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.

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).

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.

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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.

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.

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).