USVI-On-Line

Oh, it already seems so long ago, but I had a great trip to St. John recently with my 13 year old son. I had planned to take my 15 year old as well, but unfortunately his grades were not up to par so he got to stay home with my husband. As a parent, you hope some of the tough love stuff will sink in at some point but we’ll see!

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Since we own a condo at Grande Bay, we stayed there for our week in our one bedroom suite. I am often asked by prospective guests if they should rent a vehicle for their stay since Grande Bay is located within Cruz Bay. In my previous 18 or so trips, I have always had a car/jeep on island so we could go where we wanted whenever we liked. This trip we decided to forego the car for the first time (well almost the entire time!) and we had a wonderful trip. We did have another means of transportation as we brought along two inflatable kayaks as our checked luggage and they worked great.

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We had a very active vacation – on our first day, we took the kayaks from out in front of Grande Bay and made it all the way to Trunk Bay. We stopped along the way at a small rocky beach just around the bend from Cruz Bay, we stopped at Solomon Beach and then made it the rest of the way to Trunk Bay. We arrived hungry and thirsty and rather impressed with ourselves!


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I had to bury him in the sand!


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We were incredibly fortunate with perfect weather and a very flat ocean. We saw several sea turtles coming up for air near the Caneel beaches and it was just an incredibly peaceful journey.

Once we arrived at Trunk, we enjoyed lunch and some beach time and when we were ready to leave, we just deflated and folded up the kayaks into their backpacks and caught a taxi back to Cruz Bay.

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love having a portable boat- we brought our Klepper (a folding kayak) when we honeymooned there years ago kayaked all over the place! it's amazing what you can see in a kayak.......
bet you had a lot more fun with those boats the rest of the week!

Neat idea on the kayaks...I wonder if I could rent a dinghy for a week instead of a car. When you think about it, as long as your villa isn't too far from the water, just about everything you'd want to do on STJ can be accessed easily via a beachfront.

Anybody ever done this? Can you even rent dinghy's overnight?

I also applaud your efforts with your 15-year old. I hope his grades improve and he views a missed trip to STJ as a worthy incentive to improve them....and I also hope he makes the larger connection that doing well in high school begets getting into college which goes a long way in helping with getting the kind of job out of school that will pay you enough to go on vacations to places like STJ.

What a great first day! Can't wait to read more.

Really enjoyed your report. The inflatable kayaks are great idea. Mind sharing where you got them? How long have you had them?

Loved the kayak idea! You deserved the ride back to town after paddling over to Trunk!
Also want to applaud your parenting. Parenting can be tough, that's for sure!

That is so sweet to have a mother - son trip! Special memories! And GENIUS idea about the kayaks! I'm with everyone else - where can we buy them?!?