Can you find Kevin?
Cousins: Eyan and Hayden with Maya and Savannah
I was paid for this Daisy sour cream advert.
Maya looks like she wants to kill somebody on the bumper cars.
Maya
Savannah
Karen's brother, Jon, is ecstatic about all the tickets we won.
These are Karen's brothers, Kevin and Jon, and Sister-In-Law, Kelli.
Maggie learning how to hit.
The girls get ice cream if they are quiet during Sacrament Meeting at Church.
Maggie and her mom.
I thought I was weird, but Savannah can be really strange. I taught Savannah since she was a toddler to love life and that acting like me was fun, but lately it seems she has taken it to a new level. 
Savannah smiles.
This is Karen in front of our hotel, Marriott's Frenchman's Reef Resort. It's a pretty nice hotel. It is rated five stars (although we stayed in the four-star wing, I'm sure). All-in-all, I'd go back again anytime.
The happy couple... This was our last night there. We had just spent time walking the beach at night after a nice dinner at a restaurant on the same beach.
Behind me is Trunk Bay. It is very popular and is supposedly the 2nd best beach in the world. It was beautiful there. Karen and I had just finished a day full of hiking and realized that we did not have our swimsuits with us, so we had to buy some cheap ones (the cheapest were about $15-20) at the gift shop there. Karen bought a kids top and some mens shorts to keep the price below $70, which was the cheapest womens suits available. At the time this picture was taken, we thought we'd never get to Trunk Bay (beach in background). The road between was narrow and USVI drivers are maniacs. So, after running along blind corners between cars, we hit an overlook and hitch-hiked our way to the Bay.
This is a sugar kiln. Europeans brought slaves to these islands to work the plantations; they had them working in these kilns to separate the sugar from the sugarcane. It was said to be a very deadly job. These ruins are very old, but I cannot remember the date.
View of the British Virgin Islands (BVIs) from an overlook during our hike on St. John's (details to follow). The views were absolutely beautiful.
Trunk Bay from an overlook by the ruins pictured above.
So here we are after a long, all day journey hiking through the rain forest. Half of St. John's is a National Park. It has a ton of trails, but in no way as tourist-friendly as, say, Zion Nat'l Park. The trails are there, they just aren't marked anywhere. So, armed with a map (Karen had nothing to fear--I'm a geologist and Tenderfoot Boy Scout...), we asked a Park Ranger at the local Ranger Station where the trailhead was. Turns out, you just exit town, walk down the highway (no sidewalks or shoulder), and, when the road turns, you should see a break in the trees with a trail headed up the mountain. We decided to take the ridgeline trail and, wow, was it hot, muggy, and steep. It was fun though. We brought water and Diet Coke (just in case we got dehydrated). After summeting the higher of the two peaks along the trail, we hit another highway and wondered down a road we thought would take us to Trunk Bay. Well...it did...eventually and with great effort bushwhacking on our part. Eventually, the road was blocked, overgrown, and then disappeared entirely.
View from our hotel room looking at the sunset and clouds overlooking the bay into Charlotte Amalie, St. Thomas, USVI
This was a local I picked up on the trail in USVI Nat'l Park. The hermit crabs got pretty big there.
Here's a picture of us on the road down to Trunk Bay. The road was very steep, here, not that you can tell.
How would you like to live here? These were two houses down the road before it was blocked off. Nice. We essentially had to work our way through the forest from here down to the beach.
Another picture of karen on the steps entering the sugar kiln.
This is my sugar-mama...pun intended.
Karen on the trail in the rain forest.
A view to the north of the BVIs from a lookout on the lower of the two peaks on the trail we took.
We found this rock ledge at the top of the peak. The trailhead starts below in the picture at the first bay on my right. We took pictures from the overlook on the lower peak just at my shoulder. St. Thomas is in the background on the horizon.
Karen on the other side of the ledge. We at lunch here. We were beat, but only halfway through our ordeal.
Panoramic view of St. John's Cruz Bay from the ledge.
Dave and Karen in the forest.
View from our hotel room.
This was our hotel room. It was remodeled and upgraded, but still pretty old. It wasn't bad though. Check out the jaccuzi Karen is standing in.
Charlotte Amalie lights inthe background.
The lights of Charlotte Amalie over the bay from the beach at the Marriott's time share condos next to the hotel.
Want a time-share? The hoteliers love to offer free excursions if you sign up for a time-share. We were pressured into it several times, but held strong and refused each time. This is a view of the new time-share condos going up next to our hotel.
Here's a veiw of the cliffs looking east from the hotel we stayed at. The rocks here have iguanas crawling all over them. You can almost see the private beach in the distance.
This is a view from our room looking to the northwest.
This is a view of Charlotte Amalie from our room in the daytime. As I said, we enjoyed the hotel, but food is very, very expensive; also, because it is located away from town, you have to take a taxi to any other place on the island, which is $10 per person each way. That adds up and thus...the scooter story (which I will not go into details here, but, for those of you who did not hear the story, I will just mention that it involved a rented scooter, 20 feet of parking garage pavement, a parked car, and a concrete barrier).
