Category Archives: Vacation

Things Discovered At Hilton Head

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Today, I’m going to write about a few of the things I discovered while at Hilton Head Island during the last three visits.

Alligators: They are a thrill for visitors to see!  My son, brother-in-law, dad and I always get a thrill out of seeing alligators floating in the small water areas or laying out in the sun.  We haven’t seen any large ones, but perhaps animal control removes the larger ones to make the area save for it’s highly profitable tourism business.

Tag-along bikes!  At Hilton Head there are many bike trails on the island, and “tag along bikes” are great for smaller children that are above the toddler age!  A tag-along bike is a bike that doesn’t steer and is attached the a larger bike by a metal rod that attaches to the seat of the larger bike.  This has enabled us to go for much further bike rides because my daughter couldn’t keep up if she had her own small bike (she’s only 6), and the fact that she didn’t like the carriage that attaches to some bikes.

Tag Along Bike

 Palmetto Bugs: Or cockroaches are huge and everywhere down here!  Once, our friend had one fly into her hair at night!  Like all cockroaches, they hide during the day, but at night they are everywhere that the light isn’t.  Surprisingly, they don’t scurry like smaller cockroaches when the lights do come one (at least outside they don’t).  I walked right up to one outside by the pool, and it just stayed put (some times the do scurry away though).  Only when I prodded it with a stick did it move, and ironically it moved towards me instead of away from me.  That caused me to move out of it’s way. 

Yep, if you have a bug phobia, Hilton Head isn’t the place for you.   But I do have a friend that hates all bugs that moved down to Hilton Head area (Beaufort); she claims that she loved it down there.  She said that you learn to live with them…

Spanish moss: (the whitish gray stuff hanging from trees like a beard) turns green during the winter months and is a flowering plant.  If you see some spanish moss on the ground, leave it!  the Spanish Moss that are on the ground are usually full of biting mites!!!  I read that the Spanish Moss in trees are usually okay, but I wouldn’t want to risk it!!!

Lizards and Salamanders: are everywhere!  Having a fairly warm climate means that the bugs thrive, which in turn means that the the lizard-like animal population is high too.  Most are cute, and the kids love trying to catch them.  Since they eat insects, the locals love them too!  Not related, but I’ve seen a lot of bats at night.  I wish they would whip out the mosquito population, but I guess that’s what you get when you live in the marshes…

The Beach:  It’s truly wonderful!  The beach is nice and clean with just a few family oriented groups in the vicinity of our house.  I’ve seen sail boats, fishing vessels, clam diggers, wave runners, speed boats and the list goes on and on…  Watch out for jelly fish though!!!

Well, I’m out of time.  My family keeps telling me to get off of the computer, so it’s time for a swim.

-MR

Golfing On The Cheap In Hilton Head, Our Caddyshack Adventure

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Golden Bear

Last year we found a golf course a good ways away from the core activities of the island, that was relatively cheap.  But this year we wanted to be on the island and golf at one of the better courses.

We choose “Golden Bear”!  It’s a golf course in a gated community in Hilton Head.  The course is a beautiful Nicklaus-designed course, with a fairly challenging layout.  We saw exotic (local to the area) birds in the water hazards, and even a few alligators basking in the sun.  The houses along the golf course were spectacular (at least million dollar homes)!  Needless to say, I was amazed by both the scenary and the beautiful homes along the course!

To save on cost, decided to book our tee time at discount hours (after 4:00pm).  So we had a tee time set for 4:32pm.  The deal we got was $31.00 (it’s regularly priced in the $70s) per person, and we got my son in for free (perhaps because he’s 10).

So it was a bit expensive for my taste, but a lot cheaper than it could have been!  As we played, we had a blast!  At some holes, we looked like we were living scenes from Caddyshack.  In particular, my dad was driving off of the tee, and when he hit the ball, it hit a tree and came flying back at him (really it came back 10 feet to the left of him, but it was close enough).  My brother-in-law and I were roaring in laughter!  Another Caddyshack scene was when my son hit a ball that almost hit a very large stork-like bird.  The ball land so close to the bird that the sand that kicked up from the ball landing, hit the bird and causing it to fly away to another water hazard on the course.

One final moment was when my dad hit the ball and it hit the water, yet somehow the ball managed to skip across the pond surface and landed high on the fairway on the other side.  Without skipping a beat, I said that somewhere in pond, there was a turtle swearing out loud at my dad.  It’s still a mystery how his ball bounced out of the water, after all he was over 100 yards away when he hit the ball.  That was a first for me!

After we finished the 15th hole, the sun got tired of waiting for us and decided to go down.  The lack of light and the voracious appetite of hungry mosquitoes caused us to decide to leave the last two holes unplayed. 

It was a great experience, and by far the most challenging course I ever played!  Hilton Head is definitely a place full of discounts and deals… if you look!

Do you have any great ways to get deals on entertainment while in vacation locations like Hilton Head Island?

-MR

Vacation Mishaps And Expenses, The Dog Escaped

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I’m sad to say that so far, our vacation has been a bust!

Earlier today, we were suppose to go crabbing, but it started raining, and wouldn’t stop!  Our friends that we were going to go crabbing with said that it has been a strange period where it has rained often in the evenings, making the pools in the area out of whack chemically.

From our friend’s house, we drove out to the island through a repeated downpour of rain.  Flash flood type of weather, not at all enjoyable.  The humidity also has been very, very high!

Once we got to the hilton head house that we rented for the week (along with my family), we learned that the dog my parents recently bought jumped the fence!  Since my mom in particular loves this new dog, she instantly wanted to fly back home to try and find the her.  Apparently, the dog keeps coming back (the boy that’s watching the dog has kept my parents updated), but is afraid of the boy and won’t come to him when he calls for her.

So the flight leaves at 5:30am this morning for my mom (my dad decided to stay).  My dad is going to drive my mom to the airport so she can be on the plane at 5:30am.  The ticket will cost $400.00.

Sometimes mishaps happen!  The dog that my mom has is very expensive and they were actually going to bred her to recoup some of the money spent.  The dog is an almost all black german shepard and although pretty, also very timid.  Unfortunately, she will only come to my mom and dad when called…

And to think, I was hoping I was going to blog about my frugal adventures crabbing.  It’s easy to do and crab is delicious!

-MR

Once In A Lifetime Event That Happened During The Driving Portion Of Our Vacation Trip

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Okay, I just spent over 10 hours driving in the car on the way down to Hilton Head in South Carolina, and I thought I’d share the most interesting aspect of the trip.

By far that most amazing thing (and the reason I’m blogging about it) was watching the “oversized load” home speed across the single lane bridge (due to construction) smashing and propelling construction barrels. This was fascinating, and reminded me of a comedy skit from National Lampoon’s Vacation or something similar!

It appeared to be one of those pre-fab houses! It as a bit bigger than a mobile home, but not by much. However, on the road, it took up the brim, it’s lane and a quarter of the next lane! So it had some decent girth!

The West Virginia construction crew was working on the bridge (but luckily, not at that time) and had the traffic funneled down to a single lane by using orange barrel’s to channel all the cars and trucks down to an extremely tight lane across the bridge… Well the house sped over the bridge crushing at least 40 barrels down to flatten pancakes. A few of the barrels where hit at the perfect angle and went flying onto the off-ramp (which a few semi’s had to run over them since they were on the off-ramp at the time).

After the incident, I wanted to check to see if damage had occurred on the house so I sped up and passed the semi pulling the house to looked back and check. On the side that hit the barrels, the protective framing was gone! While I didn’t see any direct damage with my quick glance… I’m sure there was at least a little.

If I only had a camcorder at the time (and we did in the far, far back area of our minivan)… Oh well, still it was a fascinating sight to see!

This event really had us laughing (although I did feel a bit sorry for the house owner for the slight bit of damage that happened to the corner of the house)… Have you ever seen anything as outlandish during your traveling to your vacation location?

-MR