We wanted to go back to the Full Moon Beach Bar at Cane Bay on Tuesday to have their “all you can eat Alaskan King crab”. It was good last time. And we had been trying to get together with a nice couple who found our blog a while back and were here for a job interview. So we told them we’d be there (they’ve been staying up on Scenic Drive in that neighborhood). And we finally got to meet them and have a very pleasant dinner. The crab was even better than last time. And the service was great again too. Aaron took good care of all of us and even brought Goliath some bacon, which was quickly devoured by the poor starving little child.

We arrived at the restaurant a little before 7 and it was busy with a very large table of around 15 and a few other full tables. There were some empty but reserved tables and we needed to move furniture and borrow some bar chairs to create a dining area for ourselves. At first, Aaron was not enthusiastic about moving chairs from the bar, but we gave the bartender some money to cover his losses and everyone was happy.

They start off bringing fresh hot biscuits. They’re buttery and garlicky and they melt in your mouth. Then the plate of large crab legs comes with a small piece of corn on the cob and a little baked red potato, plenty of drawn butter and sour cream. It was absolutely fabulous! Before we were even finished our first plates, Aaron brought another one loaded with more crab. We filled up on that and after some interesting conversation with Emil and Lakiesha, were ready for our ride home. It was a great evening!

I had most of Wednesday off and wanted to get together and take them snorkeling somewhere nice, but we never were able to hook up that day. But Friday looked good for all of us for a kayak trip. Emil has done a lot of kayaking, but Lakiesha had no experience with water sports or activities at all. So Michael met them at Virgin Kayak, where they’d rent a kayak from Bryan and Jill and they hoisted the boat onto the rover.

They met me at home after stopping for supplies and we put our kayak upon the pumpkin too. It was windy and didn’t look like perfect boating weather, but we drove down solitude road to the small beach we’ve launched from before. Despite the strong winds, the water wasn’t too rough. There was a little chop, but no large swells, so we loaded the kayaks up with cooler, bags of food and snorkeling gear.

Emil gave Lakiesha a quick lesson in paddling a kayak and we were off. She was scared and I reassured her that it was not dangerous, because if it were, I wouldn’t be going out there. Soon they were happily paddling away. Then it was our turn. We were in the water just off the beach and Michael, who had put the cooler on very close to his seat back at a weird angle, decided it was too uncomfortable. So he turned to the side to try to adjust it. As he did this, I turned to the same side to look at him and our kayak flipped right over! We were in the water! Meanwhile, our friends were calmly paddling around as I struggled to catch my breath and Michael attempted to recover the cooler. The cooler was too big and made the boat top-heavy. Luckily, we were close to shore. Emil saved the day by taking the cooler on their kayak where it fit perfectly between his legs. Michael recovered the few items that had started floating away (including our crocs! Now we know - crocs float!), we flipped our kayak back over, got in and we were off, too. How embarrassing!

We made good time getting to Buck and had a great day out there. We dipped in the water and had some lunch, then Michael and Emil snorkeled out to the reef area on the north side and saw a huge lobster. Michael said it was as big as our dog, Mini! Good thing Emil doesn’t like to eat lobster!

Lakiesha and I stayed near the beach where we floated around looking at the white fish that hang out just off-shore. We went back to our towels and talked for a long time about journalism, which is her line of work, and how commercialized it has become. After the guys returned, we repacked the kayaks and headed back to the big island.

Later, we went to the Yacht Club for happy hour and shared a bottle of champagne to celebrate Lakiesha’s first-ever kayak trip and snorkeling adventure.

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 12th, 2008 at 5:01 pm and is filed under Reviews, St. Croix, Terry Talk. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.