The Long Way to St John

Our drive down to Ft Lauderdale was uneventful, stopping at Staunton, VA, Florence, SC, and Jacksonville, FL, eventually getting to Ft Lauderdale on Sat. afternoon.  The weather there was beautiful, we sat outside near the pool for dinner and watched Notre Dame beat Syracuse in a good B-Ball game.  Rose early (5AM) for our short flight back up to Charlotte, NC, for our connecting flight to St Thomas.  Arrived in Charlotte to find that our other flight had been Canceled!!  Oh great!!  Only thing we could do was to accept their re-route of us back down to MIAMI, then reconnect with a new flight to ST.  Got back down to Miami at 3PM, caught our 5:45PM to ST, arriving there at 9PM.  We really didn't think our bags would make it (since we also had to change airlines), but they did, Yeah!!  Had a driver pick us up and we bolted for the Red Hook ferry which runs every hour to St John.  Got there to watch the 10PM ferry leave, had to sit in the terminal for the 11PM one.  Got on that with about 8 others and we were over on St John in about 20 minutes where we were again met by a guy to drive us to our rental jeep.  Picture this, we're on the island at 12:30 (after midnight), driving an unfamiliar vehicle on back country roads to the other side of the island, just glad I've owned a jeep all these years.  Oh yes, did I mention they drive on the left side in the islands?  Got to our mountainside cottage at 1PM, the last mile up a dirt, offroad type backroad, having to use 4WD to get up the steep inclines.  Went to bed right away, dead tired after a very circuitous journey to SJ.