St. Croix–Christiansted and Points East

DSC00418_2Christiansted, at 3,000, the larger of St. Croix‘s two towns, is just what one would expect a Caribbean tourist town to be: shops, restaurants, water sports, bars, and realtors. When cruise ships dock at St. Croix’s only non-industrial, deep-water port in Frederiksted, passengers are almost always immediately taxied or bused to the more attractive, more upscale, more commercial, Cristiansted. According to my walking-around, noonish census, visible tourists here outnumber visible Crucians 2-1.

Some observations:

A boardwalk slides around a few blocks of waterfront where pine needle-like seaweed accumulates…

where decrepit Danish windmills stand, refitted as seaside bars…

where mahi mahi (Coryphaena hippurus) catches are weighed…

and fileted. The thrashing fish are tarpon (Megalops atlanticus), scrapping for scraps like underwater seagulls.

Narrow streets and many tourists create parking challenges. Here my wife admires my car-plus-13 inches accomplishment: back, forward, back…and done!

DSC00437From Christiansted we drove east to Point Udall, the easternmost point of land under an American flag, by direction of travel, omitting embassies. Note that the westernmost point of land, using the same definition, is Point Udall, Guam.

The east Point was named for Stewart Udall, Arizona Congressman and Secretary of the Interior under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson. The west Point was named for his brother, Morris “Mo” Udall, who succeeded him in Congress and later ran for President.

Stewart’s Point sits in the breakers above my ear.

Before I retire this blog, I shall strive for a bookend photo of Mo’s Point above my other ear.

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4 Comments on “St. Croix–Christiansted and Points East

  1. Great parking job!! What about Saipan for easternmost – it is a US Territory. Same status as Guam but on the other side of the dateline??

    1. It depends on how you define easternmost. The Udall definition uses traveling direction from the mainland. If you were to travel both east and west from the mainland, you’d get to Saipan first by heading west, not east. By your definition, the Big Island of Hawai’i (or maybe Catalina) would be easternmost. If you’re thinking of using longitude, the easternmost and westernmost land is in the Aleutian Islands, which straddle the 180th meridian.

  2. As Stewart and Morris said at the dedication, “We’re noted for making a lot of points and thought these two you’d all really like.”

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