You could be one of the luckiest guys there is if you had a girl who would walk with you – rain, snow, cold, wind – weekend after weekend, season after season, for 10 years.
I am that guy.
And while she’s been doing it, she somehow added a decade to her age, and so there was an odd concurrence of the hikes turning 10 and Gail turning 40.
OK, 50.
Wait, 60?!
She certainly doesn’t walk like it, unless I walk like I’m 80. It’s been said here many times that she is the better hiker than I – faster up a mountain, faster on the flat, and usually only slightly faster down the mountain.
Anyway, seemed time to honor the hiking constancy and the hiking prowess of The Greatest Day Hiker of Them All by taking her somewhere where yes, she could hike, but there would be some other things:
1. Warmth instead of winter.
2. Beaches and snorkeling instead of snow crunch and heated gloves.
3. Fine dinners every night instead of just hiking night.
4. Cozy accommodations in new places instead of the ol’ homestead.
The U.S. Virgin Islands in late winter!
Which include little St. John, with its territory dominated by Virgin Islands National Park and its many beaches and trails. Which we undertook in fairly systematic fashion:
February 27: Salt Pond, Ram Head and Drunk Bay Trails and back. 3 miles.
Maybe the most challenging part of this pleasant trek was the drive to it–across most of the island in the Jeep rental, driving on the “wrong” side of the narrow, twisting road where the locals tend to wander toward you till the last sec’.
The hike itself includes a nearly immediate payoff–you’re at Saltpond Bay in .2 mile, and ready to snorkel already! And a trip-long pattern was established: After lunch, Gail went for a long snorkel while I got a good solid nap.
From there it was out to Ram Head and back, and then out the little stick trail to Drunk Bay, along the shore of which visitors have done lots of cairn and other rock-and-shell decoration work. A pleasing afternoon overall: Yes, we can do these trails; yes, they lead to cool beaches; yes, we now have the most-distant (longest drive) trails behind us.
February 28: Leinster, Johnny Horn and Brown Bay Trails and back. About 6 miles.
The most challenging part of this beachy set of trails was finding a place to park, as it happened to be the big festival day at the Annaberg Sugar Mill Ruins, where the Leinster Trail begins. Hundreds of school kids, plus teachers, musicians, rangers were all gathered to explore the ruins, taste sugar water and enjoy the day which just happened, like all the other days on St. John, to have a high of about 80 and a low of about 74.
The Leinster is a waterside trail taking you to Watermelon Bay, where the snorkeling was pretty good. The Johnny Horn is a connector trail to the Brown Bay, which leads down to, uh, Brown Bay, where there was more good snorkeling, lunch, and that snorkel/nap combo.
March 2: Reef Bay, Lameshur, Yawzi Point and Petroglyph trails. About 9 miles.
The most challenging part of this hike was the daggone hike, which is long, steep in spots and ends with a hard climb.
Much of the distance is through forest along rocky trails, with several sets of several-hundred-foot climbs. But Little Lameshur Bay was inviting enough to The Snorkeler that she stayed in the water pretty much paralleling the full one-mile length of the Ram Head Trail while her companion took, um, a nap. Nifty to look down, as we walked on the craggy point above, to where she’d been in the water.
The walk back was highlighted by the side trail to the petroglyphs–crude drawings in the rocks from maybe 2,000 years ago, made so as to reflect in the pooled water below. The pathway to them is flanked by a huge and precise rock wall, made maybe 300 years ago by slaves of the conquering Europeans of the time.
March 4: Lind Point Trail (upper and lower) to Caneel Bay and back. About 3 miles.
The most challenging part of this hike was nothing, as we saved the easiest–and nearest to town–for last, walking up the steps behind the National Park visitor center, over the small hill and then down onto the beach at Salmon Bay. Gail make a snorkeling excursion toward the private Caneel Bay, and came back to report that she was stopped from swimming into their bay by the presence of several pirhanas, apparently hired by the resort to keep the riffraff out.
