Last Day on St. John

Today we went to Ram Head on the southeast coast. The trail was about one mile long beginning at Salt Pond Bay Beach. The sign said to expect it to take about one hour each way, which made it sound like a challenging trail.

It started at a beach of stones. The water was amazingly clear—I could see every detail on the rocks underwater.

As we climbed, the scenery got more and more beautiful until it became absolutely spectacular!

There were parts of the trail where you could look over the precipice. Tom went closer to the edge than I was comfortable with so he could take some pictures. My thought was, “Don’t go near the edge! I would not be able to save you if you are hanging from the edge!” When I verbalized this, Tom just looked at me with an “Of course!” expression. It took less than an hour to get up to the top—an invigorating climb, but not so very strenuous.

And the scenic view from the top was GORGEOUS. These photos do not do it justice.

Whenever I would lead on the trail, I would sometimes turn to look back, only to find that Tom had disappeared. I’d find him stooping down to take a photo of a pretty flower or an interesting small animal. When Tom took the lead on trail, I talked the whole time so that Tom would know I was right behind him.

While we were hiking back down from Ram Head, I was thinking that I’d love to just sit on the white sands of Salt Pond Bay beach and soak my feet in the water. But once we got back down to the beach, the white sand area was too hot. We settled under the shade of the Mangrove trees and sat on the rocks with our feet immersed in the water. Ah! so wonderfully refreshing.

We decided to check out Drunk Bay, since it was close by. In my mind, since we had already seen so many bays with their beaches, I wondered if this one could be any different. We went on the trail that leads to this bay. We came to a large brownish pond with white foam along its edges. Tom thought maybe this was Drunk Bay, with white foam representing beer froth. But then Tom checked the map and realized this was Salt Pond and Drunk Bay is beyond it.

When we came to the bay, we knew this was it! It was a very dramatic change. The water color was deep, deep blue, so deep and dark blue it was almost scary. I was used to colors so warm and inviting, aqua blue-green! There were large boulders, and as the full strength of the waves hit these boulders, it created a giant spray of angry white foam.

The beach was filled with larger whitish rocks and coral of all shapes and sizes. The huge boulders were deep grey. Visitors have created art formations of white rocks and coral on dark boulders.

We decided to go to Miss Lucy’s Restaurant again for lunch--great food and beautiful setting at this place! We were there for two hours over our leisurely lunch. Our live entertainment today did not include the diving pelicans we saw on Thursday, but the chicken cleanup crew was out in force, grabbing any leftovers from the tables as people left.

Today, the chickens were joined by a goat which came up to tables to grab food whether anyone was at the table or not. This goat came to our table as we were eating and pushed us, trying to reach our food. When we pushed her head away, she pressed against our hands, trying to get to our plates. She only managed to grab a napkin and a packet of sugar—and ate them both! She walked away when someone from another table threw her a french fry. She is on mission to get herself fed, since she’s a nursing mama.

Tomorrow we head back home!