Tropical Diversion: St Croix

Since we weren't going to have any visitors for a few days we decided to hop over to St. Croix since we hadn't been there yet. I guess it was a little more than a hop, about 40 nautical miles with a eastern wind at about 17 knots so we had a really good sail all the way over. It took close to 8 hours but we left early Thursday morning and are spending three nights here. We anchored in Gallows Bay which is next to the channel leading into Christiansted. We decided to rent a car so we could tour the island and we took the dogs along, which they loved it. The island is about 80 square miles and actually bigger than St. Thomas and St. John. It has some fairly nice beaches and a rain forest. There are really only two main towns, Christiansted and Frederiksted. I guess Frederiksted gets cruise ships in once in a while but there weren't any while we were there. Last night there was a live band in the gazebo in downtown Frederiksted which we listened to for a little while, while we watched the sunset. While we were driving around we thought it didn't seem like we were on a tropical island but then you would go around a turn and there would be a beautiful beach. There is a reef that goes almost around the whole island and I guess the diving is awesome (we didn't try it though) but there are probably about 80 different dive sites marked on the local map covering the North and West side of the island
We stopped for lunch at Coconuts in Frederiksteda and we met this young couple and when we asked them where they were from the girl said Loveland, Colorado. We couldn't believe it but it was actually George Lundeen's daughter. Crazy small world we live in.
We will be heading back to Charlotte Amalie Sunday so we can get ready for the Crowell's visit, then we have Wes's sister and her family coming down, so we will be pretty busy the next couple of weeks