The travel bug…..It all started 5 years ago. My international travel experience consisted of a few trips to Mexico as a child with my parents. My husband on the other hand had never been out of the country. We had 3 young kids, a mortgage plus everything that goes along with being an adult and neither of us owned a passport. But we NEEDED a vacation. Heck, we had never even gone on a honeymoon.
My husband has a very high stress job on the police force and he has been busting his butt for 15 years. I wanted to take him on a vacation where he could forget every worry or problem back home and just relax. The only problem with that is that we didn’t have passports. I wanted the sun, a beach and tropical drinks. Where in the heck were we going to find that? I started doing my research and well, I found that place and I don’t know if it was a blessing or a curse!
We ended up on the beautiful island of St. Thomas in the US Virgin Islands. No passport needed!! From that day forward we were hooked. Hooked on the perfect weather, the clearest, bluest water you’ve ever seen and the softest sand you could ever dig your toes into. We were there for one whole glorious week and we were already planning a return trip before we even left. I mean seriously…..look at it’s beauty.
Fast forward a year. This time around we are in St. Thomas again, but with the whole family in tow, me the hubs, his mother and our three kids. That week was probably the moment that I realized we needed to take our kids on more vacations. It was time to let them see different cultures, taste new food and understand that there is more to our world than Colorado! We spent most of our time playing at the beach. We did visit the local aquarium where they got to feed and hold tropical birds, touch nurse sharks and watch a pretty hilarious sea lion. I loved watching them smile, laugh and play on the beach without a care in the world. Learn to snorkel and view all of the beautiful underwater creatures was a blast and something they will never forget. Searching for seashells, sea life and lizards. It is all so simple!
Fast forward another year. This time around it was a surprise 40th birthday trip for my husband to St. Croix (the largest of the 3 islands) with our friends. St. Croix is just as beautiful but with a different vibe and atmosphere. We loved it. Wide open spaces, two totally different climates at opposite ends of the island. You can go from desert to tropical all on one island! We day hopped from beach to beach, ate fantastic local food, toured the Cruzan Rum distillery and slept at the pool. Our absolute favorite part of the trip though…..the day charter to Buck Island with Big Beard Adventures. All you can drink, a beach BBQ, new friends and old on a boat headed to the BEST location in the world. I got to see my first turtle ever in wild in the ocean. I got to swim with it! I had been waiting 3 trips to finally do this and it was completely worth the wait.
So there you have it, we have a small obsession with the Caribbean and just can’t get enough of it. So after 5 years we finally broke down and got passports for all of us. We want more. We want to see what the rest of the world has for us! Stay tuned for our next adventure and more about our previous adventures on each of the US Virgin Islands islands.