Trippin' in St Croix

Greetings from Inverness, Florida.

We went to St Croix!  It was my first time staying on an island in the Caribbean.   

I will tell you all about it in a bit, but first...

If you have been reading this blog a few years, you may remember that just before I published my first book I had to choose a cover.  I had two designs created and then I could not decide between the two designs.

The sunset picture...

(The sunset picture was taken by my friend Dennis N.)

And the cover design that I call the "Joy of Travel" picture (The photo is a purchased stock photo. That isn't George and I in a convertible.)

I remind you now because Dennis N., who took the sunset picture and let me use it for the cover, sent me a picture he took years ago at a party at my house.  I had him, his wife Frankie, and our friends Debra, Glen,  and Joan, and a Warm Shower's guest over for dinner.  We moved the furniture and put on some line dance music.  And had some laughs.  It is funny, but I don't remember if this was before or after George passed.  Was he smiling in the corner?

It was fun times, a great memory.

I hope you are making good memories this week.

Sciatica Update

I started Physical Therapy after getting xrays of my spine and hips.  I am at the end of my third week of PT.  I am still feeling pain and numbness everyday. It comes and goes. It is in my left leg mostly,  sometimes my right leg, sometimes both feet are numb.  

I am doing the exercises they gave me. I think today they finally gave me exercises that challenge me.  Before this, it was simple and easy stretches and movements that I do every day anyway, like stretching my legs.

Tuesday this week I had been looking forward to a group ride to Crystal River to see the manatee and dine on the bay.  But my leg was hurting, so I backed off and did a shorter ride.  Fortunately, some of my biking buddies stayed with me.

Steve went and a lot of other riders too.  I am glad he went.  I rode most the way with my friend, Jean.  She makes me laugh. And Ariene and John who are fun and inspiring also joined us. 

The Crystal River riders had a good time too.

This sciatic setback is making me feel old.  Boohoo.  I keep reminding myself of those who have real health issues.  Who are living with incurable pain.  I am at that age when it seems many of my friends are having health issues.  We are at that stage when hips, hearts, backs, and guts start to have problems.

My heart goes out to them and to my friend Connie who lost her husband recently.  Jerry was a lovely gentle soul, who laughed easily and loved people.  He is still with us in our hearts.  I took this picture probably in 2014 or 15 at a Christmas Eve party George and I hosted.

Goodness, let's change the subject, this is getting too... I don't know.

St. Croix 

Since I last wrote to you, Steve and I and four of his neighbors flew to St. Croix, Virgin Islands.

Jim, Steve and I at the airport on our way to St. Croix.

Debbie, Mark and Christie waiting for our flight to St. Croix.

 On February 27, 2024, we flew from Tampa to Miami and then to St Croix.  The second part of the trip offered movies.   Steve had never seen the movie UP.  It is a cute Pixar animated movie about an old man who gets his house to fly with helium balloons.   It was fun to see Steve in the seat next to me watching the movie with his earbuds.  He was shaking with laughter, tears running down his cheeks. 

St Croix is a US territory, so we didn't need to use our passports.  I did anyway, I don't get much chance to use it.

We shared a three bedroom, three bath condo.  We lucked out in that our building was the only one in the complex looking directly out over the Caribbean Sea. 

Besides being my first time staying on a Caribbean Island,  I had several other firsts.  

My first sailboat ride.  Christie reserved for us a sailboat ride for a few miles out to Buck Island National Park.  Off it's coast are coral reefs we could snorkel over.  The boat was like a catamaran that held two rows of six passengers on either side (24 passengers plus Captain Carl and his first mate).  (Do I sound like I know about boating?  Fooled you!)

I had been wondering if a sailboat was silent or did the flapping of the sails make the ride noisy. Captain Carl used the engine to get the boat out of the harbor, then up went the sails.  When he turned the engine off, it was quiet yet we were gliding quite fast over the water.  Ahhhh, lovely.  In places the water was aqua and teal and sometimes deep blue.  It was a perfect day for sailing.  I loved it!  

Steve and I and the whole gang were smiling.

The lovely clear water over the sands near Buck Island.

Christie moved to a comfy spot at the front of the boat.

Debbie and Jim.

Steve and I chose to snorkle with the guide, which was a mistake because she went fast, there were so many others following her we had to keep an eye out for flippers and fists.   I like to snorkel like I kayak.  If I see something of interest I want to just float and watch.   Even with the frantic snorkel, the boat ride and island walk were awesome. 

After snorkeling, we moved to the beach on Buck Island. 
We had to jump into chest-high water and walk to shore.

We ate our picnic lunch on the beach and then hiked over the island on our own.  

Little orchids on Buck Island

Looking down at the reefs surrounding Buck Island.

Mark, Christie and I on Buck Island.

No weaving off the trail on Buck Island.

The termite nests in the area are larger than basket balls.

On St Croix I had another first, I had my first time seeing Moco Jumbie. These performers on tall stilts is a traditional thing that was carried over from Africa by the slaves who were brought to St. Croix to make sugar.  The Moco Jumbie were traditionally something to ward off evil spirits, I think.  The master of ceremonies explained the tradition and how they are used now to share the culture of the island and are present at parades and festivals.  What was neat about the show was it was an easy walk from our condo to the motel/bar where the show was free with our drinks.  At that same show we also saw fire dancers.  One of the fire dancers was the girlfriend of one of the guides we had on a nature walk earlier in the day.  We had fun trying to pick her out and then going and meeting her after the show.

Here are some pictures from the show and the hike.

This trip I had my second time snorkling over corral in the ocean.  I was super excited to have this opportunity and fun folks with whom to share this experience.  We saw lots of Hawksbill and Green Turtles, some of them swimming near the surface right in front of us.   We were saddened by the amount of dead corral, which seemed like 75% of the coral.

One time Steve and I saw a line of five or six cuddle fish swimming.  

I arranged for us to go on a nature hike with a guide to some tidal pools. 

We got two guides. There were only eight tourists. Nice!
Hugh and Tae were friendly, knowledgeable and fun.

We had to scale these cliffs to get to the tidal pools.

We had discovered that our car was infested with roaches.  Tae tore off a branch of a neem tree to lay on the floor of the car.  Roaches don't like it.  It is the natural native roach repellant. 

We really were lucky.  We had good weather and a great place to stay.  This is the building we stayed in.

Our friends Christie and Mark, Debbie and Jim also live in Steve's neighborhood.  We enjoy many of the same activities and can talk openly about our political views.  They were easy to be with.  We had lots of laughs.

We enjoyed eating out at the local establishments, and for several meals everyone seemed to pitch in to create meals at our condo.

Most mornings I would step out on the patio and watch the sun rise and do my daily Spanish practice.

The island has been in the hands of several nations.  The cars have the US design with the steering wheel on the left.  However the laws in St. Croix  have folks drive on the left.  One tourist shared their motto, "Ass to the grass".  Mark and Steve were the only assigned drivers, they did an awesome job getting us around with several backseat drivers.

The first night we drove to Christiansted, which was just three miles from our condo.  We had a lovely dinner with a cute friendly waitress at Cafe Fresco.  We sat out on the courtyard, the walls around us a lovely blue and a huge mango tree in the middle providing shade.  

Hens and roosters run wild on St. Croix.  We had several in the yards around our condo.  Once we stepped out of the car and there were four eggs in the grass right there.  We didn't know how long they had been there, so we didn't pick them up to try.

Along the drive to the condo were trees growing on trees, or maybe it was like a banyon tree, throwing down roots from the branches.

One morning, I was up early as always and was able to walk the narrow beach and watch the sun rise.

I created a Google album so we could share pictures, but they haven't uploaded any yet... if you are reading this, Christie and Debbie, here is your reminder!

Mark and Steve took pictures while snorkeling.  But they didn't have enough lights on their cameras for really clear pictures. 

One night after a full day, we had drinks and listened to music in our condo.  We were laughing a lot, us gals got up and danced once or twice.  I tried to take a picture of the guys together.  Steve kept talking, or maybe he was eating, but every picture I took he was making a funny face.  We gals laughed so hard!

Christie made most of our trip arrangements.  She has done a lot of traveling.  She booked the flights, the rental car (wisely getting a roomy SUV with good shocks) and our wonderful condo.  Thanks Christie!  

On our third day, I asked her, "Where to next?"  We talked about other islands.  Roatan?   It is off the coast of Honduras.  Maybe next year!

For Steve and I, I am investigating Costa Rica and Greece and Tuscany... 

We'll have to make a list and prioritize, since at this age, we never know when our travel days will be over.  Our friends Ann and Fred have been traveling throughout their 62 years of marriage.  They still are doing self-guided bike tours in Europe.  Fred turned 89 this year.  

We went to a friendly brewery.  Jim was excited about the Detroit Lions Football Team in the playoffs.  He was asking folks if they were going to watch the game.  It was interesting to watch him meet and chat with a couple different groups of people from Michigan.  He and Debbie stay in Michigan during the summers.  Christie and Mark are from the finger lakes region of NY and met folks that live near them there!  

I don't have pictures of it but we had an evening kayak trip to see the bioluminescence.  What fun!  We also got to see glow worms.  Our guide on the bioluminescence trip was also Tae, the guy that guided us on the nature hike to the tidal pools. Tae was fun and informative and very excited to be guiding us fun folks again.  If you got to St. Croix, look up Bush Tribe Adventures.  

Since Christie was a biology teacher and passionate about plants and animals she had a lot of knowledge to share with him and was super interested in all the plants he showed us on the hike.  

Back Home

While writing this I decided to rent a two wheel electric assist bicycle and see if it helps with the sciatic pain.  The Physical Therapist said I should avoid riding the trike for three weeks to see if maybe that is irritating the sciatic nerve.  It has been over a week.  There is a gathering of trike riders from all over happening here right now. Some I know from my travels.  Especially in Ohio.  So I will probably go on a couple rides with them on my trike.

I had a flat on my trike, twice! Steve told me he fixed it twice but the next morning it was flat again.  He also fixed the chain that was making noise.  The last bike shop I took it to, that added a new chain, threaded it wrong.  Thank you, Steve, for the fixes and attempted fixes,  I feel so blessed.

I took the wheel to the bike shop.  It came back with a schrader valve (fatter valve).  It had gone in with a presta valve.  Interesting.  They must have found burrs on the valve opening and widened it.

On February 13th, while we were gathered with the group waiting to ride, Steve quietly gave me a gift bag.  In it was a picture he took of a scrub Jay when we were birding the day before.  In the bag were also a few chocolates for Valentines Day.  I didn't even know the day was coming. 

Perfect!  I taped the picture up on the wall of my trailer (LILAC) next to the bag that he gave me full of dove chocolates last Valentine's Day.  😋 

I am still making reservations for our summer travel.  I even made some reservations while I was in St Croix!  I was super pleased and did a little dance after I was able to book an electric site in Banff, BC, Canada.  Cool beans.  I decided to bring with us an atlas.  I will mark on it the places we are going and write things we can do at each location on sticky notes put on those pages.  I am still hanging on to old paper technology.  

My Political Jibe

Well, I could tell you where we are in history, but if Congress doesn't vote on aide for Ukraine, people in the future will know this period as the time the Soviet Union returned to power and we abandoned our allies.  Today, Ukraine had to pull out of a place they had been hanging onto.

I am starting to write politicians again, being a thorn.  Though I probably won't make much headway unless many many many other people do the same thing.  Come on people!  Let's make some noise! This isn't right!

I am sharing Heather Cox Richardson's newsletter with some friends.  If you want me to share it with you too, let me know.  I just need your email and permission.

It is just something I can do to relieve some of the anxiety 🙃.   She is a historian and often adds historical perspective to the news.

Or you can buy the subscription to support her work.

Adios, Hasta Luego

It's time to close until next time.  I have been editing this blog at Steve's house where I have access to nice WIFI. He left the house about an hour ago to go pick up his daughter at the Tampa airport.  We are going to have fun with her this week.  Though the weather prediction is cooler weather, highs in the 60's and 70's.

Speaking of WIFI, I have been tempted to buy a house now because this year I have bad cell service at my campsite in Florida.  And then I went to the library and had horrible WIFI service there.  Silly me, thinking of buying a house to get WIFI.  Since I will be traveling for over six months this year and the next few years, it is best if I remain houseless for now.  

Maybe I can check with my neighbors and see if I can tap into their WIFI if I help pay for it.  Aha!  Good thinking, Susan!

I met with my banker and it seems like this lifestyle is doing well for my financial future.  Less spending on taxes, insurance, and house maintenance.  Steve is helping cover the costs of  our travel, reducing my expenses even more.  So it looks like I might still have a few bucks when I am 99 if things remain the same for a few years.  Then, after 99, I will have to leave the planet or ride away on my trike.

I hope this find you well.  I am sending hugs to all of you suffering.  And a high five to all of you doing well.