We went on a true vacation. No children. I feel rejuvenated. It was relaxing and incredible. Very healing after going through a miscarriage the week before. Thank you to Andrew's work for having such an excellent perk--a vacation fund! We get $2,000 a year that has to be used for travel. Well shucks, we can do that. Major thanks to my parents for taking care of our youngsters so we could go on this escapade. Visiting South Carolina has been on our bucket list and we see why people love it! What a gorgeous place! We flew out of SLC on Saturday, October 11 and returned on Saturday, October 18.
After taking a red-eye flight, we arrived in Charleston at 8:30am on Sunday, October 19. I had the day mapped out full of recommendations. We were pumped.
It was raining buckets when we arrived! Roads were flooding. The rental car hydroplaned a time or two. We heard downtown Charleston was closed due to the bad weather and that it had been pelting rain nonstop for a few days. We were disappointed to say the least. Lots of the things we intended to do required mother nature's cooperation. Thankfully, all the crummy weather left after day 1. We had ideal weather the rest of the time. The humidity we've heard complaints about wasn't really a thing. October is a nice time to visit.
We were still able to go to church in Charleston since that's indoors! I love wards outside of Utah! People were friendly and I relished the closeness felt amongst members and the vulnerability in relief society. Funny story... we landed not long before church. We changed out of our sweatpants/dirty airplane clothes in the car of the church parking lot right before the meeting. I used the visor mirror in my car to put on some makeup to hide the dark circles under my eyes. I don't sleep well on planes.
Giving up that the weather would turn, we made the 2 hour drive to our Airbnb condo on Hilton Head island. This post covers activities we did and the food we ate in Hilton Head!
Here are some things I learned about Hilton Head...
- There are butterflies all over the place! They're so pretty! I mostly saw orange and yellow butterflies.
- There are many signs that say beware of alligators. This one was right outside of our condo.
.HEIC)
- There are miniature stop signs for bikers on bike trails. Well, on google maps, the tiny stop signs appear and show like they're stop signs for cars on the road. They're not. At first it was a little confusing when the maps would say, "At the stop sign, turn right." We didn't have a stop sign!
- Turtles like to hangout and bask in the sun! We saw several.
We spent 5 nights in Hilton Head. Our condo backed up to Folly beach. We spent our last night in Charleston.
.HEIC)
Activities
- Beach. There was a quaint boardwalk that led us to the water. We tried to soak up as much time as we could near the ocean. We walked the shore at sunset, did a sunrise run, and basked in the rays of the sun while reading. We both managed to get sunburned. Just call Andrew Rudolph. I wasn't able to swim for most of our trip, but when I finally could I didn't spend much time in the salty water. It wasn't quite like the broiling showers I'm used to.
Important question.... What did I read at the beach??
- Kayaking to see dolphins. Lots of reviewers online suggested a dolphin tour and a friend who visited the island recently told us it was worth doing. We decided to take watching dolphins to the next level and do a kayaking dolphin tour. Andrew said that even if we didn't see dolphins, we could enjoy kayaking still. I think he jinxed us. The views were breathtaking. We were in a double kayak and are both tall. I'm surprised I didn't lose my oar after many collisions with Andrew's. The tour guide told us that only 5 out of 100 tours haven't seen dolphins. We beat the odds... After 2 hours we still hadn't seen anything! Right as we were almost back to the dock, we saw faraway fins. Unfortunately we couldn't follow them because it was nearly dark. Still a pleasant experience seeing these views. I woke up with sore arms the next morning. Andrew won the lottery and saw 3 dolphins on a beach run one morning without me. I got to see the video though.
- Sea Pines Forest Preserve. Seeing an alligator was high on Andrew's list and we got to! We strolled around a swamp. It was secluded, shady, and beautiful! We saw squirrels, a lizard, and the best part was when I spotted an alligator! The alligator was slow moving and lazy and didn't seem to want to show us much, but we watched it for awhile. We also saw moss on trees and so much algae covering the water.
- Legendary golf. Hilton Head takes mini golf seriously. There a few courses and they have 36 holes! We opted to do the 18 hole course. The ambiance was fun. At night, they light the course up and go all out with water features. Andrew got not only 1 but 2 holes in one! We clearly should have done the "championship course" instead of just the " professional" one. I learned my lesson... Stop betting. I lost by 11 points which resulted in me having to take the middle seat on the airplane ride home. The jokes on Andrew though because on our first flight the row only had 2 seats (no middle seat) and the second flight there was an empty seat by us. Phew, I dodged a bullet. The golf course had a bible verse at every hole which was unique. We saw several churches there!
- Renting bikes. We could rent bikes where we stayed. We explored the island and rode a 15 mile route. The island is flat, but there is a bridge. The path we took required us to cross the bridge, and boy was it steep. I had hoped we'd have our own lane to cross the water, but we shared the road with cars whizzing by at 55mph. At least it was a wide bike lane, but there wasn't a large margin for making mistakes and we weren't wearing helmets. We always do at home, but the cheapskate in me couldn't justify $20 more than we already paid just for helmets. As we started the incline, I just went for it. No turning back now. Our rental bikes didn't have gears, but that didn't stop us. I didn't dare pause to take a picture at the top of the bridge of the gorgeous view. Couldn't risk it. We lived to tell the tale, and my butt felt that ride for a couple days.
- Pickleball. The complex we stayed in had pickleball courts! We had a great time competing with each other. Andrew is better than me much to my chagrin. I claim he's lucky. He did admit I make better shots than him. I did manage to beat him one game though! We played over 10 games and went to the courts a couple of times. There was "open play" each morning and a large group gathered to play doubles. After seeing us play for over an hour, another couple invited us to join the group the following morning. We were warned that "all levels are welcome from 2.0 to 5.0 and not to worry, pickleball players are pretty nice. Nobody would be mean to us." Clearly, we are professionals-not. Almost everyone in the pickleball club were retirees. This little pep talk made us chuckle for days.
- We went to the "Frozen Moo" ice cream shop TWICE. We couldn't resist. They have 91 flavors. The InstaGraham (graham cracker) and Savannah Bannah (peanut butter, banana, with chocolate chunks) were our favorites.
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