Hargrove Annual Report 2004: St_Croix
Before you move to a new city and new jobs, you have to take a vacation. You never know when you will have your next chance to get away. Thus, Charles and Amy decided to take a diving tripin December to St. Croix in the US Virgin Islands and invited us along. (They remembered our penchant for inviting ourselves, and decided to preempt us this time.)
Charles had read about a great dive on the Fredriksted Pier, with tons of little creatures such as sea horses. Alas, the pier was off-limits due to Homeland Security restrictions. That's right! They were afraid someone would attach a bomb to the pier and sink a cruise ship, or something like that. We had to make do with other dives. Fortunately, there are many good sites around the island.
We arrived fairly late on Saturday and did little but walk around the town of Christiansted and ate at a quaint place featuring local dishes. We had read about a nature preserve on the west end of the island that was open only on the weekend, so on Sunday we rented a vehicle, a less-than-pristine Jeep Wrangler, and set off to explore. We discovered that almost everything is closed on Sunday, and that the nature preserve caters to turtles, who weren't in evidence in December. We later took a guided tour of the west end to see an old sugar plantation as well as local attractions such as a beer drinking pig.
Diving was the attraction, though, and we managed several trips. Jim and Linda hadn't dived since 1992, and needed a refresher. Jim found it like riding a bicycle, something you don't forget how to do. Linda found that her ears weren't as easy to clear as they once had been and contented herself with snorkeling. Charles had a new digital camera and an underwater housing. He was able to take some truly marvelous pictures, which we've included in this years photos, including two in the Best of 2004.
Our itinerary forced a change of planes in Miami, an airport that is not on Jim's list of favorites. We are happy to report that the airport is much better than it used to be, and when the construction is finished may be tolerable. The walls in one of the waiting areas are decorated with fish sculptures that entranced Linda.
Here are photos from the trip. Charles's camera can also manage decent videos. (Because Jim hasn't figured out how to change video formats you'll need Quicktime to play these movies. Your browser should offer to fetch the required file for you if necessary.)
And for the birders in the audience, here is the trip list, such as it is, for St. Croix.
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