Oct. 30, 2013:

The Elysian Resort:
This is a Wyndham managed resort with Wyndham owning some of the units and Worldmark also having a few.  There's also several privately owned units that are rented out or occupied by residents.  It's on the east side of the island on Cowpet Bay and about 2 miles from Red Hook.  All of the Wyndham units are studios---either double studio (with 2 double beds and a kitchenette); king studio (like the double only with a king bed); studio parlor (which we got with the Queen Murphy bed and full kitchen); and the studio parlor loft (like ours only with a lofted bedroom and almost impossible to reserve).  I had thought about reserving the parlor and a king bedroom for Ken and me and having them adjoining, but then we would have had double the energy fee of $22/day and they probably would have been at opposite ends of the resort with the way things were going.  As it turned out, I really liked the studio parlor.  It was quite large, nicely renovated, the murphy bed was very comfortable and folded up and down easily, there were place settings for 4, even had a dishwasher, the patio had a table with 2 chairs and a lounge chair on it (good for drying our wet suits every day since we didn't have a washer and drier).   Would have been nice to have a higher unit with a better view, but at least we got to stay in the same rooms all 7 and 9 nights (2 reservations for the kids and 3 for us with one of ours being a Worldmark reservation, the other 2 being Wyndham).  I had tried the Wyndham VIP trick of  cancelling and rebooking our reservation within the 60 day mark to save half the points, but the cancelled reservations didn't come right back up.  I had a Worldmark bonus time reservation as a back up in case Wyndham didn't offer those days again.  Fortunately I was able to pick up 6 of our 9 nights at a later time for half the regular Wyndham points and kept the Worldmark reservation for the other 3 nights.  I didn't play that game with Angie and Josh's reservations.  I would say the studios were worth the full point price anyway now that we've stayed there. 

Murphy bed behind couch.  Couch was surprisingly comfortable for sitting on, too.  Kitchen to the left behind me, hallway to door and bathroom behind me to the right.

The small but adequate bathroom area---separate toilet and shower area to left.  No tub.  Closet with safe to immediate left although safe was locked and they couldn't open it.

 Nicely equipped kitchen with full sized appliances, granite counter tops, glass tiled back splashed. 

 From sliding door to patio towards kitchen .

 from kitchen area with Murphy bed folded down.  Still lots of room to get around.

 Ken cooking breakfast.  Murphy bed folded up (rather sloppily!).   Good view of front door; bathroom to the right behind kitchen.

View from our room (W149)

View from Angie and Josh's room (L 107)  Tennis court below them, main office to the left with the green awning.

Ken and I went to the main office in the morning and officially check-in.  Turned out we weren't charged the energy fee for either room for the night of the 29th.  We also asked about free internet for VIP and she actually gave us the password!   I don't know if that's a  Wyndham VIP privilege, but it paid to ask!  (Internet service wasn't the greatest, but it kept us connected to email and facebook.)  We also verified we wouldn't have to move 3 times and got beach towels for us and the kids.  Things were looking up! 

Next thing on the agenda was to find the grocery store.  The little one in Red Hook that the kids remembered had closed.  So we went to one close to Red Hook---Food Center.  I found things to be even more expensive here then on Hawaii.  We did bring some stuff with us from home---like pancake mix and some snacks, but still spent a fortune on sodas, cereals, milk, eggs, bacon, etc.  We ate most of our breakfasts in our rooms.  Then ate lunch and dinner out.

Then it was time to hit the water!  Angie and Josh told us how great the snorkeling was right there at Cowpet and they are right!   The resort even has a bunch of "toys" for rent, but we didn't rent any.

 It was a beautiful calm day for snorkeling Cowpet Bay! 

 This snapper was one of the first fishies to greet us.

 Then some sort of wrasse,

 around the point we came upon some great coral.

 a parrotfish

Christmas tree worms growing on some coral

 spiny urchin

 a blue head wrasse

 a "feather duster" worm

 another type of snapper

 a yellow stripe snapper in a graveyard of shells.

 a damselfish with lavender coloring instead of blue

 colorful corals

 general view around the point

 blue surgeonfish or tang?

 there is a school of these guys who like to follow snorkelers. (I'm told these are Palometa fish, a relative of the Pompano fish in Florida)

 another type of coral--elkhorn

 a school of squid

 close up of squid

 something scared them and they sprayed "ink" and took off.

 tiny fish over coral

 coming back around the point and looking towards the Elysian resort. 

At this point, my Canon D20 point and shoot underwater camera was acting very strangely!  It kept zooming on it's own.  By the time I got out and checked the battery compartment, it was too late.  I'd drowned another underwater camera.  I don't open them at the beach, I clean them after snorkeling, but I guess when you spend 3 and 4 hours at a time in the water and days at a time, it takes a toll.   But I wasn't about to be without an underwater camera for the rest of my trip!  On to research who sells underwater cameras in St. Thomas!  We tried Office Max and K-mart---no success there.  Decided to hit the internet and came up with Royal Caribbean and Boolchards so we headed into Charlotte Amelia only to find them closed already.  But since we were there, we went to Shipwreck Bar for a brew and dinner.  It was quite good and the wait staff was very nice---albeit Red Socks fans!

This was also the night of the 6th game of the World Series.  Our STL Cardinals were in it playing the Boston Red Socks (again) so we wanted to make sure we were around our rooms to watch it.  So after dinner, we made our way back to the "kids" room and shared a few more drinks while attempting to watch the Cardinals game.  We were down 2-3 in games won, so needed this win.  But after the Red Sox scored about 7 runs to our none, we gave up and headed to the pool and Jacuzzi---it was too painful to watch any more!  Our boys lost, but they put up a much better showing this year then last time we played them in the World Series!  It was made better by being in the warm pool and having a yummy Mango Cruzan and pinacolada juice drink!

More trials and tribulations, but we're going to have a great time, damn it!!!