10%

Virgin Islands National Park

By Scott Richardson

April 21^st, 2024

We're not (typically) beach people. The idea of staring out at the ocean and the risk of sunburn usually deter us. But January seemed like the perfect time to try a beach vacation. So, my wife and I packed our bags and flew to the US Virgin Islands, a place we'd never been before, to explore my 56th national park: Virgin Islands National Park on St. John.

Well before dawn, we left Philadelphia and flew to St. Thomas, connecting through Miami. We arrived in St. Thomas by mid-afternoon but immediately realized our northeastern sense of urgency didn't match the Carribean sense of island time. We'd booked the last rental car on the island, and it was sitting at a rental agency that closed at 5 PM on the neighboring island of St. John. And while a 45-minute taxi and 30-minute ferry ride should've put us in their office with plenty of time to spare, we could only leave once our camping gear arrived at the baggage claim and the ground crew wasn't showing any urgency.

Convinced that the airport purposefully delayed baggage to lure waiting tourists into the airport bar for a painkiller, we finally grabbed our bag and found a taxi. And while it's less than 10 miles from Charlotte Amalie to the ferry terminal in Red Hook, the twisting roads and heavy traffic slow the ride.

Luckily, our rental car was waiting for us at the dock in Cruz Bay. After a brief stop at the rental agency's office, we could finally relax as we drove leisurely to our campground in Cinnamon Bay. Even on a holiday weekend, our campsite, tucked into a verdant forest lining the white sand beach, felt secluded. It was a short walk to the campground's restaurant and bar, where we relaxed with an overpriced prime rib dinner, painkiller cocktails, and a key lime pie dessert.

It's said that the Virgin Islands earned their name from Christopher Columbus, who named them after the legend of St. Ursula and her eleven thousand virgins. It is also said that Sir Francis Drake named the islands after Queen Elizabeth the Virgin Queen in 1595. They were known as the Danish West Indies for much of their modern history until the United States bought the islands from Denmark in 1917, when they were temporarily given the name American West Indies. Congress eventually accepted the name United States Virgin Islands.

We departed for our first hike on the island right from our campsite and headed uphill to the Cinnamon Bay Trail. Historically, the trail was a horse and donkey trail that served plantation workers traversing the island.

The trail passed through a mile of shady forest filled with palms, mushrooms, and spider lilies before opening to a view overlooking the northwestern beaches.

On our way back to Cinnamon Bay, we took a spur trail to the ruins of the America Hill Estate House.

Overlooking Maho Bay, it served as a guesthouse throughout the early 1900s and the headquarters for local rumrunners during the prohibition years.

We explored the ruins of a sugar factory at the base of the Cinnamon Bay Trail. Sugarcane was crushed and boiled. Later, bay rum became the dominant industry. In the early twentieth century, the Danish West India Plantation Company used Cinnamon Bay to produce bay leaf oil for cologne and lotion products.

We left Cinnamon Bay and headed toward the eastern end of St. John. The narrow, twisting roads had no shoulders, and our Toyota Highlander felt too large for the road. While the twisting roads keep speeds down, so do the dogs, chickens, and goats that run across the road without notice.

We skipped the crowds at Maho Bay and headed toward the remote south-eastern point of St. John at Ram's Head. We stopped for lunch at Skinny Legs in Coral Bay, an exciting mix of a laid-back restaurant and gift shop that just happened to stop accepting credit cards when we arrived. We found our college's banner hanging among the hundreds along its ceiling. We enjoyed burgers and another slice of key lime pie before heading off.

We accidentally drove to where the road ended, and a 4x4 trail began to travel to Lameshur Bay but turned back to find the trailhead to the Blue Cobblestone Beach.

We walked along a skinny white sand beach, then smelled the Salt Pond, the only place on St. John that sits below sea level, which allows water to travel into the pond but little to flow out. Constant sunlight quickly evaporates the water, creating an extremely salty pond. It's filled with red algae, which makes its distinctive scent.

Further down the trail, we found the empty Blue Cobblestone beach, a beautiful rocky stone beach, before switchbacking towards the unrelentingly sunny Ram's Head 200 feet above. Cacti lined the trail as we traveled up the hillside, ending at a series of rocky bluffs overlooking the southern edge of St. John.

We returned to camp while looking for an authentic Caribbean restaurant for dinner. From camp, we took a hard left turn up a twisting road to the island's center. The turn was too tight for our Highlander, so we backed up into traffic and made the turn on the second attempt. The tight twists and turns felt like we were driving up a mountain. But it seemed to be a crazy road across a neighborhood, complete with blind hairpin turns lined with concrete walls that made the turns much more precarious.

We walked into a fenced yard and were greeted by a server who pointed out the restaurant's offerings: steamed chicken, mutton, oxtail, pork, and conch. There were also tons of sides, such as rice, fried plantains, and mac and cheese. Locals seemed to enjoy the music playing loud enough to shake our picnic table as we sat on a hilltop, enjoying the warm evening air.

We headed to the Reef Bay Trail early the following day, hoping to find parking in a small pullout along the road. The lot was empty when we arrived but was complete by the time we left.

We hiked downhill through several miles of shaded forest before the remains of an old sugar factory at Jossie Gut. After another mile, we reached the intersection of a spur trail to a series of petroglyphs. The Taino people who inhabited the island in pre-Columbian times likely carved the petroglyphs.

The Reef Bay Trail ends at the well-preserved ruins of the Reef Bay Plantation, a sugar mill that operated until 1916.

Denmark abolished slavery in the Danish West Indies in 1848, and the sugar industry on St. John collapsed. The owners of the Reef Bay Plantation converted their operation to steam power to keep it economically viable. However, they depleted their soils and produced less yield as the years passed. Several people were crushed by the steam-powered rollers that processed sugarcane. In 1916, a hurricane damaged the plantation enough to shutter it permanently. A small fruit-growing business survived for several years. The Rockefeller family ultimately acquired the land in the 1950s and donated it to the National Park Service for preservation.

Just beyond the Reef Bay Plantation ruins is the beautiful white sand (and empty) Reef Bay beach. We started our hike early in the morning and had the beach to ourselves for at least 30 minutes. The clear water made looking for fish easy, while the gentle waves pushed us along the cactus-lined shore.

As we changed back into our hiking clothes, we managed to stick ourselves on a small cactus. We spent some time carefully removing the needles and cleaning up the cuts.

We meandered slowly back up the trail and were greeted by two tortoises towards the end. We also found dozens of hermit crabs disguised under shells and rocks along the trail.

We headed back to Cinnamon Bay and rented snorkeling equipment. That afternoon, the eastern end of Cinnamon Bay and nearby Maho Bay were deemed the best snorkeling locations.

We entered the water at the end of Cinnamon Bay beach and snorkeled around the bend toward Maho Bay. The gentle waves allowed the water to stay clear, and we found dozens of fish, including giant schools of bright blue fish.

We spent the evening exploring the nightlife in Cruz Bay with dinner at a Mexican restaurant and cocktails at a rum bar. The following day, we cleaned up our camp in the rain and returned to Cruz Bay to explore the park's visitor's center and some local art galleries. Finally, we boarded the ferry back to St. Thomas and flew home.