Monday, February 15, 2010

Cruisin'

The beautiful Ruby Princess!
We just returned from a 10 day Caribbean cruise!

It was a last minute thing, we literally packed up in 2 hours and caught a plane headed south!

We dropped Hannah off in Lousiana to play with her cousins for the week. As you can see she didn't miss us too much.
Then we headed to Ft. Lauderdale to catch our ship. However, we missed the ship because we got stuck in a snow "storm" in Memphis, TN. Yes crazy huh! It snowed for about 5 mins then turned into rain but that shut the whole airport down. Ugh don't even get me started...But we were able to fly to St. Thomas (at our own expense) to meet the ship. We made lemonaide out of the lemons we were dealt.

In St. Thomas we stayed at a little B&B called the Galleon House it was a very clean and cute little place! We did a little sight seeing in St. Thomas but is was a pretty populated island so the next morning we hopped a ferry to St. John. We loved that island. Most of it is federal park land so only about 500 people live on the island. We rented a tent and camped at Cinnamon Bay! Check out their website and you can hear what it sounded like at night :) It was so much fun!
Also while in St. John we hiked the Reef Bay trail which was beautiful. Ruins...
Old Sugar Mill
The beach! We had the entire thing to ourselves all day!!!
The next morning we drove around the island in our rented jeep. It is such a beautiful island I can't wait to go back. The beaches are pristine and the water is perfect for swimming & snorkeling. I told Jeremy I wanted to move to that island!! Can't I trade one island for another?? Instead of bears and deer they have wild chickens, donkeys and goats all over the place :) After that we caught the ferry back to St. Thomas and boarded our ship!
The next port of call was St. Kitts where we did the St. Kitts Volcano Hike of a lifetime!
Yes I actually hiked to the top of that mountain, Mt Liamuiga ! It was about 6 miles round-trip with an over 3,700 ft elevation gain! Killer hike but definitely worth it. This was not your everyday cruiseship excursion this was intense, the kind of hiking Jeremy does when he is deer hunting!
This was the trail! You literally are crawling through roots and scrambling over rocks. Quite a hike!Neat trees! It is a cotton silk tree. Their trunks help catch the water! Pretty amazing! At the top looking down into the crater of the volcano! Pretty amazing view from up there! Our guide O'Neil! This guys is 58 years old, has 9 kids and does this killer hike 1-2 times a day!! I think he will live to be over a 100! He was amazing. He set this killer pace but did stop every so often to tell us all about the flora & fauna. He knows his stuff!

Well that is all for now! I will post some more from our trip as I get time!!