May 3 - May 12  Hilton Head Island Motorcoach Resort - Hilton Head Island, SC

This resort is a new one for us, but one we want to visit again.  It's a big resort (nearly 400 sites)  with lots of mature trees (mostly huge pines and "live" oaks). Most sites are also beautifully landscaped.  Without any prior knowledge of this resort, we blindly picked a site near the back of the property.  It turned out to be wonderfully shaded from some huge live oaks. Our weather was terrific with highs most days in the upper 80's which gave us the excuse (like we needed one) to enjoy and cool off in the pool.

We took a day to visit one of the public beaches (Coligny Beach) where we were impressed by the rocking chairs and wooden swings that are available as resting spots for people coming and going to the beach.  We saw this beach on a Sunday so it was a hub of activity. It looked like the Jersey beaches on a summer weekend.  Jan made the mistake of taking her sandals off to walk in the sand without realizing hot the sand was away from the water and ended up with several small blisters on the bottoms of her feet.  Luckily they only presented problems for a day or two.

One day was devoted to errands and a car tour of the island including a stop at a fort called Fort Howell built in 1864 during the Civil War. This fort was built by black Union Army troops to protect the first town (Mitchelville) in the South specifically for the newly freed slaves.  After our visits to several forts while we stayed in Georgia, we didn't want to pass this one up.  Unfortunately, the mosquitoes near the fort were voracious and started attacking soon after we arrived.  We walked quickly out, viewed the remains of the earthen fort, took a few pictures and hastily returned to the car.  While driving the island, we also noticed that the island has a terrific system of bike paths.  Once again, we regretted that we hadn't brought our bikes along on the trip.  However, we learned that we could rent bikes and they would deliver them to and pick them up from the resort and to our site for us.  That convinced us to get a couple of rental bikes for the rest of our visit.  These bikes were better than the ones we rented on Jekyll Island and the same price for a week as we had paid for a day at Jekyll Island, but they still had coaster-type brakes.  After years of riding a bike with hand breaks, it took some time adjusting to the coaster brakes and we're anxious to travel in the future with our own bikes.

Our first bike trip was about 17 miles round-trip to South Beach located in an area of the island called Sea Pines.  We rewarded ourselves when we got to South Beach by having lunch at the Salty Dog Cafe.  Steamed shrimp, hush puppies and coleslaw.........all delicious.

To give our seats a rest, the next day, we went for a hike at Pinkney Island National Wildlife Refuge which is a small island located between the mainland of South Carolina and Hilton Head Island.   

We hiked about 3 miles and saw a busy bird sanctuary.  Before we visit this area again, we'll have our own bikes and a rack to transport them on the car.  We could have traveled and seen much more of the 7-8  mile island with our bikes.

One of our neighbors at the resort suggested a hike in a part of the Sea Pines area called the Forest Preserve.  We were intrigued and headed out to take a look.  We hiked 3.7 miles that day hoping to see a rookery that was shown on their map, but when we hiked out to the rookery, we found a sign that there were no birds.  

After our fun experiences at the rookery in Venice, FL, that was disappointing, but we had a great walk through a beautiful forest on mostly shady paths and enjoyed the trip.

For our last full day, we geared up and hit the bike paths again.  This time, we did a 15 mile (round-trip) to Singleton Beach. 

With the warm temperatures, any of the days with bike rides or hikes got us sweating (or is that perspiring?) .  On our return to the resort, we put on swim suits and headed for the resort pool.  Ahhhhh....so cool and refreshing.  A dip in the pool and some relaxation before we started thinking about dinner.    We were having such a good time that we decided to celebrate our 44th wedding anniversary (May 12th) before we left. 

We met some wonderful people while we were on Hilton Head Island.  Our immediate neighbors on one side were a very nice couple from Quebec, Jocelyn and Michel.  Michel is confined to a wheel chair but that didn't seem to stop him from living in a motorcoach and being active in the resort community.  We also discovered that Michel drove the motorcoach.  Neighbors across the street from us, Roly and Carol were from Avon Park, Florida.  Roly and Carol gave us some great insight into other RV parks/resorts that we would like to try

This resort is a definite "must visit again", but for now, we need to continue our journey towards home.