Today was a super busy day, but so awesome! We started by hitting Christianstead National Historical Site right when it opened. We had intended to get the stamps (so we didn't have to carry our book all day) and come back later to actually tour the fort, but the fort was so small that we were able to get this done right away. The fort was built by the Danish to protect their interests in the Carribbean, including slavery. The dungeon had some very tight quarters!
After the fort, we boarded the Adventure through Big Beard's to head over to Buck Island Reef National Monument. Big Beard's has a half or full day snorkeling tour, and we chose the half day. I had my fill of snorkeling on St. John, and found out there that it really is just not my cup of tea, so I didn't snorkel here. On the half day trip, Big Beard's makes two snorkel stops. The first stop is at Turtle Beach on Buck Island and Captain John mentioned that this beach is always on "America's Most Beautiful Beaches" lists. It was a very pretty beach, and was a lot like Trunk and Maho Bay on St. John. At Turtle Beach, the crew gives a snorkel class on the beach and then you get about an hour there to get used to snorkeling. During the class, I noticed a big moving dark spot in the water and thought it might be a turtle, but as it got closer, it was much bigger than a turtle. Keep in mind this thing swam by just as the snorkelers were about to get in the water. I asked Captain John what it was and he let me know that it was an 8-foot tiger shark. Steve saw it from where he was also, but didn't have a good view of it. He asked what it was and was so glad to hear he was about to swim with a shark.
After about an hour of snorkeling there, you move over to the East side of the park to snorkel in much rougher water to swim around coral reef. Steve really liked what he saw but he said this was really hard to snorkel in because of the waves. He was about ready to come back to the boat when he saw a barracuda. Steve got a picture of him and thought it was time to head back to the boat. Every time he took a break getting to the boat, he'd turn around and there was that dang barracuda, chasing him! It really did follow him until he got totally out of the water. A lot of people saw the barracuda, so it must have been having a great time scaring all the humans.
A couple things made this a really fun trip for me, because you're probably wondering how I had fun if I didn't snorkel. First, no one saw turtles while snorkeling, and they are rarely seen while snorkeling here. Instead, you see them on the boat ride while getting to/from the Monument. We saw about a dozen of them and this honestly makes the trip worth it for me! It is mating season, so they spend more time at the surface now, which is why we saw so many of them. The bad news is, it's really hard to get a picture of them because you see them in a wave and then they disappear. We did however get a picture of two of them mating, so my apologies for the turtle porn when I do eventually add pictures. ;-). The other thing that made this fun was that a couple people on the boat were really interested in our hobby. Steve and I love the National Parks and we love what we see and experience in a National Park. It's even more fun to talk about with people and hopefully encourage them to go "find their park" as well. I think the couple from Michigan that just got married may have caught the bug because of us and that makes me happy.
We had lunch right on the water after the boat tour where Steve tried conch fritters for the first time. He said they just tasted like "deep fried." We wrapped up our time in downtown Christianstead by picking up some souvenirs and trying on some beautiful tanzanite rings. Stupid house budget for next year got in the way of actually purchasing said beautiful tanzanite rings. :-(
We drove to Point Udall after lunch, which is the eastern-most point of the United States. When we got there, there was not a soul to be found. So we took a few selfies and admired the view for all of 5 minutes when a car with two sketchy people drove by (it's a dead end road), so we quickly got in the car and left.
We did an early dinner at Rowdy Joe's again and I enjoyed another giant mojito. They put basil in their mojitos which is a really nice touch!
The other park on St. Croix is Salt River Bay National Historical Park & Ecological Preseve. Before we left on this trip, we tried to book a kayaking tour of the bioluminescent bay, but they warned us that it would be a very bright moon that night making it a less than thrilling experience. That and the fact that I really had no desire to kayak made us turn it down. But, today we mulled it over some more and thought if we didn't at least try it, we might regret it. So we called up Bush Tribe Kayak Tours and they still agreed to take us out. It was just the two of us on the tour with Chris, our tour guide. Boy am I glad we did this! They warned us again that the bright moon would mean not much bioluminescence, but it was still really cool! We started the tour at 6:30 and we went to the rookery first, where we saw some egrets, pelicans, and ibis. Then we headed over to another bay right next to the bioluminescent one to find some small sharks, but they didn't cooperate. Then we ended the tour in the bioluminescent bay where we saw the plankton that light up. This was so fun - once you move your hand in the water, it glitters! We tried getting pictures, but I'm sure they won't show up. We tried to find a jellyfish that lights up, and we didn't find one, but another kayak tour did and they had it in a cup for their tour (they let it go at the end); they were nice enough to share their jellyfish with us, where we were able to touch it to make it light up. You can definitely tell Chris loves his job and he was an awesome tour guide! He was also interested in our little hobby so we ended up just swapping a lot of stories as well. I highly recommend doing this, especially through Bush Tribe, and even better if you can get Chris to be your tour guide!
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