Tag Archives: hilton head

Hilton Head Island Again?

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Hilton Head House

Hilton Head House

This year my entire family decided to take a trip down to Hilton Head Island again.  Hopefully, we’ll most likely stay at the same Hilton Head house as we have in previous years.

We like the familiar Hilton Head house because we are comfortable and like where it’s located.  We usually stay at the Palmetto Dunes area, the houses we’ve stayed at has always been one in this particular area.

Personally, I like the Palmetto Dunes area because the beach in that area isn’t very crowded and easy to access.  I’ve biked to the public beach access areas, and while they are nice too, I prefer the less crowded Palmetto Dune beaches.

We always get bikes for everybody in our group.  We even get a Tag-along bike so my daughter could ride too.

Most likely, we’ll also go to Sea Pines resort.  It cost $5.00 per car to get in, but this is where the Salty Dog restaurant and other small shops and restaurants are located.  I especially like the Harbour Town Lighthouse because unlike other lighthouses, this ones has old pictures with small comments below them explaining the history of the lighthouse as you climb the stairs to get to the top.

Harbour Town Lighthouse

Harbour Town Lighthouse

This area also has one of the coolest trees that I’ve ever seen in a certain park in the area.  The tree is growing horizontally instead of vertically, very cool and strange at the same time.  The kids love that tree!

I think we like the house so much because it’s almost seems like it’s our vacation home.  Of course we are just renting it, but you could almost imagine that you owned it after a week of living in it.  Very cool feeling!

I really look forward to eating seafood while I’m down there, especially the fried oysters!  We don’t really have fried oysters up where I live, so I try to get my fill while I’m down there!

Initially I wanted to go to Hawaii, but the rest of my family didn’t want to do that, so it’s Hilton Head again!  Still it will be a blast!

Cheers,

MR

Disney World Seen From The Eyes Of A Child

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Disney Castle

 
Surprisingly, I’ve been missing Disney World a lot lately! 

It’s surprising to me because it was expensive for us to go since we don’t live close to Florida, and I hated paying the $4,000 to $5,000 for the trip.

So I decided to ask my daughter (she’s 6 mind you), if she missed Disney.  She shrugged her shoulders, which means not really.  Thinking that she must not have understood, I asked her which vacation she preferred better, the one at Hilton Head, that we when to this past summer or Disney World.  I posed this question to her believing she would say Disney World instantly.  She didn’t!  My daughter (also called pumpkin, princess, sweetie, sweetie-pie, etc)  said she liked both vacations about the same!!!  This little discovery was an amazing answer to me!  I was a bit shocked, I thought Disney would be the winner, hands down.

My 6-year-old is very smart (she tests at an ending 3rd grade reading level, not bad for a beginning 1st grader), and already judges things much like an adult would, so I was thrown for a loop! 

That’s when it hit me!  She doesn’t have the same base background that I do with Disney!  As a very young child, I use to get excited every Sunday night to watch the latest Disney special on TV (or were they reruns by then).  I’ve seen all the classics, I know almost all of the characters (both older and newer ones).  But to my daughter and son, Mickey at Disney World is just some person dressed in a costume.  I don’t think they felt the magic that my wife and I did.

So, while the value of my investment in the Disney World experience may increase for my kids as time folds (nostalgia), currently Disney is a bit of a disappointment for me at the moment, at least for generating excitement from my daughter.  This may change with time (nostalgia kicking in again).

I was sick the entire time I was down there (flu), and yet I still wish I could go back again!  Could it be that my daughter is too smart to enjoy that magic of Disney?  If so, that makes me a bit sad!

We’ll have to go again sometime, perhaps I can embellish the experience somehow!  For me, now that a bit of time has passed, the money spent on the vacation seemed well worth it!

Do you find that sometimes kids enjoy a cheaper vacation more so than an expensive one? 

-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

Hilton Head Bound… In August

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This will be the third year that my entire family will go down to hilton head again.

Ironically, my son (while asking about Hawaii too) said that he wanted to go down to Hilton Head with the family again.  I have to admit, I’m looking forward to it myself this year too (see my post from this past winter).

We will probably go kayaking (hopefully) with the dolphins again this year, rent bikes to go on the various trails, and of course… hit the beach.  Now that I’m pretty comfortable with the location and have a feel for the location, I’ll probably read a little more and try to do stuff that I haven’t done the previous two years.

My only regret will probably be that fact that we didn’t  book a vacation on one of the plantations. The main reason that I would like to stay on a plantation is because my 6 year old is going to be riding a bike by herself.  The house that we are staying at is close to the main road into the island, and while the traffic on the road that the house is on isn’t too busy for an adult it’s still pretty busy for a 6 year old.  I might break down and rent another tag-a-long bike attachment.  That way, she would be more safe than ride a bike by herself…  I’m sure she’ll protest, but safety first!

This time around, I’ll also be taking my golf clubs, and perhaps even my son’s clubs  🙂

Unfortunately, we are not schedule to go down until August though, so we’re in for a long wait.

If you ever go down to Hilton Head, consider kayaking with the dolphins…  It was a much better experience than I thought it would be.

-MR