South Carolina is not a bad place to be in the winter time,
especially if you’re from New Hampshire and have a generous notion of what
constitutes “warm”. High temperatures
have been around 70 degrees yesterday and today, which is just fine by us. The sun is unexpectedly strong too – as evidenced
by my bright red lobster legs. |
| Seagull & pelican |
We are staying at the Sea Pines Resort way out at the end of
Hilton Head Island. It covers a large
amount of territory, all of it crisscrossed with bike paths and surrounded by
ocean. Our first order of business, upon
arriving yesterday, was to hop on the bikes and find our way to the beach. It was high tide and there was only a thin
ribbon of sand down at the tip of South Beach, but we had a nice walk to the
breakwater and the girls were able to work on their shell collections.
We’re staying near the South Beach Marina, which is a quaint
little village (“Just like New England!” the reservations lady gushed) way down
at the end of Sea Pines, and home of the famous Salty Dog Café. I thought it would be nice to have a little
town with shops and restaurants within easy walking distance – but had not
reckoned on how quiet this place is in February. We were almost the only people out and about
when we walked down there after dinner, and found much of it was closed. We did get to see some cool tropical birds
inside Jake’s Cargo, and luckily found that the Salty Dog ice cream parlor was
in operation (though I can’t imagine why since I think we were the only
customers all night).
 |
| Macaws and parrot in the middle of a souvenir shop |
Today was a wonderful day.
Bob and I went for a run along the beaches and bike paths, then we all
headed out for the day. Based on the
weather forecast this was to be the warmest day, so we headed for the
beach. This time it was low tide, and
there was a huge strip of exposed beach.
The beaches here are very hard-packed, and so are wonderful for
bike-riding. The bikes they rent down
here have fat tires and a single gear, and are just right for riding on the flat
sand. Within five minutes of arriving we
were watching a dolphin swim just a short way offshore.
Of course, after a few miles of riding, the girls had worked
up a sweat and it didn’t take them long to dive into the water. The locals, dressed in their sweatpants and
windbreakers, looked on in horrified fascination. I could only shrug and say, “We’re from New
Hampshire”. At fifty degrees, the water
wasn’t much colder than Hampton Beach in midsummer.
We rode home on the inland bike paths, making a stop at
Lawton Stables. Nadia’s dearest love is
horses, and the stables also has a petting zoo with various farm animals – plus
a friendly deer that’s free to roam around.
(Helpful tip: if you are going to a petting zoo and want to get lots of
attention (in the form of licking) from the animals, it is a good idea to go
for a swim in the salty ocean first.) We
also spied several gators lounging around the various lagoon and canals, but we
did not attempt to pet those.
Our package here included a $50 coupon for a fancy
restaurant. We did some research and
found that they had a children’s menu, so spruced ourselves up as best we could
and headed over to Harbour Town, the center of Sea Pines. The Topside Waterfront is on the second floor
at the base of the iconic Harbour Town lighthouse, and we got a corner table
looking out over the ocean in both directions.
We needn’t have worried about the kids, since we were pretty much the
only people in the restaurant – also, kids don’t get to antsy in restaurants if
they can watch a beautiful sunset and frolicking dolphins while waiting for
their food.
 |
| Air temperature: 68. Water temperature: 50. |
***
From Bob:
This was a pretty predictable day. The Sea Pines employee sitting on the rocking
chair outside the Welcome Center yesterday proved it. He overheard this conversation between me and
Lanie as we sat on another two rocking chairs outside the Welcome Center:
Lanie: Do they have oak trees here?
Me: I think so. They have a special kind of oak tree here
that grow really big and have lots of branches.
Lanie: Do they have maple trees here?
Me: I’m not sure
about that one. We’ll have to keep our
eyes open as we ride around and see if we spot any maples.
Lanie: We’ll have to see if they have any ferns, too.
 |
| Local fauna |
Me: Yep.
Lanie: Do they have any pines? Oh yeah, it’s Sea Pines!
Me: We can see some pines right here. And palm trees.
Lanie: I love palm trees.
The man looked at me and said, “You’re going to have a good
time here.”
And so we have, looking at all the kinds of trees (not a lot
of maples, though). We’ve rode our
smooth Beach Cruisers up the beach this morning, picnicked, rode across to the
horse stables/petting zoo, then rode home on among the forest bike path. It all got better as the day went on.
 |
| Friendly, salt-loving deer |
Other things we could have told you yesterday: the girls would go In the water, no matter
how cold it was (of the hundreds and hundreds of people we saw on the beach
today, only one person not in our family got in over their waist – virtually no
one else went in even up to their ankles); we would cover a lot of ground (Jen
hit her fitbit steps goal by early evening, even though fitbit does not
recognize cycling as a worthy activity); we would wind up needing something we
wished we brought from home (aloe lotion for sunburn -- $8 a bottle).
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