National Parks and Recreation

Is this the most remote national park we’ve been too so far? I think it has to be. We did take a boat for five days just to get here.

Okay, okay, maybe we took a boat for five days because this national park was part of a longer cruise we decided to do over Christmas Break. But still, it counts.

This was our first Holland America cruise and I have to say, it was…okay. I know we’re not exactly the “demographic” for Holland America (every single person who heard we were sailing with them cracked some joke about us joining the retirement home), but there was still just an overall lack of programming on board the ship that left me a little bored at times. Though, I admit, this is very much a me problem. I have never been the kind of girl who can just relax and do nothing on vacation.

However, Holland America was over $5,000 cheaper than its Disney counterpart with the same itinerary at the same time, so alas! We set off to check off our 30th national park! ~SO CLOSE to the halfway mark!~

The sky was putting on a show as we woke up for our early excursion call time and we got to watch the sunrise over the island. Not a bad way to begin the last day of 2025.

The ship parked at Charlotte Amalie on St. Thomas, the second largest island in the US Virgin Islands. The national park takes up nearly two-thirds of St. John, the next largest island in the group, so we had to take a 45 minute ferry to get there.

A ferry which, incidentally, cruised right past Epstein island — pictured above. I must have known at one point that this island was a part of the US Virgin Islands, but it really didn’t register until our tour guide mentioned it. Little Saint James island (its actual name) and its neighbor Great Saint James were purchased in 2023 for $60 million by some other billionaire after the Epstein estate had tried listing the pair at $125 million to help settle a number of lawsuits. I don’t know about you, but even paying half the asking price seems like way too much. I don’t know how you can exist in that space without feeling icky. But I guess if you’re rich enough to buy two islands, you’re also probably a scumbag.

Anyhoo, we continued our trek and pulled into beautiful Cruz Bay.

This was certainly one of the more unique visitor centers we’ve encountered in our travels. You could hike, drive or boat right up to the front door.

The island experienced extensive damage in 2017 from two back to back category 5 hurricanes: Irma and Maria. The park reopened just three months later, but there are still signs of damage throughout the island to this day.

After arriving in Cruz Bay, we were sorted onto our busses and took off onto the steep and winding mountain roads. Some of our fellow passengers were not having a great time with the skinny roads, but our driver was wonderful and we’ve definitely been on far scarier drives.

Our first major viewpoint was Caneel Bay, a very important part of the history of the national park. Back in 1952, Laurance Rockefeller visited the island of St. John and was so overcome by its beauty that he casually decided to purchase the entire thing. Must be nice. Though, I have to give our boy Larry some credit, because he promptly donated nearly 60% of the island to the National Park Service under the condition that it be protected from future development. He then built the first “environmentally-friendly resort” on this very spot.

This quickly became THE place to be for the business elite at the time, but he kept his promise to preserve the area’s natural beauty. For example, the buildings were designed to blend into the surrounding landscape and all lighting on the property was engineered to face down to help minimize light pollution and preserve the night sky. This resort persevered for decades until being destroyed in 2017 by Hurricanes Irma and Maria. Today, the US Department of the Interior is still working on plans to rebuild this area and restore the resort to its former glory.

From there, we continued on to Trunk Bay, at which point you could pretty clearly see the British Virgin Islands out in the distance. This is also the site of the famous underwater snorkeling trail. A designated path you can travel to see the best the USVI has to offer in terms of undersea wildlife.

Unfortunately, this tour was merely an island explorer bus tour and didn’t allow us the opportunity to do any hiking or snorkeling in the park. I do think you need at least a couple of days on the island to truly get a feel for the area and explore everything it has to offer, but we knew we had to choose our battles going in. Cruises are great! But they definitely limit your time in any given spot. So we made the executive decision to prioritise this tour to see as much of the national park as possible, knowing it meant we weren’t going to be able to get down and dirty exploring it.

Luckily, we had stopped in Turks and Caicos a few days prior and did an AMAZING snorkeling excursion there where we saw a million fish and were completely surrounded by them. This really helped me to feel not so left out.

I mean, come on!

We continued our drive around the island to see Coral Bay and get an even better vantage point of the many little islands that make up the British Virgin Islands archipeligo.

This was probably one of my favorite viewpoints. Our tour guide also went off bushwhacking through the forest here to find some Caribbean plant that James and I both can’t remember the name of, but it tasted vaguely like spearmint when you chewed on it. Again, several of our fellow tour takers were not about to put some random plant in their mouths, but we dove right in. Live a little, people!

By then it was time to return to the ferry and subsequently back to our ship. The sky put on quite the show as we pulled away from port, though, and we got a beautiful sunset over St. Croix, the largest of the US Virgin Islands as we went. A beautiful end to a pretty good year for us.

We then got to ring in the new year at sea (and in Atlantic time, even better!) and had the absolute best time partying the night away on the lido deck. I wasn’t sure how I’d feel spending a holiday like this surrounded by strangers, but while I missed my family immensely, we had a really awesome time. Also, there may be a rumor floating around that we joined a group of women in jumping into the pool fully-clothed shortly after midnight. But I can neither confirm nor deny.

I hope everyone also had a wonderful holiday season and happy new year. And for my New England friends, I hope you aren’t too buried in snow. (Though you know I’m loving every second of it). Spring is on the way, I promise!!

Cheers to a happy and healthy 2026 filled with many adventures! Rumor has it James and I will be soaring well past the national park halfway point in 2026 and I’m so excited to see where this year actually takes us.

Be well!