The countdown is on!

I can’t believe that, as I write this, we have only about one and a half weeks left here. It is a bittersweet time. We look forward to friends, family and some of the comforts of home that we take for granted (Pizza delivery! Target! Super Stop & Shop!), but we will also miss the friends we have made here.

As I left off, I was flying home for two wonderful bridal showers. Each was very different, but both were such a great time. The weather was gorgeous and the blushing brides-to-be and grooms-to-be are so happy and so in love. Quite a nice way to spend a weekend!

I was happy to discover that the guys didn’t get into too much trouble while left on their own. Apparently their weekend consisted of some beverages and a whole lot of beef (burgers, meatballs, elk, etc.). Sounds like a guy’s weekend to me!

I was happy to get back and celebrated Chris slightly belated birthday by baking a cake and taking him out to a restaurant we were told to try, Latitude 18. It’s a very casual bar on the water that had some great music and some pretty good eats. All in all, it was a nice night. I surprised Chris with the Wii and I think he’s excited to try it. He’s especially happy to try out the Wii Fit, since his work day doesn’t leave him too much time, in addition to his runs, to get out to the gym. He misses that extra activity. I’m not going to lie, I’m looking forward to trying it myself!

This past weekend, we spent one last day on St. John. We hiked to our favorite spot, but by way of a different route, went to lunch at Island Blues and then headed on to Cinnamon Beach. We finished the day with a drink at the Beach Bar. We ended the evening by meeting our friends up for pizza at Island Times. It was one of those fantastic days you just can’t get enough of.

Now we have just ONE MORE weekend left and we’ll be back to the real world. We plan to have some fun times this weekend with the friends we’ve met here, so check back next week to see how it goes.


Last trek to some of St. John's ruins


One of our favorite bays

Hello once again!

We are coming off yet another fairly laid back weekend. The weather here was pretty overcast making beach-going kind of chancy, what with the tropics penchant for impromptu showers. We started off the weekend by having a burrito night with our neighbors. Well, little did I know how far some burrito fixings go! What I thought was an amount that should have just about covered the 6 of us, ended up feeding the 6 of us (some with seconds). It then carried on into feeding us and even one of our neighbors again, all through the weekend and into Monday. I might just be sick of burritos, although I didn’t think that was possible.

Saturday night we ended up going on over to St. John to try out Rhumb Lines- a Thai restaurant that has some great eats. After that, we went to this little hole in the wall pub that is known for letting you pour your own drinks. Yes-as much or as little as you want. That could get dangerous! But, alas, our ferry was leaving sooner than later and we weren’t able to do too much damage. After that, since we started out fairly early, we had time to catch a movie (Date Night) before calling it a night.

This weekend coming up, I am abandoning my husband (for his birthday weekend, no less!) to head home for a couple of wedding showers. It is amazing that it worked out, though, that I could actually go to both showers in one trip home. I look forward to seeing everyone and celebrating! Also, Chris will not be alone for his birthday. Greg and Josh have been threatening to take Chris out for a guys’ night to celebrate his big 35th. I have a feeling Chris is looking forward to it and can’t help but wonder what kind of stories I will hear when I get home. I am grateful, though, that he will have some people to hang out with rather than spend his bday alone. Then, when I get back on that Monday, we will celebrate all over again!

For my final note, I want to share my excitement and happiness over some major milestones Chris’ sister and brother-in-law (hi Jenny and Jay!) have accomplished. They have been planning to move to Florida for quite a while now and have had some very discouraging experiences with interviews and job hunting. But, they stuck with it. And, with a little bit of good fortune and a lot of just being fabulous, they have managed to pull it all off! In short time they’ve both lined up jobs, found a great school for the kids, put an offer on a new home (which was accepted), and found a family physician. We couldn’t be more supportive. Although, and I know it goes without saying, we will miss them tons here. But, we know they are only a short flight away and a very easy phone call. We love you guys!!!!

I’m a Wreck Diver!

Hello all, once again! Not too much here to report for this past week. Chris had to work most of the weekend, but we did find time to do a dive that we have been aiming to go to. This dive is called the Wit Shoal II and it is, more often than not, a inhospitable dive site due to being in a convergence zone where the north shore swell meets the south shore currents and which create choppy conditions. However, luck was on our side and it was a near perfect day to go to the Wit Shoal.

I may have reached a personal diving milestone in that, during both dives that day, I felt very comfortable down there and actually spent more time enjoying the surroundings than thinking about what may go wrong. I loved swimming around the ship wreck and also got a thrill out of seeing a few nurse sharks. One of them had to be at least a 6 footer. While nurse sharks are actually one of the most benign sharks that you can come across, our captain informed us that they are the most common shark species to bite humans. This is because they are so unthreatening that people often try to pet them! And that, to those who might not already suspect this, is a bad idea.

A little history on the Wit Shoal II:
The WIT Shoal II / LST 467 is located a few miles southwest of the St. Thomas airport, near Saba Rock. The WIT Shoal was originally a warship, known as LST 467. LST stands for Landing Ship Tanks, and she was built in 1943 to land up to 20 Sherman tanks onto the beach in the Allied invasions of Europe and the Pacific during World War II. LSTs were designed to run right up onto the beach to land the tanks. The bow of the ship has large doors which open outward, and an inner door which lowers down to form a ramp for the tanks to drive onto the beach. LST 467 served in the Pacific during the war.

After the war this 328 foot long ship was purchased by the West Indies Transport company, and renamed the WIT Shoal II. She was used as a freighter until she sank in Tropical Storm Klaus, on November 6, 1984. Today the WIT Shoal is one of the premier diving wrecks of St. Thomas.

The shipwreck sits upright in 90 feet of water, but the top of the observation tower is only 35 feet beneath the waves. There are 5 levels of decks for divers to explore.

That’s it in a nutshell! We hope to try to do one more dive before we head on home in just a few weeks. I have posted a few photos below, though I found them on the web and did not actually take them myself.

Love to all,

Kasey


A nurse shark. Pretty cool!


Photo of the Wit Shoal II


Wit Shoal again. I think I may have seen this baracuda in our travels :)

Mid-Week Check-In

Hola! Not too much to report on the isle. We had a pretty relaxed weekend. We kicked it off by celebrating our friend’s birthday at Mojo’s and then moseyed our way on over to Fat Turtle. We had a great time at Fat Turtle. Not too late of a night. A highlight of the night was a poor fellow’s unrequited attraction to my dear husband. We enjoyed watching Chris politely dodge his advances, while I remained quiet about Chris being my husband. I found this justifiable since Chris chooses to opt out of wearing his wedding ring. Eventually, I informed the lovelorn lad that Chris was, indeed, my husband and he was out of luck. He said his farewell by telling Chris that he was beautiful. Needless to say, Chris’ new nickname is “beautiful”.

On Saturday, our friend and neighbor, Josh, told us about this off-the-beaten-path beach on the island that he wanted to show us and our other friends.. He wasn’t kidding. We could not have gotten there in our car or even our other neighbor’s SUV. We needed Josh’s all terrain “rock climber” jeep to get over some very rocky and dubious roads. The beach was pretty darn cool and, after the two mile decent on the less than ideal terrain, seemed to have the air of a possible horror movie. Take one deserted beach only reached by a long and somewhat inaccessible road, add in the 4 unmarked graves/headstones that we saw at the entrance and top that off with the shanty huts and miscellaneous old furniture that was strewn about the beach and, I’ll tell you the truth, I did NOT want to be there by nightfall. However, this beach was serene and virtually private. It was a gorgeous place to spend a few hours (of daylight). Unfortunately, I did not take enough pictures to do it justice, but I do have a few.

Other than that, all is well and pretty much status quo here. We have a friend who is staying in St. John coming here to spend the night on Friday, so we hope to show her a good time. Other than that, we are going to just go with the flow and see where the days take us.

Love you all and see you soon!

Kasey


"Beautiful" enjoying a long walk on the beach


Random Furniture, but it does the trick!

Ladies Weekend!!!

Oh, so where do we begin? I will start off that I have the best husband in the world to tolerate 4 days/nights of estrogen with myself, Katrina and Jackie. With him working on weeknights, he very kindly would drop us off at our nighttime destination and offered us rides home anytime before midnight. What a great guy! We let him off the hook for our rides home so that he could relax for the evenings.

So, upon my picking them up from the airport, we went directly to Mojo’s. This is a little tiki hut in a parking lot in Havensight that has great drinks and is on the way home from the airport. After Mojo’s, we proceeded to drop our stuff at the condo and go immediately to the pool, since the ladies demanded some serious sun time (and who wouldn’t?). After we watched the sun go down, it was shower time and then off to Red Hook for some good eats at Lotus (sushi). Chris joined us for dinner and there was raw fish in abundance. My unadventurous self stuck to steak. Still, very good. In keeping with the Asian fare, we complimented our meals with *Sake. At the end of dinner, Chris bid us farewell (probably with relief) and left us to test out *”Ladies night” at Duffy’s. Oddly enough, this place was also in a parking lot. I sure know how to wow my guests with “location, location, location”.

Without going into too much detail for the rest of the trip (as that would take up a whole lotta blog), the rest of our agenda went something like this:

Thursday/Night: Magan’s Bay beach. Rain found us. We outran rain by proceeding on to Sapphire beach. After a little bit of bbque Edward’s style we headed on to Red Hook, again. First we went to Big Bambooze, then on to Fat Boy’s and ending the festivities at Caribbean Saloon.

Friday/Night: Linquist Beach for the duration- a crowd favorite. Then home to get ready and head out to fine dining at, you guessed it, Havana Blue. Dinner was great and we headed home early, since us ladies were dragging from a couple of nights out and we also had a big boating day to wake up to.

Saturday/Night: Early morning and we were off to the docks. Our first destination was Virgin Gorda, as we think it is a “must see”. But unfortunately, due to anchoring issues and some *road blocks, we had to abort the mission and head on over to our next destination, Willie Ts. I think I talked about this barge before, so I will just post photos below. Finally, we made it home safe and sound and then headed out to dinner at Rancho Latino. This is a hole-in-the-wall restaurant that has really good food and was a lot of fun, but very…interesting. I think it took 2 hours to get our food and then, well, I’ll let the photo below explain it all. After dinner, we clearly had to end the trip with another late night at, you guessed it, Iggies.

Sunday: Happy Easter everyone! The ladies and I hit the pool for some last bit of sunshine while Chris slept in. Then, sadly, it was off to the airport to drop my girls off. Sad times! But, I will see them and all of y’all soon enough!
Okay, well, sorry for the long blog, but a lot went on! Enjoy the pictures and the additional info below.

XOXO, Kasey

*Sake or saké: (pronounced /’sɑ:ki:/ or /’sɑ:keɪ/ in English and [sake] ( listen) in Japanese) is a Japanese alcoholic beverage made from rice.

* “Ladies night”: Ladies drink for FREE. All night.

*Road blocks: Scaling giant rocks and getting stuck half way to the Bath’s portion of things and having to jump of a tall boulder into what we hoped was deep enough water (sorry mom & dad) and then swimming quite a bit to try to find Katrina who was smart enough to try to swim to the Baths rather than scale rocks.


Mojo's. Parking Lot Bar #1.


The 3 amigas! In Parking Lot Bar #2.


We LOVE hammocks!


So, picture these rocks, times 2 or 3, and trying to climb them/jump off them/swim around them in big waves. It's harder than it looks!


Willie T's!!!! We jumped off the top back side. Several times! Mom and Dad- it's cool. Lot's of people do it.


Oddest check I've ever seen! Rancho Latino. They just couldn't keep up with us!

Relaxing and Chill-axing

Hola! Nothing too much new to report from the last weekend. We laid pretty low and had a whole Kasey-and-Chris only weekend. It was very nice!

On Saturday, we headed on over to one of our favorite places, St. John, and had a date day. First, we headed to Cinnamon Bay for some fun in the sun and then, very resourcefully, showered and got ready at the beach accomodations. After that, we headed on over to Woody's for their famous happy hour. Then, off to one of the loveliest restaurants on the island, Asolare. The view was gorgeous and the food was delicious! Four thumbs up from the two of us.

Sunday was a quiet type of day. Chris had to work a bit. I hit the pool and Chris joined me later, but even I have my sun limits. So, after a bit, we headed over to play some tennis and then went in for the night.

That's it! Saving our energy for our visitors who land tomorrow. Yay! Can't wait to see you Katrina and Jackie!

Cheers!

Boats!!!

We have had quite the nautical past couple of weeks, which has been fantastic. It’s a whole different good time when you are out there on the water.

The Saturday after my parents’ visit, we had rented a boat with our neighbors and friends. One of our friends drives a boat here for work, so he was able to act as our captain for the day. We stocked up on munchies and beverages and made it on over to White Beach on Jost van Dyke and then we headed to Willie T’s- a ship with a bar and restaurant in the middle of a bay. It was gorgeous weather and we had a ton of fun!

This past weekend, we were invited to join our friends, Susan and Bill, on their boat, which is big enough to sleep on, which we did. This weekend was the annual Blues Fest in St. John and we went over in style. We headed out bright and early on Saturday morning to Coral Bay in St. John to anchor up and hang out on the boat with an array of boat drinks and snacks. Kind of like tail-gating. Then, we headed over to Island Blues where we got some late lunch/early dinner and got to listen to a blues band. Then off to the concert where we set up shop on the field and saw an array of talent. By midnight, we were beat and headed back to the boat.

The next day, our friends had heard us rave about the hike we do on St. John where we can look down at the boaters in Waterlemon Cay with jealousy. They decided that they would let us finally enjoy the experience from a boat. We tied up in the Cay and enjoyed a verrrry relaxing and leisurely Sunday. We were able to jump right into the water from the boat and there was some pretty cool snorkeling a bit of a swim away. All in all it was a lovely day and we are very grateful that we got to live like boaters for a weekend!

This weekend we plan to take it easy and revitalize ourselves so that we can show our next visitors, Katrina and Jackie, an amazing time. Can’t wait!

Adios for now,
Kasey


He's on a boat!


Our weekend boat hosts


Looking up to the spot we usually look down from in envy