Once again, we had a wonderful time on St John on our trip April 22 -29. The Westin was the Westin and we purchased another week. Highlights of our trip are as follows:

1) Sunday, April 23 we went to Maho Bay. Smooth, sandy, and our 4 year old had a great time playing on the shoreline.

2) Monday, April 24 our annual pilgrimage to Salt Pond; more people than last year, but still, a beautiful place. Set up our sun tent and snorkeled for a while before enjoying a picnic lunch. My husband decided to hike the Drunk Bay Trail as a warm up for his Reef Bay trip. Nice walk, but then we had to walk back up the Salt Pond trail. Glad our daughter is older and able to walk most of the way on her own.

3) Tuesday, April 25 quiet day for my daughter and I as my husband takes off early for his Reef Bay Hike. For the second year in a row, he sees the “elusive” deer (have pictures from last year).

4) Thursday, April 26 our daughter decides to spend the day at the Westin Kids Club (great time for her, good value) so we decide to try Waterlemon. Hike to launching point is nice and relatively flat. Other people on the trail say the current is strong, so I’m glad I decided to borrow my daughter’s noodle. It looks weird, but does the trick. We swim out to the side of the cay in order to try to swim around counter clockwise. The water got shallow very quickly and I was worried about bumping into the coral. I decide to swim back out to the front of the cay, and my husband, a very strong swimmer, swims back out to go around the cay. This works out well; in the front I see the biggest stoplight parrotfish I’ve ever seen, and great coral formations. After a few minutes, my husband makes it around the cay, and as we are swimming back, we see a couple of large sea turtles underneath us. This may have had something to do with the enormous school of those little fish swimming in the bay. There were so many of them I felt as if I were swimming in a cloud of fish. Anyway, we make it back to shore safely and begin our hike back to the car. We see a group of about 6 donkeys lurking in the trees and a lot of mongooses.

5) Friday, April 28 Cinnamon Bay. The bay was probably the calmest I had seen it in the seven years I’ve been coming to St. John. We had a wonderful time at Cinnamon and our daughter enjoyed being able to play in the surf and being able to walk out “far” into the water. We were glad to see that the T’ree Lizard restaurant was still doing a booming business; it’s one of our traditions to eat there every year.

6) Saturday, April 29 was our last day on St John this year, but the sadness of leaving was tempered by the fact we’re coming back for two weeks next year. Unfortunately, our flight back home wasn’t until Sunday, so we left the island and stayed at the Marriott on St. Thomas. Ok hotel, but after a week in our 3 bedroom pool villa, even the beachfront room at Morningstar seemed lacking. Our daughter walked into the room and said “Where’s the living room, where’s the kitchen?” Obviously, the child spends too much time in timeshare. I would say, however, that the Marriott is not a “family” oriented hotel. Too many big, fat loud guys drinking in the pool to make me comfortable taking my four year old there. Also, the beach and water did not appear “clean” in comparison to the St. John beaches.

We don’t eat out much because we have the grill at the villa, but we did have a good meal at Lime Inn which is very family friendly. Starfish Market proved to have the best selection of grocery items and fairly good prices; in fact, their ground sirloin was cheaper by about a dollar a pound than I’m paying here in Ohio.

Overall, as I wrote above, another wonderful trip to St John.

Lori