The Dovecote

Hello, Eden here again. A few weeks ago our family went on a trip to St. John, almost exactly 10 years after the last time we all went together. It was lovely, of course, but there definitely were some ups and downs.

First of all, our original flight got delayed. Then canceled. We headed back home after sitting in the airport for 3 hours, spent another stressful hour trying to get a different flight, and miraculously scored one that would get us to St. John at the same time that we had originally planned (I don't know why I'm saying "we"-- Mom and Pops did all the work).

We had to wake up at 4:00 AM the next morning to catch our new flight, which is always kind of horrible until you actually get on the plane and get to see the sun rise from thousands of feet in the air.

I should probably mention at this point that Z had gotten his wisdom teeth removed only three days before. Everyone was mostly hoping that his stitches (because he had to get stitches!!) wouldn't come loose while we were flying because of the change in pressure. Thankfully, Z, and his gums, survived.

We arrived at St. Thomas midafternoon, caught the ferry just in time, did some grocery shopping in Cruz Bay, and finally headed towards our rental place. Ma refuses to drive in St. John, so Dad did all the tricky maneuvering through the twisty-turny roads.

The view from the back porch of our rental house

We relaxed at Salt Pond bay for a few hours that evening, since it was only about 2 minutes away by car, and then got some much-needed sleep.

On day 2 we decided to hike down to an old favorite: Brown Bay. Even I remembered this place. It was iconic, and Ma declared it "The Most Beautiful Beach I Have Ever Seen".

Now, it is the most tragical.

We arrived at Brown Bay only to find a bay that was no longer brown, but red and black with sargassum. The whole beach was like one giant scab. It was ruined.

Our appropriately devastated faces. You can see the sargassumed Brown Bay in the background.

We at lunch along the rocky shore, explored some sugar mill ruins

and then got smoothies to console ourselves.

Ordering the drinks. Dad thought that the menu said "Millishakes" and thus ordered his drink. Turns out it actually said "Milkshakes," as one would expect. We teased him endlessly for it.

Pre-smoothies

Post-smoothies

To continue the tradition started 10 years ago, we have yummy drink time every day at roughly 4:00 PM. So we got two yummy drinks that day.

The next day we got up early to go to Oppenheimer Beach, which Ma says is her favorite, after the now deceased Brown Bay (RIP old friend🫡). I'll just put in some pictures and you'll probably get the idea:

Stingray!

I think I figured out how to upload videos to the blog, so here's one of a fish who kept following me around. We named him Fred.

We headed back into Cruz Bay, ate lunch at Banana Deck, did some more grocery shopping (because we had eaten over half of the food we had thought would last us the whole week), etc... and visited Kiddel Bay that evening.

The next day Dad had to stay home and do some work. He saw some hermit crabs having a secret meeting. We spent the rest of the day speculating about what they were up to.

Ma, Z and I spent most of the day hanging out at Salt Pond.

At this point, Z hadn't been able to eat anything but soft foods -- his wisdom teeth, or lack thereof, were still ailing him. And then, around our fifth day in St. John, he developed a pain in his throat. So, after exploring the Catherineburg Ruins (an iconic site which we had spent hours at on our last trip) we headed into Cruz Bay and spent a good few hours trying to find a clinic, trying to get the doctor to see Z, trying to figure out what was wrong, trying to get him medicine... Overall, a necessary but not very fun excursion.

Anyway, here are some photos of the ruins:

This photo may look familiar to you...

...If you remember this one from when Ma posted about our last St. John trip

Oh, and here's Dad with his fancy drink at the restaurant we ate at. There aren't many pictures of him because he took most of them.

We ended the evening at Salt Pond, which was almost empty. That mostly redeemed the day.

The next day we slept in, then went to Cinnamon Bay, which was lovely.

We're going to attempt another video. For context, Z had just recited all of Hebrews 11 (and some of 12) to us -- He has apparently been working on memorizing it the whole last semester. This got Ma remembering how Granddad once asked her and all of her cousins to recite a bible verse from memory, and very few of them actually could. And then Dad took this video:

After we were done with Cinnamon, we drove into Cruz Bay yet again for an occasion we had all been eagerly anticipating: Lobster. Z and I had never had lobster before, so Ma made a reservation at a place called Morgan's Mango, which had great reviews.

And then Morgan's Mango ran out of Lobster.

So we canceled the reservation and went to Banana Deck. Thankfully, Z's mouth had healed enough by now to devour the lobster platter. Apparently, the chefs at Banana Deck were worried that the lobster would get lonely all by himself, because he was accompanied by shrimp, crab, broccoli and rice. Oh, and we got Conch Fritters as an appetizer.

I have never eaten so much butter in one sitting in my life.

The feast (Or part of it)

And a nice picture

Z and Dad were sitting right in the sun.

And Z found some sunglasses

But when we got back...

No fan.

No air conditioning

No water

No fridge.

The power was out across the whole island. Not just St. John, either -- St Thomas and St Croix were also in blackout.

So what did we do? We ate the popsicles before they melted and played Cards Against Humanity.

The power stayed out until about midnight. At that point we were sleeping out on the screened-in porch. We hauled our mattresses back inside and went to sleep.

Half an hour later, the fans and air conditioning died again.

The next time the power came on it stayed on, thank goodness, and all of our facilities were working in the morning. We got up early and headed on a 4-mile hike to the Petraglyphs, a hike which I personally dubbed the Butter Burner (I was still feeling the effects of the lobster dinner).

The Petraglyphs

A specific caricature that Ma and Dad named Ricky

Two hermit crabs bunking down together

And then, being hot and covered and sweat, we had to beach.

When we got back the power was out again. Ma went down to Salt Pond to cool off while the rest of us endured the heat.

We went out to a delicious BBQ place called Johnny Lime for supper. I tore apart that Jerk Chicken with my bare hands.

The next day was packing & leaving day, sadly. We had breakfast and got on the ferry to go home.

And... that was it.

Overall, great trip. Not sure it lived up to the original, but maybe my memory is clouded by nostalgia.

If you want to check out the blogposts from that trip, here's the link:

https://dovecote1.blogspot.com/2016/08/st-john-sea-urchins-and-pee.html

Hello, this is Eden again. Needless to say, much has happened since the last post, which I believe was in September. Z started at Westmont and I think we can officially say that he is now a California guy. He's coming home for the summer in a few days, when we will have to re-South-Dakota-fy him.

We visited him in Santa Barbara at the end of March.

Let's just say that, in a competition between Santa Barbara and Sioux Falls, there would be an obvious winner.

We also got to see Z in a spectacular performance called Spring Sing. He sang in a skit put on by his dorm in which he played a super senior. Unfortunately, I'm still figuring out this whole blogging thing and can't find a picture of Z in his wig.

Anyway, other than that, not much has happened besides Easter and spring. Summer is also in on its way, though its progress is unsteady.

Ma and I went on our yearly girls' trip to Omaha this past Tuesday, too, which was great fun.

We ate Wheat Fields and were harassed by panhandling geese. Definitely worth skipping school for.

Well, Ma and Z are nearly done with school, and though I still have a ways to go, I'm already feeling the alluring pull of summer vacation. Hence my doing this instead of my homework. The second I'm done, though, we head for St. John! Hopefully either I or Ma will remember to blog about that. But no guarantees.

Speaking of which, we forgot to blog about our UK trip, so I'll just stick some photos of that in here real quick.