I started this trip the Sunday before Thanksgiving! Ted had been working in Florida and the Gray family had planned a belated birthday for Ted the more Senior to take place Thanksgiving. I flew into Tampa and met up with Ted. He finished up his work and we made our way over to the DeLand area (near Daytona) to visit with my sister and all her family for a day or so. We stopped on the way and enjoyed an excellent dinner at Emeril’s restaurant in Universal City in Orlando! YUM.

So in DeLand we visited with Deb and Elizabeth and Liz’s daughter Vanessa. Had dinner with the entire family - Deb had to work - so everyone but Deb and also Jeremy was not able to make it. It was great. We had a good time! Liz made arrangements to have Brittany - Jeremy’s daughter for the day so that we could meet her. The two little girls here - Vanessa is the littler one - on the left. She’s just a year old. Brittany is a year older. Two little girls in Pink!

We left Wednesday after breakfast with Debby - went to Ft. Lauderdale airport to pick up Hannah.

We had a great Thanksgiving over in Naples with the Gray clan. Everyone was there - Thack & Yelena, Scarlett and Jim, Hannah, Tim and Pim, Ted the more Senior and Ted and I. You have to take my word for it - because no one took ANY PICTURES! Unbelievable.

We left for the island early Saturday morning. Flew over to San Juan with Hannah and parted ways there - she back to St. Thomas.

Nimbus adjusts to island life in his own way.

He finds a variety of places to rest and relax.

But never far from a head scratch or belly rub…

On Wednesday, we traveled to St. Thomas to see Hannah and Ollie. We traveled by seaplane for the first time.

It is quite different from normal commercial air travel, a welcome throwback to simpler days. One needs only to arrive within 30 minutes of departure and check in. Free parking to boot!

The cabin is rather small, accommodating only a dozen passengers. The seats are rather narrow!

The flight is a quick 20 minutes in the air to cover the 40 miles. This is a pic of the St Thomas cruise ship pier at Havensight. Hannah picked us up right on time and we headed to the condo.

The condo is an upstairs unit on the side of the mountain in an area called Frenchman’s Bay.

Here is Hannah helping with a “daddy-do” which is one of the reasons for the trip, to fix a few issues with the condo.

This is Hannah’s cat, Mocko.

From the condo, one has a nice view to the south with St Croix in the distance on the horizon. So we can see one another from across the way.

This is the marine science center at the University of the VI where Hannah is attending grad school to earn a masters.

Not a bad location to have to go to school…

Barnacles…

We returned to St Croix this evening via seaplane again.

We are off to St. Thomas today via the seaplane. Lets hope the wings stay on! We’ll be back tomorrow evening.

This little section of the north shore gets enough rainfall to be classified as “rain forest”. It reminds me of 17 Yard Drive in Los Osos.

Further east is a land crab village. These guys get pretty big eventually.

Doug Bend ,shown here with us at Savant on Tuesday is a recent arrival on St. Croix. He is best friends with a friend of ours, David Hancock whom we have know since he was 4. Doug took a job on island with one of the local judges. Welocme to STX Doug!

On Labor Day weekend, one of the local north shore dive shops hosts an event called a Treasure Hunt.

They “seed” the reef with about 100 of these washers. If you find one, you gain an entry into the prize drawing which is held on Monday. So on Sunday morning, I went scuba diving to find a washer.

The give-away is quite a party. I won a snorkel gear bag which is a nice prize.

Here are a couple of pics from the dive.

These are schooling little fish like the ones featured in “Nemo”. They did not spell out anything for me but they were fun to watch. I have never seen them before.

“Garden Eels” live in large colonies in the sandy bottomed areas.

A Trigger Fish, not too common around here.

Here are a few photos of people at the Domino Club where we usuall go on Sunday afternoons for a while to socialize.

Amanda, B’Nut and Eric

Kate, Coby and Cassia

Who dey?

Karin arrived from California on August 28th and I flew in from Wisconsin on the 1st of September. It will be only a brief visit as we’ll be heading to Pittsburgh soon for work. All on STX is pretty much the same. Hurrican Dean missed us by quite a ways so no issue there. Felix is going to wreak havoc in Central America in the next few days. Lets hope it subsides some.

Hannah moved to St Thomas a few weeks ago. We waved to her this morning as one can see STT from our house on a clear day.

St Thomas as seen from St Croix

Hannah’s condo is about mid island and faces the south so she can see us too. The Google Earth coordinates of the condo are: North 18,19,29,73 by West 64,54,08,55.

Hannah’s friend Jocelyn arrived from Las Vegas late Saturday. She had a great introduction to St. Croix by attending Mango Melee Sunday afternoon.

We saw lots of friends - touched bases. Ted and I found a mango tasting line sponsored by the Horticulture department of UVI. They had little tastings of all the different mangos and also local fruit juices. Perfect! There is an amazing difference in the tastes of the different mangos.

The grounds of the Botanical Gardens are spectacular. This flower is pretty amazing.

It’s called a Parrot’s Beak Heliconia (Heliconia rostrata) and is native to Argentina through Peru. It’s related to the banana family.

This is a different plant yet - however, the colors are very much the same as the other. Entirely different looking plant.

…. otherwise known by Nimbus as the Intruders!

Tigger on the left and Mango on the right - Mango is the elder of the two. And they are trouble.

If they can get a paw into the cupboard with the trash bags - this is what will happen. Actually - Hannah says it can get worse. They can scatter (with the help of the lovely breeze) the cupboard full of trash bags ALL over the house!