– St. John to Denton, Texas –
We were up early once again on Sunday for our last run up St. John’s enormous hills. I won’t say I’m going to miss them, but it was an experience, I’ll say. They were the easiest they’d been, and yet still crazy in places. It was especially quiet on our last day, since it was Sunday. In case you’re wondering, this blog post was written a little later than the others, since we got in around 12:30am on Sunday night/Monday morning. It was a late night.
After our run, we had the last of our hotel breakfast things, then started to pack. If we’d worked a little harder, we might’ve even had time for the beach, though it likely would’ve made the morning a little too busy. We were ready to leave the hotel by 9:30 on at least one of the beach morning, so we would’ve had time if we’d done all of our packing the night before, but then we would’ve had to take home wet swimsuits. Totally not worth it.
Since we left our hotel at 10am, we had an hour to kill before our ferry left. We considered doing something in Cruz bay, but with it being Sunday morning, nothing really appealed, so instead we sat at the ferry terminal and watched an episode or two of Psych on the iPad while we waited to load up.
It took forever to get all of the vehicles on the ferry. We started out with only two big trucks on the ferry, and the entire thing was basically completely loaded when another two big trucks showed up, and we had to unload and reload the ferry. Mark and I were lucky, since we’d been the very first car on the ferry (and we were backed tightly into a little corner of the boat), and we didn’t have to move. We just watched while everyone else jockeyed into position again. Those truck drivers had to be incredibly careful to fit those monsters on the ferry without crushing any of the other cars.
I stayed in the car and watched while Mark went up to the deck to take some last photos of St. John. I wasn’t really into it anymore, so I just played on my phone. He took a nice photo of our hotel. That gray building with the solar panels on the left housed our room in particular. The bottom left balcony had been ours. They were actually going to start construction right after we left for some renovations. A lot of places in the Virgin Islands close on September 1st for hurricane season.
We made it back to St. Thomas about 11:45, which wasn’t too bad. The ferry dropped us in Red Hook, and we drove back into the town of St. Thomas to get our last meal at Veggie Plus for lunch. I was super excited to find the barbeque tofu I enjoyed so much the previous Sunday there at lunch, so we enjoyed our meal immensely. We had also by then learned how to order food there so we didn’t get too much, and we did well in that respect, too.
With very little left for us to do, we cruised along the familiar roads of St. Thomas and eventually found ourselves back at the Mountain Top, where we looked around for a final time, taking pictures of the view and really looking through the souvenirs. I was getting a little sick of the place, but it was about the best we could do for a place to hang out without buying anything.
It ended up being about 1:30 or so when we turned in the car to the airport, though it was a little earlier than we had intended to return. We bought our gas and had just run out of things to do, in the end. The rental car return was a nightmare. They didn’t have any spots left to return vehicles, really, so we just had to cram the car into a tiny corner and hope that was where they wanted it. We had to turn the keys in back at the bag claim area, which was also painful. It was pretty warm, and we had put away our hats already.
Check-in and security at the airport were easy enough, though we were selected for some extra screening since we forgot to take a packaged rum cake we’d picked up as a souvenir out of our luggage before screening. They are really careful about food entering and leaving the island. We saw tons of people being pulled aside for the same thing, which is why it took so long. Luckily we were early, so it didn’t matter.
We had to visit U.S. Customs and Border Patrol as well, though we had technically never left the country. Maybe it is related to the boat trips you can take to various other islands in the area? I’m not sure. Anyway, I thought I was glad to make it through security, but really I shouldn’t have been.
The airport in St. Thomas is air-conditioned, but not very well. We spent a warm two hours waiting patiently for our flight to finally board. I don’t think I’ve ever been so excited to get on an airplane. At least it was cooler there, even though we had to board out on the tarmac. Once again, I found myself missing the hat I’d packed away.
On our flight in, we’d come through Miami, but this time, our first flight stopped in Charlotte, North Carolina. It is absolutely freezing in that airport. It takes a little longer to get to Charlotte, of course, so that wasn’t cool, but we endured. When we arrived, we had just enough time for a quick dinner of a bagel sandwich and chips before we had to hurry over to our terminal. Our layover was only about an hour and a half, and we boarded our next flight not long after dinner.
We arrived back in DFW without any trouble, and waited for our bag. It was pretty late, and the airport was quiet, though not totally empty. It’s getting a little old, seeing DFW in the dark. We will be doing it again for both of our flights to and from South Korea in September. I think I’ll be getting tired of DFW altogether by then.
I was super excited to go and retrieve little Ripley from my parents’ house on Monday morning. She was pretty excited to see me, too. I went and got her after dropping Mark off at work. Despite the late night, he still had work bright and early. That’s the cost of coming in so late, but I think it was worth it. He didn’t get to see Ripley until we went to pick him up from work Monday evening. By then, I’d been with her for so long that she wasn’t excited anymore, and he got cheated out of his exuberant puppy greetings. He’s got a trip to DC coming up, so maybe she’ll hit him up then.
