This was a friends & family trip covering the US east coast from the Caribbean to New Hampshire, a trip we had planed for earlier in 2012, but had to postpone it due to infirmary. So over a 3 week span starting in September we traveled to Florida, the Virgin Islands, Boston & New England, Mamaroneck & New York City. Along the way we visited John’s niece Betty & sister Skeets, and Jessie’s friend Joan, and attended John’s 50th High School reunion.
If you get past all the photos from the trip, you’ll find Jessie’s blog entry from our stay a Maho Bay on St John USVI.
Diner with John’s niece Betty & her children Felicia & Stephen near Fort Lauderdale, FL
John & his sister “Skeets” in USVI
John & Jessie on BVI Virgin Gorda at The Baths
Our tent cabin at Maho Bay, St John USVI
Jessie at The Baths Virgin Gorda BVI
Diner pavilion at Maho Bay St John USVI
Skeets & Jessie at Magens Bay, St Thomas USVI
View from Villa Santana, Charlotte Amalie, St Thomas USVI
Printing press in Boston
The North Church, Boston
USS Constitution, Boston Harbor
John looking through periscope on the USS Albacore at the Albacore Museum in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. From the web: “Albacore was the Navy’s test bed for the shape of modern submarines. She was diesel electric and faster than the nuclear subs of the time.”
Jessie at the wheel! at the Albacore Museum in New Hampshire
Jessie & Joan at Stonington (along Conn coast) where the locals had defeated a British raiding force on August 10, 1814
The Mashantucket Pequot Museum in Mashantucket CT is one of the best museums I’ve ever visited!
Joan at the door of her “Robert Pratt c.1758” home in Essex CT
Free drinks & hotdogs at Yankee Stadium!
At Yankee Stadium
Washington Square, NYC
Jessie & Joan in the observation tower at the Mashantucket Pequot Museum, Mashantucket CT
USS Albacore at the Albacore Museum in Portsmouth, New Hampshire
USS Enterprise museum in NY Harbor
MIG fighter aboard USS Enterprise
(Note: this was in the blog but “unpublished” until Aug 2 2014)
27-Sept-2012 As we’re sitting in our tent-cabin overlooking beautiful and pristine Maho Bay, US Virgin Islands we’ve returned to our blog to catch up on our travels. We had planned to take this tip in May, but Jessie’s sciatica intervened. After a full recovery and our return from the trip to Ecuador in July, we re-planned a 3-week trip for mid September (the Caribbean hurricane season) and included stops in Miami Florida, USVI, then up to Boston Mass, and will be flying out of JFK in New York a week later to return home to California.
Now we’re on St John island at Maho Bay Camps watching the turquoise water below as pelicans dive into schools of fish for their diner. Maho Bay is one of the few remaining private undeveloped areas on the northwestern shore of St John about a 20 minute taxi ride from Cruz Bay bordering the VI National Park. The camp is an “ecological” resort with rustic tent cabins on wood platforms dotted along a tree-covered hillside linked by elevated walkways and stairs connecting the beach and dining pavilion. Viewed from the sea, its hardly visible on the hillside, especially compared to the opulent villas on other parts of the island.
We were drawn here because (a) John’s sister, Skeets, lives on near-by St Thomas island, (b) John was pleasantly impressed with the ambiance when he stayed here (just after his divorce) in 2009, and (c) the camp is scheduled to close in 2013 because the land owners are seeking out a buyer and cannot extend the camp’s lease.
Our first two days of the trip were spent in the Miami area, more precisely Ft Lauderdale. There we visited John’s niece, Betty, and her two grown children, Felicia and Stephen. We had a delicious Italian meal at Cafe Vincenzo the first night with Betty, and we then found Tumi, a Peruvian restaurant, via Zagat for an even more delicious meal the following night with Betty & kids. Our one day of sight-seeing was reduced to an afternoon so Jessie could get some work done, so we simply went to the Ft Lauderdale beach and had lunch, a great blackened fish sandwich, and drinks at Anglins Beach Cafe on the fishing pier listening to a local musical group.
Then we flew to St Thomas (STT) and were met by Skeets at the airport and spent two nights at Sapphire Bay on the east end near Red Hook. The first night Skeets drove us back to Charlotte Amalie for diner at ** where she had an Ole Wife fish plate and we shared a . Gladys’ Cafe
On our second day at Maho we took a boat tour on Breakaway charters to the British Virgin Islands of Virgin Gorda, Scrub and Jost Van Dyke. The tour included stops at the ‘Baths’ (huge bolders piled on top of each other at the water’s edge), snorkeling on a beautiful reef, lunch at the Scrub Island resort, and finally a beach landing for drinks at the Soggy Dollar Bar on Jost Van Dyke.
On the Go with John and Jessie 