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Lara writes an e-mail in the Caneel Internet room

This is the day that the hurricane is supposed to be at its worst. The past several days we have received notes on our door with status updates and they have set up tracking maps in the main lobby. The great news is that it looks almost certain that it will be just a glancing blow. The wind had picked up as we went to have breakfast. The food was great as it had been the previous two days. They give you an 8 page version of the New York Times which is cool, but on this day we had to make sure we put it under our placemat so that it didn't blow away. We went and checked on the storm in the Internet room and wrote a few e-mails. They have two computers in there which have a program on there limiting the time to 15 minutes per session.

Caneel Beach in the background

We decided that since it wasn't raining, we'd go take a tour of the grounds. The resort is huge! We saw all the pretty beaches along the western part of the resort. Gorgeous just like all the rest. The westernmost beach (Caneel's Hawksnest?) has all these cool cactii just behind the beach. It is so hot and especially so humid that you sweat just walking around, even with the sun behind the clouds as it is with the hurricane. We saw the Turtle Bay restaurant that we have reservations for on Friday. It looks very nice. We decided to take the shuttle bus back to our room as we are wusses and we were already sweating quite a bit.

The hurricane blows through

I had lunch at the same beachfront place that we had breakfast. It was having a lunch buffet that was pretty good. They had prime rib and a salad bar and some other things. It was decent but nothing to write home about. I would have gone to the beachfront bar place that we went to our first night, but it was closed since some of Caneel's employees couldn't make it from St. Thomas due to the hurricane. We came back to our room and watched a movie on my laptop.

On the Caneel dock after the storm

Lara at the Coral Bay overlook

The winds died down as Hurricane Frances kept heading west. We decided to go into Cruz Bay in our rental Jeep to get some dinner. As we were heading out of the entrance of Caneel I asked Lara if she wouldn't mind driving down the North Shore Road for a bit. She then agreed that we should go to Coral Bay on the other side of the island to check that out. Heading east, we passed Hawksnest, Jumbie, Trunk, Cinnamon, and then came to a part in the road that was incredibly steep. Because it had been raining, it was slick too. The wheels started to slip, so I put it into 4-wheel drive and made it up slowly. There was hardly any traffic whatsoever...we maybe saw 3 cars pass us on the way to Coral Bay. This was a good thing since I was going very slow as we made our way through many narrow and steep turns in the road. One part of the road we both thought must have been a one-way street since it was so narrow, but it wasn't. Thankfully we didn't see one other car on that stretch.

These goats didn't seem too concerned about our jeep

We both agreed that Coral Bay is kinda ‘scummy.' While that term can apply for Cruz Bay to some extent, much of Coral Bay and the properties on that side of the island were kinda run down with bunches of trash in view of the road. We were looking for Skinny Legs Restaurant but couldn't find it. I should have brought the map. We took Route 107 past Coral Bay along the south side of the island. There were several packs of goats just walking along the road. They don't seem to be very afraid of the traffic...one small goat just stood in the middle of the road and I went around him. We continued on Route 107. I thought that it went back to Cruz Bay but I was wrong. The paved road totally stops and it's just a dirt road.

Lara was a good sport as we went through huge puddles thanks to Frances. I put it in four wheel drive just in case and went really slow. The Jeep rocked from side to side violently as we went ‘rootin.' We went a good ways until the trail seemed to end and a sign said that the park ranger station was ahead. We turned around and took another branch in the road. As we went down this way a wild pig (with tusks) and a younger one ran out on the road about 20 yars in front of our car. This road didn't seem to promising so we headed back the way we came.

Donkeys roaming Coral Bay

A huge crab on the North Shore Road

We saw a pack of wild donkeys in Coral Bay as we went back through. Along the North Shore Road we stopped and took a picture of a crab that we saw on the road. When we finally made it back to Cruz Bay it was around 8pm and we hadn't eaten yet. Because of the hurricane, almost everything was closed. We went back to Caneel and thought we'd have to spend a lot of money on food, but Caneel had provided sandwiches at the beach bar because so many of their restaurant workers couldn't make it to work due to the storm. I asked how much they were and she said they were free, so we had a pretty nice dinner for the price of two cokes (which aren't cheap at Caneel...2.50 a piece). Back at the room we started watching the movie ‘Chicago' on my laptop. I don't know if I was tired or just not into musicals, but we only watched 45 minutes of it before going to sleep.

Very loud birds	The wind and surf was picking up	Caneel Bay grounds	Surf and cactii	Near the western edge of the resort	Tons of cactii in the background
A little island north of the resort	Caneel Bay grounds	Hurricane Frances from our balcony	Caneel Bay after the storm	Lara on the Caneel Bay dock after the storm	The Caneel Bay dock after the storm
Overlooking one of the North Shore's many beautiful beaches	I almost died