We’re settled in here at the Sea Pines and we’ve started to get the lay of the Hilton Head.  As nice as it is, it may not live up to Watkinsville, GA, and our friends the Byers.   Of course the value of good friends is difficult to quantify, and the Byers’ hospitality was top-notch.  But it really was Abby the puppy who stacked the deck. 

The girls spent the last day and a half frolicking in the woods behind our hosts’ home with their friends Riley, Cole and Connor, and with Abby the dog.  The tree house and trampoline were barely touched, but the stream and ravine were thoroughly explored and the grove of bamboo was harvested for building materials.  At some point Riley offered up an “arcade” with real prizes (Lanie garnered a fistful of candy and Nadia is taking home a prized ice cream scoop with a handle fashioned like a pig).  They seem to have developed a few new types of tag along with a game that consists of jumping from the six-foot bank of the ravine over the river onto the sandy shore beyond.  Lanie does not seem to have the leg strength to carry her all the way over the stream.  Luckily, she took her sisters’ advice and put on her bathing suit for this game.

Saturday was devoted largely to travel — including a 6 am bus ride from Portsmouth to Logan, a two-hour flight to Charleston and a four hour drive into Georgia.   We appreciated seeing Tyra, Jeb, and their kids, and we definitely took to maneuvering around outside without stepping over snow banks, or without the need for boots, or even shoes in general.   We agreed when Zoe pointed out that the green grass and blooming trees gave us signals of May even though there’s a week left of February to go.

Sunday’s highlights included a trip to a small Zoo in Athens, then to the University of Georgia’s main campus, where all the kids spent about an hour climbing up inside a gigantic magnolia tree.  Athens is a true college town, with a beautiful campus and an active downtown offering many appealing lunch options.  We decided on pizzas at the Mellow Mushroom.

The big adventure of the day (perhaps it will eventually stand as the biggest adventure of the whole trip) was a walking excursion along and in the creek that runs through the Byers’ back yard.  Jeb said they had once before completed the trip from their house downstream to the junction with the Middle Oconee River.   It seemed like a fine idea until Lanie’s teeth started chattering.  She and Cole started running out of gas about two-thirds of the way to the big river, our way made more difficult than Jeb expected because of multiple trees that had fallen in the creek during last week’s ice storm.  We managed to follow the creek to the junction and then hike back via the high country (including some time walking on train tracks and a few cross-country treks across private property) and make it home in time for everyone to have a hot shower, eat some dinner and collapse into bed.

Monday is an early morning for the Byers – 6:40 school bus for Riley and Cole.  As a result, we were on the road early and had a relatively uneventful four-hour drive to Hilton Head (second biggest adventure of the trip so far – lunch at Estill, SC’s China Town restaurant).   Without too much navigational trouble we made it to the Sea Pines resort and are ready for the good life.

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From Jen:

When we realized our friends the Byers lived only four hours from Hilton Head, we gave our kids a choice.  We had promised them a week at a beach resort with very little driving.  We told them that instead we could spend the first couple of days with our friends, but it would involve 4+ hours in the car each way and NO COMPLAINING.  They didn’t hesitate for an instant – the unanimous decision was to detour to Georgia.

So, we’ve added another state to our list.  I think this means that the kids have now been in every state on the eastern seaboard except for North Carolina.  And due to Google’s very creative maneuvering (I think I must have accidentally checked off “Avoid towns of more than 1000 people” or something), we saw a fair amount of Georgia (and South Carolina) countryside. 

The “NO COMPLAINING” part didn’t entirely work out, but this was partially due to the fact that on both driving days we hit the lunch hour with nary a restaurant in sight.  Saturday, having stupidly passed up the Chile’s that was right outside the airport gates, we found ourselves, hours later, gratefully staggering into a combination Subway/Domino’s/gas station in some nameless small town.  En route back to South Carolina today, we had almost resigned ourselves to a gas station Blimpie’s when we spied a sign for a Chinese restaurant just off the main road.  This place appeared extremely sketchy, with a single employee eyeing us in a puzzled and suspicious manner and a single restroom with an “Out of Order” sign on it (which fortunately turned out to be a lie).  Zoe, who was starving and loves Chinese food, took one look at the place and said, “Maybe we should keep going.”  However, in the end it seemed to work out pretty well – there was no food that was actually prepared since there were no other customers at the time, so everything we got was fresh made.  It took a little longer, but I think improved the quality.  Also, no negative digestive repercussions as of this point.