820’s. The mill we explored was the largest on St. John.

Tyre palm

Bay rum tree

We found two interesting trees that were featured by the park- the tyre palm and the bay rum trees. The tyre palm is found only in Puerto Rico and the Virgin islands and is a tall slender palm that reaches heights of 20 feet.

Sugar mill ruins

The bay rum tree is native to the Caribbean and is known for the essential oil it produces that is used in cooking and the production of bay rum cologne.

We finished our walking tour of the mill and headed back to the restaurant to meet Diane. We were early so we decided to begin happy hour without her (exploring ruins works up a mighty thirst!).

Finishing the walking tour

She arrived early, with her niece, Jessica, arriving a few minutes later. We were so happy to reunite. We started to reminisce, but thought that we should really order our dinner, because this could go on all night. We were deep into stories about the parks, Antarctica, Alaska and our coincidental travels together when dinner arrived.

Diane and Larry

The food was awesome, but the company and stories were better. Diane also has visited all of the national parks, and many 2 or 3 times, so she has a very rich knowledge of the park system. After we finished our meal, Jane and Capt. Larry found themselves talking more about their Great Loop trip than anything else, but were prodded on by continuous questions from our hosts. We talked about both past and future plans.

Jane, Diane, and Jessica

We had decided that we would like to catch the 2000 ferry back to Red Hook and realized that we would be cutting it close. We bid our farewells and promises to keep in contact then headed out to the taxi stand. Unfortunately there was no taxi immediately available, and we had to wait 20 minutes for one to appear. The driver promised that we would make our ferry- something we really didn’t find reassuring given our ride out to Cinnamon Bay in the daylight! True to his word, we did arrive with 10 minutes to spare. We ended our day with a nightcap and a really restful sleep.