![\"i-a63b65222a33dc40a5dc5c4d5afed7d2-sm_trail_map.jpg\"](\"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/principles\/wp-content\/blogs.dir\/467\/files\/2012\/04\/i-a23d199b69fa59e85cfa56b481d117aa-med_trail_map.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n(The sign in the picture is actually near the end of the hike that I did, but it shows the trail clearly.)<\/p>\n
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The trail really starts in Cruz Bay, but I picked it up where it intersects the Lind Point Trail, just up the hill from where we were staying. It doesn’t really mess around much, starting off pretty much straight up the hill:<\/p>\n
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About five minutes after I started up the trail, it started to rain, which was depressingly typical. I decided to keep going, though, figuring that the rain wouldn’t last all that long, and happily, it stopped before I got to the top of Caneel Hill:<\/p>\n
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the clouds stuck around, though, which made for a different view than is really typical of pictures of the island (it’s a little hard to photograph, though). The view inland is also kind of cool:<\/p>\n
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Behind Caneel Hill is Margaret Hill, which is roughly a hundred feet higher, meaning some more climbing:<\/p>\n
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(you need to watch out for the ankle-breaker crabs here…), past some found art:<\/p>\n
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(these were probably left behind by somebody working on clearing these spiky plants out of the path:<\/p>\n
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(Some previous hiker or worker stuck them on the branches of a nearby bush, and I thought they looked kind of cool.)<\/p>\n
The top of Margaret Hill doesn’t have the same sort of wooden observation platform that they put on Caneel Hill, but there’s a large flat rock from which you can get a nice view:<\/p>\n
The hill in the foreground is Caneel Hill, Cruz Bay is on the left, and the mist-shrouded island in the distance is St. Thomas. The trail I was on passes very close to the tacky red-roofed villa at the lower left.<\/p>\n It was all downhill from there, literally– the trail runs from the top of the hill down to sea level, passing some ruins from the days of sugar plantations:<\/p>\n and eventually ending up at the very posh Caneel Bay resort:<\/p>\n The main beach at the resort is open to the public, so I was able to walk on through the gate, and pass by their more scenic ruin:<\/p>\n (It’s an old sugar mill, and they’ve built a restaurant in it, for that feeling of elegant decay…). From there, I cut through to the previously mentioned Honeymoon Beach:<\/p>\n (that’s a picture from an earlier post), where I was supposed to meet the rest of the gang for a little snorkeling and a refreshing dip in the ocean. Thinking I beat them to the beach, I spread my stuff out, and tried to make my presence obvious:<\/p>\n Of course, it was all for nought, as they’d beaten me to the beach, and were already off looking at coral. But hey, you gotta represent.<\/p>\n (The amount of sweat on that shirt should also give you an idea of the heat and humidity. It felt really, really good to get in the water, believe me…)<\/p>\n Kate and I went back to Honeymoon Beach later that afternoon, and snorkeled our way to Caneel Bay, which was great, but I didn’t get any pictures. And that’s how we spent our last day in the Caribbean.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Our vacation in the Virgin Islands was with family, so we spent most of our time in a group of six people, and there was no small element of cat-herding involved in getting things arranged. This tends to drive me up the wall, so I made a point of spending one morning doing something that… Continue reading USVI: A Good Long Walk<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1647","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-pictures","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1647","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1647"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1647\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1647"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1647"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1647"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/a><\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n