As They Are: Exploring the National Parks

Wind Cave National Park: Lookout Point and Centennial Trails Loop

It was Monday afternoon, September 8, and we’d already explored two caves, but the day wasn’t over. We arrived back at our campsite at Elk Mountain Campground just before 4pm, which still gave us plenty of time for an above ground hike at Wind Cave before the sun set at 7:19pm.

The hike we chose was the Lookout Point/Centennial Trail Loop, a four-mile loop that began not too far from the campground up the park road and wound through prairie, forest, and riparian areas.

Eastern Kingbird. Image: Sean M. Santos

We stopped briefly at our campsite to refill our water bladders and prepare for our hike. By about twenty after four we were at the trailhead. We locked the jeep, shouldered our packs, and headed out.
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Wind Cave National Park: Bison Herd

Image: Sean M. Santos

In 1913, ten years after the park was established, American Bison were reintroduced to Wind Cave National Park. In establishing the park in 1903, the intent of Congress and President Theodore Roosevelt was to protect the marvelous boxwork formations of the cave, but as an ancillary benefit, the park protected thousands of acres of mixed grass prairie in the foothills of the Black Hills. This habitat would be ripe for an ambitious bison reintroduction program that would culminate at Wind Cave.

The truly vital importance of the Wind Cave herd was recognized and reinforced only in recent decades as increasingly sophisticated genetic tests have confirmed that the herd is one of the last remaining genetically pure herds on public lands in North America. Most other herds have a certain percentage of genetic material from interbreeding with cattle. Even the herd at Custer State Park, adjacent to Wind Cave along its northern border, is not free of genetic material from cattle. The other pure herds are found at Yellowstone National Park, the Henry Mountains in Utah (reintroduced from the Yellowstone herd), and Elk Island National Park in Alberta, Canada.

The saga of the Wind Cave herd began in 1894, as bison reached a point of near extinction in the American West.
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Detour: Jewel Cave National Monument

Jewel Cave National Monument was established by President Theodore Roosevelt on February 7, 1908 as the nation’s thirteenth National Monument. It was intended to protect what at the time was assumed to be a small, but distinctly beautiful cave. Jewel Cave now stands as the second longest on Earth at over 166 miles of explored passageways.

After our morning tour of Wind Cave, we had planned to do a couple short hikes and then visit Jewel Cave for the 2pm Scenic Tour. The unexpectedly busy tours at Wind Cave (particularly for a Monday after Labor Day) made us a little anxious about getting the tour we wanted that afternoon. (The ultimate plan was to come back to Wind Cave to do some hiking in the late afternoon.) So we started out on the 35-mile drive to Jewel Cave

As our route took us through the town of Custer and into the heart of the Black Hills, we began to see granite outcrops indicative of the center of the Hills.
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Wind Cave National Park: Under the Black Hills

After we’d breakfasted on Monday morning, September 8, we drove the short distance from Elk Mountain Campground to the Wind Cave National Park visitor center. We were hoping to take the 9am Natural Entrance Tour, but we were too close to its starting time. Ranger Andrew sold us the final two tickets for the 9:45am tour. He informed us that there would be a group of middle schoolers on the tour with us, but it should be fine, since there had been others from the same large group on tours the day before without any problems.

As we waited the forty-five minutes for our tour, we watched the twenty-minute park introductory film and explored the exhibitions in the CCC-era visitor center. We also stopped by the bookstore.

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Wind Cave National Park: Into the Black Hills

Wind Cave National Park is possibly the most important little-known park in the entire system. It became the seventh National Park in 1903 when Congress passed legislation, subsequently signed by President Theodore Roosevelt, to protect a small, but beautiful cave in the Black Hills of southwestern South Dakota. (Starting here with Wind Cave, all five park units we’d visit would have some connection or indebtedness to Roosevelt.) It was the first National Park to protect a cave, and it also happened to protect an important transition zone between the mixed grass prairie of the South Dakota plains and the Ponderosa Pine forests of the Black Hills.

The quiet importance of the park would grow. What had been assumed to be a small cave is now known to be the fourth longest and among the oldest in the world. On the surface, a reintroduction program for the American Bison, begun in 1913, has yielded one of the most important, purest herds in the United States. It is a herd vital to reintroduction programs across the prairie.

Yet even many of those who have visited the Badlands or Mount Rushmore haven’t necessarily heard of this unassuming, intensely beautiful park. Perhaps that’s for the best.

Before heading from Badlands National Park to the Black Hills, however, we needed to stop for lunch. And, really, there was only one choice:
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Badlands National Park: The Window and the Door

It was Sunday morning, September 7, and although we had already broken camp at Sage Creek Campground, we weren’t quite finished exploring Badlands National Park. Instead of immediately exiting the park via the west entrance, we drove east on the Loop Road one more time to see a few more sightsnear the eastern entrance of the park that we’d skipped the previous day.

While we’d finished striking camp, we’d noticed some cloud cover moving in. Now on the road it added some drama. Although a few raindrops fell on the windshield, we could see that it wouldn’t last. (Note the Black Hills in the far right along the horizon in the image below.)

Image: Sean M. Santos
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Badlands National Park: Saddle Pass, Castle, Medicine Root Loop Trails

After visiting the Notch, we were ready for more hiking. We drove to the Saddle Pass Trailhead west of the visitor center area on the Loop Road. Saddle Pass Trail was only 0.2 miles, but it climbed directly up the Badlands Wall. Saddle Pass then connected to a relatively flat loop combining a portion of Castle Trail with Medicine Root Loop Trail. Ultimately it would be a 4.5-mile loop hike.

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Badlands National Park: The Notch Trail

After lunch, it was time to finally get out of the car and begin exploring some of the Badlands landscapes close-up. We began with the Notch Trail, a 1.5-mile out and back near the eastern entrance to the park. It begins at a major trailhead parking area for trails both short and long. It is also one of the first stops on the Loop Road for those entering the park from the east. On this Saturday afternoon, September 6, it was busy with retirees, families, and couples of various ages.

The Notch Trail is the most demanding of the three short trails starting at this parking lot. The trail began by winding its way into a wall of Badlands formations to the east.

Slowly, prairie grasses and some small stands of juniper gave way to more barren formations.
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Badlands National Park: Loop Road

The Badlands Loop Road, which is not actually a loop, twists for over twenty-five miles above and below the Badlands Wall, offering an almost overwhelming density of scenic views, both from the windshield and at a series of interpretive overlooks and pullouts. It is a classic example of making the wonders of a park easily accessible to motorists, a philosophy that dominated the Park Service’s thinking in its first half century. On my previous visit, Lisa and I had motored along the road from east to west. This time, Sean and I would take the drive from west to east.

Pinnacles Overlook

After our encounter with the Bighorn Sheep and an additional encounter with a grazing herd of them on the side of the road, which had stopped traffic, we turned right onto the paved Loop Road and stopped at the first overlook.
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Badlands National Park: Bighorn Sheep and Prairie Dogs

Bighorn Sheep

After my bison encounter and after a breakfast of Mountain House Breakfast Skillet (more on this later), we set off for a morning drive on the Badlands Loop Road east to the visitor center and Cedar Pass.

The first twelve miles of the road were unpaved and were a retread of the route we’d driven in on the previous afternoon to get to Sage Creek Campground. These miles were also thick with wildlife, being both less traveled and adjacent to the largest expanse of wilderness. In addition to the plentiful bison, we spotted another pronghorn.

And then we stopped at Roberts Prairie Dog Town.

Black-Tailed Prairie Dog
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Badlands National Park: Bison at Sunrise

I awoke on Saturday, September 6, before sunrise, to the sound of birdsong echoing from either side of the shallow valley of Sage Creek Campground. Brilliant, hearty, melodic birdsong, which I would later realize came from Western Meadowlarks.

Sean was still sleeping, so I carefully rolled out of the tent, put on my boots, and zipped on my hoodie. The temperature had dropped quite a bit overnight.

Sage Creek Campground is situated as a large oval with pit toilets at the north and south ends and most of the tent sites within the middle of the oval. It is almost completely surrounded by the federally-designated Sage Creek Wilderness.
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Badlands National Park: Traveling to a Wilderness Sunset

Although legislation to establish a National Park in the White River Badlands of South Dakota was introduced into Congress by Senator Peter Norbeck in 1909, the measure stalled and was almost destroyed completely by a Park Service in its infancy after 1916. The Badlands would not be declared a National Monument until 1939 and would not become a National Park until November 10, 1978 (two days before I was born).

Badlands National Park would be the first that I would visit for a second time. I’d already spent a cold, exhilarating January afternoon there with my friend Lisa over ten years earlier. That earlier trip anticipated my move from Ann Arbor to Chicago and this one felt that it helped mark my tenth anniversary in the city.

Sean and I took a mid-morning flight on American Eagle to Sioux Falls on Friday, September 5. (The previous evening we’d taken in a fantastic concert by Owen Pallet at the Metro.) The 9:30 – 11:05am timeframe was ultimately civilized, allowing us to wake up at our normal times and to grab breakfast at Frontera Tortas, our O’Hare tradition.
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The Dakotas: Planning

Prairie Sunflowers, Cedar Pass area, Badlands National Park

With the exception of a lovely long weekend in Florida in March with my parents, by Labor Day 2014 Sean and I had not taken a real vacation in 2014. This was due both to the whims and vagaries of his firm and that the summer months are busy at Openlands. (For comparison, by Labor Day 2013, we’d already visited the Virgin Islands, California, and Florida and had driven around the whole of Lake Michigan.) It was past time for a vacation. It was time to sleep in a tent.

We decided upon a trip to the Dakotas (and Wyoming). We’d hit three parks: Badlands, Wind Cave, and Theodore Roosevelt, plus three monuments.

I’d been itching to go to Theodore Roosevelt since reading Edmund Morris’ biography of him two years ago. I’d even thought of visiting the park between my time at Marwen and my time at Openlands.
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Big Bend National Park: Grapevine Hills

It was Wednesday morning, November 13, and it was time to go home, but still we wanted to get in one more short hike before driving back to El Paso for our flight. We drank some hotel room coffee while we loaded the car with the gear we had packed the night before. The visibility was better, but still not great.

Our destination that morning was Grapevine Hills and its famous balanced rock. In my mind I was already calculating: if we arrive at the trailhead by such time and on average it takes us so long to do a hike of said length then we should be starting the drive to El Paso by that time which makes it possible to catch our flight and so forth.

The store and visitor center are visible across the parking lot from the door of our room at the Chisos Mountains Lodge. The formation behind them is visible too. The wall of mountains behind that, which forms the north wall of the Basin, is not.

In the interest of time, we decided not to get breakfast at the lodge, but to grab something later during the drive to El Paso.
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Big Bend National Park: The Moody Desert

A Raven soars over the Chihuahuan Desert

It was Tuesday afternoon, November 12, our final afternoon at Big Bend National Park. We were back in Chisos Basin earlier than we had planned, driven from the high mountains by the mist and clouds. We ate through some of our remaining bars and food for lunch, but not before I had consulted “Butterflies of the Big Bend Country” in the store to determine the species of our butterfly companion: Lyside Sulphur.

We would be spending our final night at the park in the Chisos Mountains Lodge here in the Basin. We inquired about early check-in, but our room wasn’t ready. While we were in the lobby, we overheard staff talking about possible road closures, which made us a little nervous. The visibility was still horrible, and we wanted to drive down out of the mountains (in the hope that visibility was better in the desert below) and see a few more sights this final afternoon.

We went into the visitor center and consulted with the ranger. He said that when he’d last had a report, the visibility at park headquarters at Panther Junction in the desert below was about the same as it was here in the Basin. But he said there was no reason or even remotest possibility that the road into the Chisos would close. He told us that this weather, unusual for the time of year, had happened often in the preceding weeks, and that some occurrences were worse than this. He also said that this time of slow seeping rain/drizzle was excellent for the desert because it would soak into the land, as opposed to sudden torrential storms that just wash over the surface.

We browsed for a while and looked at exhibitions in the visitor center before deciding to head down to the headquarters at Panther Junction. Even if visibility were terrible, we could possibly check out a video or presentation in the auditorium there.
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Big Bend National Park: Companion

Lyside Sulphur

On Monday afternoon, November 11, not long after we began my big birthday backpack into the High Chisos Mountains Complex, we were switchbacking up Laguna Meadow Trail, still within sight of the lodge buildings, when Sean, who had been in front but was now behind since I’d requested a slower pace, said:

“There’s an insect on your backpack.”

“What kind of insect?” I asked.

“A butterfly,” he replied.

“Take a photo.”

We stopped. He snapped a few photos of the yellow-green butterfly. And we continued on, assuming like most times that a curious dragonfly or a shy moth landed on us during a hike, that it would soon fly away. Some forty-five minutes later, he mentioned that the insect was still there.

Up and up and up we hiked along Laguna Meadow Trail, growing wearier and warmer. Each time I asked, “Is it still there?” the reply came back, “Yes.” Even when we stopped to rest, munching on trail mix while sitting on the rock walls that the trail dogs had built to create the switchbacks, the butterfly was still there. Even when I’d stop at practically every switchback, bending over to ease the weight of my pack and to stretch my hamstrings and to catch my breath as we reached the high ridge of the Colima Trail near our campsite, the butterfly was still there.
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Big Bend National Park: The Misty Mountains

And then the clouds came.

In the growing light before dawn, we were awakened by a soft rain. We made sure that our gear was covered, and climbed back into our sleeping bags to doze for another hour or so. At 7:30, I woke up in earnest. Outside our tent it had stopped raining, but the mist had rolled in, making the world chilly and moody and destroying any visibility. It was my 35th birthday, Tuesday, November 12.

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Big Bend National Park: Into the Chisos

Emory Peak

After a morning spent exploring Burro Mesa and striking our camp at Cottonwood, we drove to the heart of Big Bend National Park: Chisos Basin. We had reserved our backcountry campsite the day before and planned to hike into the mountains for an overnight backpack trip. I wanted to wake up the following morning, Tuesday, November 12, on my 35th birthday in the Chisos Mountains.

Vernon Bailey Peak looms over the Chisos Basin

Multiple times over the preceding days we had driven the park roads in a great arc north of the Chisos, but this time, we turned south onto the road that ran up into the center of the mountains. The road rose steadily up the northern slopes into a canyon called Green Gulch. A delicate set of power lines ran along the road providing electricity to the visitor center, store, and lodge in the Basin.
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Big Bend National Park: Burro Mesa

Monday, November 11, Sean and I had the morning to spend exploring the southwestern portion of Big Bend before we broke camp at Cottonwood and hiked into the Chisos in the afternoon. There were still many things to see in this part of the park, but it was time to pick just one or two.

We grabbed our day packs, water, and snacks and headed toward Burro Mesa.

Mule Ears Peaks
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Big Bend National Park: Sunset and Sunrise

After our day of exploring three canyons, visiting hot springs, and lunching in Mexico, it was time to head back to our campsite at Cottonwood Campground. The sun was setting in earnest as we passed back around the great bulk of the Chisos Mountains at the center of the park. On the western slopes, the dramatic light of the setting sun caused us to pull over and take in the vista.

Perhaps the most striking elements of the western face of the Chisos range are the lines of igneous rock that cut like huge, ancient stone walls across the slopes. These are lines of magma that pushed up and cooled beneath the earth. The hard igneous rock that forms them was left standing when the softer sedimentary deposits eroded away. In the light of the setting sun, they were particularly striking.
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Big Bend National Park: Hot Springs

After our visit to Boquillas del Carmen, Mexico and Boquillas Canyon, there were still two major sights we wanted to see in the eastern part of the park before returning to our campground: Ernst Tinaja and the Hot Springs. But first, we drove down to the Rio Grande Village visitor center. At the center, we paid our backcountry fee an reserved a primitive campsite in the Chisos Mountains for our backpack the next night. This season, the park has switched over to a computerized system for backcountry reservations, and ours was the first that the ranger at Rio Grande Village had processed.

Both to and from the short drive to Rio Grande village, we were afforded breathtaking views of the Sierra del Carmen across the river in Mexico.

Sierra del Carmen

After the visitor center, we attempted to reach Ernst Tinaja, one of many depressions in the rock in various parts of the park. The depressions act as natural water holes, trapping rainwater, and are both dramatic and great places to see wildlife. Ernst Tinaja is several miles up Old Ore Road from the main park road. Unfortunately, after about three quarters of a mile, we decided that the road was just too rough for the rented Captiva. We turned around and returned to the main road.
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Big Bend National Park: Boquillas

From Tuff Canyon, we followed the Ross Maxwell Scenic Drive to its terminus at the main park road. We headed east, north of the great bulk of the Chisos Mountains. We passed the park headquarters at Panther Junction and continued southeast, windows open to the glorious fragrances of a cloudless morning.

Nugent Mountain (foreground) and the Chisos Mountains
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Big Bend National Park: Tuff Canyon

From Santa Elena Canyon, we headed northeast on the Ross Maxwell Scenic Drive past Cottonwood Campground and Castolon to the pull off for Tuff Canyon. There are many washes in the desert of Big Bend National Park, but perhaps none so dramatic as Tuff Canyon. It was carved by Blue Creek, which originates in the Chisos Mountains. The rock that comprises the canyon is volcanic tuff, formed when a volcanic explosion blew tons of ash into the air, which eventually hardened as it was compressed by overlying layers of rock.

In the photo above, the darker rock on the canyon floor is trachyitic lava, and the light gray rock of the walls, which eroded away much more quickly, is the tuff.

The signage at Big Bend National Park is very impressive, utilitarian for the desert elements, but also created with striking design in mind. Well done, NPS!
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Big Bend National Park: Santa Elena Canyon

Sunday morning, November 10, Sean and I climbed into the car and turned left out of Cottonwood Campground. We headed down the final, westernmost eight miles of the Ross Maxwell Scenic Drive toward Santa Elena Canyon. The road curved through scrub land on a bench above the river’s floodplain, which was green with plant life below. A roadrunner ran across the road and then flew to some nearby branches.

Greater Roadrunner

Ross Maxwell Scenic Drive ends at the parking lot for Santa Elena Canyon Trail. In front of us loomed a massive miles-long uplift known as the Mesa de Anguila on the northern (American) side of the Rio Grande and the Sierra Ponce on the southern (Mexican) side. The uplift, which was formed by the Terlingua Fault at its base, is bisected by the 1,500-foot deep Santa Elena Canyon.
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Big Bend National Park: To the Rio Grande

Cerro Castellan from Cottonwood Campground

Sean and I flew from Chicago to El Paso on Friday evening, November 8, after work and after having both taken our gear to work that morning. There’s something fun about wearing a full backpacking pack on the CTA during the morning commute. I had been a bit nervous that our backpacks would surpass the 50-pound limit, but without water, they didn’t. It was the first time we’d checked our big packs.

In what has become a new tradition at O’Hare, we had dinner at Frontera Tortas. Complete with vacation-launching margaritas.
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Big Bend National Park: Planning

Big Bend National Park is massive. Established in 1944 on 801,163 acres along a great curve of the Rio Grande in far southwest Texas, it is larger than Yosemite. It contains hundreds of thousands of acres of Chihuahuan Desert as well as entire mountain ranges, canyons, mesas, and of course, the US side of the Rio Grande. The best, most famous description of the park is quoted in the Official Handbook, which I actually did not read until we returned from our trip. This poetic description of Big Bend is attributed to a 19th century Mexican cowboy:

Where the rainbows wait for the rain, and the big river is kept in a stone box, and water runs uphill and mountains float in the air, except at night when they go away to play with other mountains…

In the weeks leading up to our trip to Big Bend National Park, I’d quipped, “If you’d ever told me that I’d be excited to spend my 35th birthday in Texas, I’d have told you you were crazy.” My only previous experiences with the state involved sometimes lengthy layovers at Dallas-Fort Worth airport. Not the thing to spark the imagination.
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Save the Wolves of Isle Royale National Park
Isle Royale National Park is currently accepting public feedback on what to do, if anything, to conserve the island’s dwindling, inbred wolf population. Currently there are eight adult wolves and an unknown number (two or three) of pups.

Three options are under consideration:
1. do nothing, even if wolves go extinct
2. allow wolves to go extinct and then introduce new wolves
3. introduce new wolves through genetic rescue (introducing adult wolves to the island to offset inbreeding)
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Pinnacles National Park: Species List

California Quail

For a short visit to a relatively small park, our weekend camping trip to Pinnacles National Park afforded Sean and me with ample opportunities to see wildlife, from the endangered California Condor to many other, more abundant species. As I’ve written before, the park is a jewel for its scenery certainly, but also for its wildlife. I’ve spent quite a lot of time since we returned from the trip identifying species (particularly the birds) from photos we captured or notes we made. Obviously we saw more species than what’s listed here (with a nod to butterflies and other insects), but I’m pretty confident of the accuracy of what is on this list.

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Pinnacles National Park: South Wilderness Trail

It was Sunday morning, June 2. Sean and I were booked on a flight home to Chicago from San Jose at 1:55 that afternoon, but now, at not quite 7am, we were ready for our final hike at Pinnacles National Park: South Wilderness Trail.

South Wilderness Trail is 3.25 miles one-way with little to no elevation gain. It follows Chalone Creek south from a junction with Bench Trail not far from the Pinnacles Campground. Ironically given its name, it does not actually pass through much of the park’s federal wilderness area as designated by the Wilderness Act. The trail, although relatively easy to follow, is less maintained than many of the other trails in the park.
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Pinnacles National Park: At Camp, Part Two

Tule Bluet Damselfly

After our long morning hike on Saturday (June 1), we were back at our campsite by early afternoon. We lunched on tortillas filled with peanut butter and potato chips. We were considering an evening walk, but for the afternoon, we decided it was time to relax in the campground, particularly since it was so hot. (We’d learn later that it hit 104 degrees in the park that afternoon.)
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Pinnacles National Park: Condor Gulch Trail

California Condor

For our Saturday (June 1) hike, we wanted to explore the Pinnacles formations from the east side of the park. The logical choice was to hike to at least the overlook on Condor Gulch Trail. Several options presented themselves to us: we could drive to the trailhead or we could hike there from the campground. We could do the trail as an out-and-back or we could link it to other trails as a grand loop. Ultimately, we decided to hike to and from our campsite, linking Bench Trail, Bear Gulch Trail, Condor Gulch Trail, and High Peaks Trail into a marvelous 8.8 mile hike with a 1,350 foot elevation gain.

We set out around 7:45am on Bench Trail, which connects the campground to all the other trails in the park. The first section of Bench Trail followed both Sandy Creek and the park road into the heart of the park, passing by grasslands in various stages of restoration.

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Pinnacles National Park: At Camp

It was Friday afternoon, May 31. We’d finished our hike into the High Peaks at about 1:45. Now we needed to drive around the south end of the Gabilan mountains to the park’s east entrance in order to reach Pinnacles Campground.

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Pinnacles National Park: High Peaks

After the delight of Balconies Trail, we were ready for more hiking. This time we’d head up into the heart of the Pinnacles formations. The Juniper Canyon Loop is a 4.3-mile hike with an elevation gain of 1,215 feet. For the first half-mile traveling south, the trail climbs gradually through riparian woodlands in Juniper Canyon. Then it climbs steeply in a series of switchbacks, eventually ending at the High Peaks Trail. The High Peaks Trail winds through the formations themselves before the Tunnel Trail leads back to Juniper Canyon for the descent.

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Pinnacles National Park: Balconies Trail

Balconies Trail, a 2.4-mile loop with an elevation gain of 200 feet, is a perfect introduction to Pinnacles National Park. From the oak savanna near the parking lot, it winds through chaparral areas before entering a canyon carved by the West Fork Chalone Creek. The trail climbs in a series of switchbacks up the lower part of the Balconies cliffs before looping around and passing through Balconies Cave. The relatively short trail passes through three (arguably four) of the five habitats in the park. It offers sweeping vistas, great bird watching, and a scramble through a talus cave.

We always intended our visit to Balconies Cave to be the first item on our to-do list at Pinnacles, preferably as early as possible on Friday so that there would be relatively few other visitors.
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Pinnacles National Park: Flying to the Mountains

It was storming intermittently in Chicago on the evening of Thursday, May 30. Our flight to San Jose was delayed 1.5 hours, so we sat at O’Hare munching on Frontera Tortas and watching the other passengers get increasingly anxious.
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Pinnacles National Park: Planning

Pinnacles National Park is a jewel.

It was established as Pinnacles National Monument on January 16, 1908 by President Theodore Roosevelt, only the twelfth National Monument created under the presidential powers conferred by the Antiquities Act of 1906. Originally, the monument only protected a little over 2,000 acres at the heart of the park, the pinnacles formations themselves. Since then, the monument has been expanded five times, once by congress and four times by executive order, as the ecological importance and recreational value of the areas adjacent to the monument were recognized. The most recent expansion was in January 2000, by executive order of President Clinton as he left office, largely to preserve the watersheds of Pinnacles’ creeks and streams.

Pinnacles now comprises over 26,000 acres in the Gabilan Mountains of central California. In 1976, just under 13,000 acres at Pinnacles were set aside as federally-designated wilderness under the Wilderness Act of 1964. Because of the wilderness designation, California highway 146 does not bisect the park. In order to travel from one side of Pinnacles to the other, visitors must drive about 1.5 hours to the south of the mountains through King City in the Salinas Valley.
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Virgin Islands National Park: Going Home

After Maho Bay, we headed back to Concordia for our final evening on the island. We had been planning to cook a pasta dinner in our loft, but Sean made the executive decision that we should have dinner at Cafe Concordia for a third and final time. Plus, is was live music night.
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Virgin Islands National Park: Thoughts on the Plants and Animals

Brown Pelicans at Brown Bay. Sage Mountain on Tortola in the British Virgin Islands is behind them.

It is estimated that ninety percent of St. John was clear-cut during the plantation era. But researchers have also learned that because of the uncertain plantation economy on St. John, wherein an estate might lie fallow and abandoned for several generations, only a fraction of the island was clear-cut at any one time. Regardless, there is very little virgin forest in Virgin Islands National Park. Many of the oldest and largest trees date from the plantation era, but these were left standing to provide shade or property demarkation and therefore don’t necessarily follow natural distribution patterns on the landscape. (It is difficult to date the age of trees in the tropics because there are no annual growth rings.)

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Virgin Islands National Park: Maho Bay

Image: Adam Geffen

After Annaberg, we had a decision to make: should we return to Concordia and spend our final afternoon at our home base of Salt Pond Bay or should we go to Maho Bay for a swim and a snorkel? Adam voted for Maho Bay because we hadn’t been there yet. All the rest of us voted for Concordia. Phil said he preferred to swim in the freshwater pool there. I was ready to be done with driving. And so forth. Adam wanted to know if we did snorkel at Salt Pond Bay again, if I’d swim out to some of the farther rocks with him. I agreed.

We climbed into the Jeep and headed out. Between Maho Bay and Annaberg, North Shore Road is divided into two single-lane roads, one in each direction. I accidentally made a wrong turn, and we suddenly found ourselves driving down the single-lane road back toward Maho Bay (see map). The first safe place to turn around was the beach’s parking lot. So since we were already there and there was a great parking spot, we decided to go for a swim. I told Adam, “It’s the story of your life. Everyone votes against you, and you still get your way.”
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Virgin Islands National Park: Annaberg

Annaberg plantation lies on the northern shore of St. John (see map), overlooking the British Virgin Islands.

From the National Park Service guide:

Annaberg stands today in bold testament to a time when “sugar was king.” The ruins represent a colonial-era processing facility known as a “sugar works,” designed and built exclusively for the large-scale production of raw cane-sugar and its two valuable byproducts, rum and molasses. It was constructed between 1797 and 1805, at the pinnacle of the great sugar boom of the turn of the 19th century.
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Virgin Islands National Park: Trunk Bay and After

As far back as Thursday we’d been planning how best to visit Trunk Bay (see map). Regularly listed as one of the most beautiful beaches in the world, it can receive upwards of 1,000 visitors a day. Ultimately, we decided to go as early as possible on Monday morning. We were keen to check out the underwater snorkeling trail the National Park Service has installed there.
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Virgin Islands National Park: Sea Turtle and Stingray

Image: Adam Geffen

Sean, Adam, and I arrived back at Concordia with enough daylight left for a swim and snorkel. Phil joined us, and we headed down the path to Salt Pond Bay.

When we got to the beach, Adam and I strapped on our gear and began swimming along the route we’d followed that morning, hoping that good luck would strike a second time along the rocks on the northwestern side of the bay. We spotted fish and plenty of long-spined sea urchins, but no turtles. We moved out into the deeper waters toward the center of the bay. I spotted something far below us and thought maybe it was a stingray, bur really it was a conch.

We decided to move back toward the shore where it was shallower and the sea grass beds thicker, and then head across the bay to the rocky shore on the other side. Sean and Phil were following our progress from near the shore. We were moving slowly along, about halfway across Salt Pond, when I spotted a stingray.

Southern Stingray. Image: Adam Geffen

We were close enough to shore that I was able to call out and tell Sean what we were seeing while Adam was filming.
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Virgin Islands National Park: Reef Bay Sugar Factory

After the petroglyphs, Sean, Adam, and I walked the level trail through the forest to the ruins of Reef Bay Sugar Factory near the beach at Reef Bay (see map).

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Virgin Islands National Park: Taino Petroglyphs

When Sean, Adam, and I reached the valley floor, we turned north onto Reef Bay Trail for a dozen yards until we came to the beginning of Petroglyph Trail, a spur trail leading westward through the forest until it crossed a gut, or semi-regular stream bed, which was currently dry. The trail dead-ended at the site of pre-Columbian petroglyphs carved by the Taino people (see map).
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Virgin Islands National Park: Lameshur Bay Trail

For the first time, we turned the Jeep left out of Concordia’s driveway, continuing down the hill and past the parking area for Salt Pond Bay. We continued west along the southern shore of St. John as the road turned from pavement to dirt and back again several times. After one of the steepest hills we’d encountered on the island, we passed the beach at Little Lameshur Bay, which appeared to be quite popular even on the remote side of the island. We continued a little further on and parked near the big National Park Service sign marking the Lameshur Bay Trailhead (see map).

Just south of the parking area were the ruins of a bay rum still and lime still that were still working in 1915. Sean, Adam, and I explored the ruins before setting off on the trail.

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Virgin Islands National Park: Moving Up the Hill

We tidied the eco-tent, finished packing up, and by 10:30am, had put everything into the Jeep to take it down to the registration desk to be held until we could move into the full-kitchen loft for the final two nights. But when Sean went in and asked, the staff said that they were cleaning the loft already, and that by the time we drove around and up the hill, they’d be done. We could move in immediately.
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Virgin Islands National Park: Sea Turtle

Green Sea Turtle: Image: Adam Geffen.

Sunday morning, March 10, dawned overcast. It was, looking back, the beginning of probably the single best day in and around a National Park I’ve had so far.

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Virgin Islands National Park: East End

Image: Sean M. Santos

Like the day before, the clouds were localized, and by the time we crested the ridge hiking away from Brown Bay, it was sunny again. We were starving, and instead of driving back to Concordia, we decided to go to Vie’s Snack Shack on the sparsely populated East End of St. John (see map). As it was, at Brown Bay’s parking area, we were partway out onto the mountainous, narrow peninsula that formed the East End.
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Virgin Islands National Park: Brown Bay

Pin Cushion Sea Star. Image: Adam Geffen

Adam and I had read in St. John Off the Beaten Track that Brown Bay (see map) was a secluded, often-empty north shore beach. It was also listed on the Park’s guide to snorkeling, which we were keen finally to do in earnest. So we decided that we would all spend Saturday morning at Brown Bay, enjoying the beach and the water. Friday afternoon, we’d reserved rental snorkels, masks, and fins from Concordia. We’d also packed our bags and lunches.

Saturday dawned clear, sunny, and warm. Soon we were underway on the 25-minute drive from Concordia to the parking area for Brown Bay Trail.
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Virgin Islands National Park: Ram Head

Friday, March 8 was overcast. It was the only morning of the trip I slept late, and I woke to find Adam making pancakes for breakfast. We discussed which adventures to have today and ultimately decided it was a great day for a hike because the sun wouldn’t be beating down on us. Bethany declined to join us both because she had sprained her ankle in January and it was acting up and also because she had some work to do on writing a grant. So she set herself up at a table by Concordia’s pool where there was access to wifi, and the rest of us assembled our gear.

Ram Head trail is one mile long. It begins at the far end of Salt Pond Bay beach and ends at the top of Ram Head point, 200 feet above the sea (see map). The first part of the trail skirts the rocky shore of the small peninsula immediately south of Salt Pond Bay.

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