Oh the places a hurricane will make you want to visit immediately... (part 1)

My Grandma Scott is pushing 90 years old. This is the lady who introduced me to the delicacy known as cinnamon toast and had no qualms about hosing naked kids off in the yard before letting them in the house. She had air conditioning in an era of box fans, and we enjoyed that almost as much as we enjoyed having free reign to play with whatever we wanted in the basement. Once my grandpa hired me to paint the fence for $40 and my grandma sneak helped me get it done. She also taught me not to order dessert unless I'm ready and willing to pay for it.

For such a short woman, she has lived a big life. In 1951, she drove across country with my grandpa before they were married and stayed in hotels with him! Scandalous! She's awesome, one who I cherish and do not see enough of. After my cousins and sister got to have her for a month this fall, as she was evacuating from Hurricane Irma, I got jealous and decided to go visit her in Florida.

Then I said, hey, Florida is close to the Caribbean, whaddya say Mack? He said, let's go see your grandma!

We had a great visit with the general, who wore sparkly shirts and split a pitcher of beer with us. I will always be so grateful she got to meet Mack and he got to see the ornery side of her that I am so enamored with. And that Florida is so close to the Caribbean.

Our first side trip was to St. Thomas in the US Virgin Islands. The little island was decimated by Hurricanes Maria and Irma, but it has power and roads and rental cars and hotels, so we went for it. I drove out of the airport with my "elbow in the bush" and only forgot about the wrong side of the road rule once. Or twice. Definitely not more than twice.

We headed out to the east end of the island to check into our AirBnb, a place we named the Jerkin' Station because there were so many bottles of gross man lotion everywhere. We were there about 4 minutes before we drove back to Charlotte Amelie and checked into the Bunker Hill Hotel instead. The lodging glitch gave us a quick look at the island and my god is it beautiful. Even in the aftermath of two Category 5 hurricanes, the blue-green hue of the ocean and the bursts of islands on the horizon was unlike anything I've ever seen.

Of course we had to check out the marina, which was conveniently located next to a place selling $8 cups of coffee and $6 bottles of water. The marina was tucked into a huge bay called Vessup Bay, but even with the protection of the bay half of the docks were ripped apart or partly sunk from the hurricanes. We looked at the beautiful boats and walked the docks while drinking our coffee, and we spotted huge tarpons and even a nurse shark in the crystal clear water. 

We spent our first night at a little dive bar near the water enjoying a Virgin Islands beer... made in Portland, Maine. The walk to the bar was a little drizzly so I ran ahead of Mack and waited for him under awnings. One of the awnings I stopped at belonged to a bar playing the raunchiest music I've ever heard of in my life, but the guys out front were jovial and made room for me with "don't let the sugar melt." Apparently St. Thomas is like top 4 for murder in the world, but that seems hard to believe. Aside from the rental car lady who spoke literally zero words to us, everyone was pretty nice, there were chickens everywhere with baby chicks, and this is what one of their weeds look like. 

The streets of Charlotte Amelie were beautiful, especially at night when the shops closed up and you got to see the different doors all latched up. The roads heading away from the seaside were steep and narrow, and from our hotel patio, we watched cars defy gravity going up one that looked like it was at an 80-degree incline!

St. Thomas neighbors St. John, an island that is mostly a national park. We took the car ferry there for $30 round trip and I got the reversing experience of a lifetime. Huge trucks were taking the car ferry between the islands to transport recovery supplies and refuse back and forth, and we had to cram in there with them. We were so close to the wall at one point I had to climb out the window to get out. No way was I riding inside the car next to those death traps! We perched on a bench by the pilot house and got an amazing view of the Virgins.

St. John was amazing. After lunch overlooking the bay, we headed into the park and hopped from one beautiful bay to another. There was a polar vortex hitting the Northeast of the US, and the effect in the Virgin Islands was huge swell. Snorkeling was out since I'm not a fan of drowning, but we walked along the different beaches and looked at coral and shells and felt the soft white sand smooth under our feet. All throughout the exploration we were stalled by donkeys hanging out in the road, which was hilarious to me. A couple of times their dongs were hanging out and my god I feel so bad for lady donkeys now.

Trunk Bay. This sand was like a cloud.

You see that dong back there on the left, practically dragging the ground? HOW COULD YOU NOT?

We managed to fit in some learning on St. John, too, with a stop at the Annaberg Sugar Mill ruins. Danish plantations occupied the island in the 18th and 19th centuries and the Annaberg Sugar Mill shows just what they were up to. After harvesting the sugar cane, they used a giant windmill or horses, depending on the weather, to crush it up and get the sweet juice. Which we are not supposed to let melt on rainy nights when we're awning hopping.

Just an awesome tree at the mill.

All those little rocks and big rocks and bricks. Walls 3 feet thick. I am too weak for back then. 

The windmill has lost its blades but it's still pretty extraordinary. I love ruins.

See above about loving ruins.

Oh those? Those beautiful islands out there. Oh, that's just part of Britain.

Driving away from the sugar mill we went thru a patch of mangroves that was completely de-leafed by the hurricanes. There were still twisty branches everywhere, but not a fleck of green on them. Poor little virgins literally got deflowered, and while spring was starting to replenish the lushness of the island, this little patch was a bizarre glimpse at how a hurricane treats trees and bushes like a stem of kale.

St. John was small enough that we managed to make it to the east end of the island to check out Salt Pond. Mack's dad had lived there for a bit and told us it was worth checking out, and I'm glad we went. It's more village-esque, and we got to see some small spots in the throes of post-hurricane apocalypse mode. We also go to see natural sponges and an absolutely breathtaking look out over the BVIs.

We ended our day of exploration at a luxurious hotel called Estate Lindholm, which had lots of recovery workers staying there and a few buildings splayed open from the hurricanes. We drank a beer from the honor bar and sat by the pool watching the sunset over the bay. And then I decided I need to live in the Virgin Islands.

The next morning I drank coffee out on the patio looking out at the same magical bay and affirmed my decision to live in the Virgin Islands.

As I was pretending to be a millionaire estate owner in paradise reading my book, I kept hearing a scratchy noise behind me. Some people were working on landscaping but the sound seemed closer than that, almost like someone behind me. I kept looking back and seeing nothing. And then I finally spotted this little ninja. We named him George and I love him. Almost more than the donkeys.

Our hearts broke a little bit seeing sailboats washed up on the shore on both islands, but that didn't dissuade us from talking about moving Kenutu to this piece of perfection. Although if she ended up on the rocks, I don't know if I'd ever recover from that. These damn boats become almost like an old friend, and I can't imagine seeing any of my friends with a giant hole in their bodies dying a slow death with no chance of recovery. I hope these boat parents have found some peace.

Even in the face of disaster and in a state of mid-repair, the US Virgin Islands were one of the most extraordinary places I have ever been. I wanted to stay, charter boats, snorkel, swim, get sunburned, catch fish, and lose track of all the time. But we had a flight to Puerto Rico to catch!