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The island’s shortest, yet wildly entraining, parade is happening this weekend!

St. John’s annual St. Patrick’s Day parade will take place tomorrow, March 15th at high noon. The route will begin, once again, near Gallows Point Resort and will follow the shoreline in front of Grande Bay before it ends around The Beach Bar and St. John Car Rental. This is a quick parade, so make sure you get set up on the parade route early to get a good seat!

My son Dalton will be throwing beads along with some of his friends and baseball buddies again this year. He will be joined by the Dynamic Dancers and a host of other St. John bars and businesses.

This is a super fun, family-friendly event, and I hope to see you all there.

The fun will spill over to Cruz Bay beach afterward, so bring those swimsuits for the kiddos because you know they’re going to get wet. And for the adults, don’t forget to bring your koozies! Sunday’s temps are forecasted to be around 84 degrees.

Cheers all! Hope to see you there!

Today’s post is short, sweet and to the point. We just concluded a record-breaking sea turtle season! Friends of the Virgin Islands National Park recorded 3,862 sea turtle hatchlings this season. How amazing is that!

There were 3,221 hatchings documented during the 2024 season, so this represents a nearly 20 percent increase for 2025. Absolutely incredible.

The majority of hatchlings are typically Hawksbill turtles, although we have a plethora of green turtles in our waters too. We even see a leatherback around the island from time to time, although this is not extremely common.

Volunteers adopt a beach starting in mid-to-late summer and look for nesting activity. Once a nest of found, Friends of the Park marks it, records it and keeps an eye on its progress. These nests have been found on dozens of beaches around the island.

Friends of the Virgin Islands National Park should release its turtle report soon. I will share all of these details once they become available.

In the meantime, if you see a sea turtle while you are out swimming or snorkeling, please keep your distance. Please do not touch them. Please do not feed them. Please simply love them from afar. I know I do!

Click here to visit Friends of the Park’s Sea Turtle Program page. It includes information on turtle talks, monitoring and much more.

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March 5th Update: The scanner has been fixed. Global Entry remains down.

If you are traveling out of the St. Thomas airport this week, please give yourselves more time than usual. The lines have been extremely long over the past week, and I have known several people that have missed flights due to this.

It’s nothing new that there are lines at the St. Thomas airport, but what has been happening over the past week is different. Apparently there is only one scanner that is currently working to scan luggage. This is causing major backups.

Friends of mine were on a 4 p.m. flight Sunday afternoon. They arrived at the airport a little after noon for their flight. They used a porter (red shirt/red cap), and it still took them an hour and fifty minutes to clear through customs and security. They did not check a bag. I know another person who flew out Sunday and was using a wheelchair. It took them an hour to get though without any checked bags. In a nutshell, lines are very long.

On a normal day, the airlines tell you to arrive three hours in advance. You should heed that advice, and wear comfortable shoes.