On Tuesday we checked out Beaufort a little more by walking downtown and exploring the surrounding neighborhoods.
There are a couple of nice shops and restaurants, but overall not a huge tourist draw. I do see how people would like this area when they retire because it does have things to do, but not too much where you would get annoyed by tourists.
We went to lunch at a local joint and sat outside and enjoyed the view of the water while we waited and waited for our food – the place had great views…but horrible service.
After lunch Gwen and I hit a couple of shops while Larry and Scott trailed behind – probably muttering to themselves wondering how shopping always seems to be involved during our trips. Although, I suppose I could equally argue that the Cubs (games, stats etc.) always seem to sneak into our vacation one way or another. :)
We did have one freaky/Kismety thing happen – Gwen and I went into this she she store and were walking around when Gwen noticed that on this one bookshelf displaying creams and perfume there were 2 stickers stating "Gwen Loves..." and "Jill Loves..." Apparently there were 2 employees with the same names as us and the point was that they were recommending products. Gwen and I, of course, thought this was some cosmic alignment of the stars that this happened & that we saw it, so we pointed it out to the saleswoman who apparently did not see that this was not some cosmic alignment of the stars...Oh well.
Shopping downtown did not take that long at all, so we walked around the various neighborhood, even seeing a secession house.
We then were walking along a frontal road so we could see the water and admire the mansions facing it, when we came across a woman and her dog as she was weeding on her property.
Her dog came right up to us and dog lovers that we are...we all "pounced" on the cute dog to pet him/her.
The woman came up to us and started talking to us. She was so nice and gave us all these tips on local restaurants etc.
I couldn't help myself, so I mentioned how beautiful her house was.
It turns out that she and her husband had purchased the house and fixed it up. Unfortunately, her husband had passed away and it was just her and her dog Bay living in the house.
I just felt so bad for her because she was probably 50 if that and was now a widow.
We then chatted about her dog Bay, who was a Boykin - apparently SC's state dog - so cute!
She also shared that she and her husband owned quite a few houses in the area, including Bubba's house in the movie Forest Gump! The thing that really struck me was that her was this very nice woman, who apparently was very well-off and she was so down to earth - just a pleasure to talk to.
I can't believe we didn't ask the woman her name because we were talking quite awhile. She then completely floored us by inviting us in for a tour of her house. Again, such a nice woman - she didn't know us from Adam and here's she's inviting 4 strangers into her house.
What can I say...her house was stunning! In her study, she told us that she used a hand heater and scraper to scrape all the paint off the wooden walls - they might have been cherry - the room just glowed.
She had lovely-period piece furniture that I suspect was from her family heirlooms.
We went from room to room with Bay apparently acting as our guide.
Honestly, I wish I could have asked the woman her name because I would have loved to send her a note thanking her for her hospitality.
What a nice day in Beaufort!
Beaufort, Mrs. Bubba Gump & Boykins! – April 14th
Stepford, Hilton Head & Buttah! - April 13th
I thought today's trip would be an excellent way to finagle a trip to Habersham (www.habershamsc.com), which a planned community in Beaufort that I had read about in Southern Living and always wanted to visit. The houses are cottage-style and they revolve around a downtown. So I figured, since I had Larry, Scott and Gwen captive in the car, I could talk them into a quick pit-stop before heading to Hilton Head.
I had originally thought that Habersham would have been built right near downtown Beaufort, but it's actually situated on the outskirts of town, a bit out of the way, but I suppose with good reason because the development is huge! The nice this is that there is more land than houses, so you really feel like your plopped down in some land preserve with lakes, walking trails and shops and restaurants - pretty much ideal if you ask me.
We first went to the "downtown" of Habersham, which had a few stores and restaurants, however, the odd thing was - and this was consistent with all that we saw while driving through Habersham - we couldn't find any people. Granted it was duirng the week, but no people. OK, maybe 1 or 2.
As my travelmates pointed out, it was a bit Stepfordish. I, of course, refused to accept this because the houses were so beautiful. I mean, if Larry and I suddenly won the lottery, I would love to have a house here or by one of the plans and build it in Crystal Lake.
We drove around for awhile and headed for Hilton Head.
When we arrived in Hilton Head, I was struck with how developed it was since the last time I was there. Yes it was golf course after golf course, which is what I expected, but the odd thing was it seemed like one strip mall after another! I guess I thought there would be a downtown Hilton Head or something for us to walk around - nothing...nada...zip. To each his own. but I think we were all happy that we didn't pick Hilton Head to be our vacation house spot.
First we went to the Tanger Outlets, which is pretty much a given with Gwen and I - who can turn down an opportunity to shop?!? I managed to get a few things - mostly at the cosmetic outlet which had some great deals on Bobbi Brown - love her stuff, but even at the outlet, she's pretty pricey.
It was already a bit late when we found the winery, Island Winery (www.islandwinery.com). I think we were a somewhat disappointed at first because 1) it started to pour, 2) the winery was closing in 10 minutes and 3) it was just a big metal building. I guess after visiting wine country in California I was expecting to see grapes growing in a field etc., not a building in a business park with a small store. On the plus side, we were able to do some quick tastings and Scott and Gwen bought some delicious wine.
So now it was about 6ish and we had a problem: although I found lots of restaurants on the Web for Hilton Head, they were all spread out and in god-knows where strip malls, so we had no idea where to go for dinner. Thankfully, one of the winery staff did point us in the right direction on some good options. So we hopped in the car and checked out a couple.
As it continued to downpour we decided it was ridiculous to search aimlessly for a place to eat, so we decided on The Old Oyster Factory (www.oldoysterfactory.com).
It was right on the water and looked great – packed – but great. So we headed inside and unfortunately had to dodge the rain as we bolted inside.
The restaurant reminded me of the seafood restaurants in Connecticut and it just made me happy because it had such a familiar feel to it – can’t take the East Coast out of the girl! I was just praying that we’d have good food since we seemed to be on a roll of great restaurants on this trip.
We had a great, albeit rainy, view of the water – we were pretty lucky with our table because even though this place was huge, it was still packed with people. We ordered our food (I ordered the petite fillet – yum!) and settled in with our drinks.
The waiter brought us a complimentary basket of hushpuppies (deep-fried balls of cornmeal - what's not to love!) and what I thought was a bowl of ice cream – having tasted HPs only once before, I wasn’t sure what the local custom was.
We were actually all staring at said bowl as the waiter set it down. We then realized that it was not ice cream but one “honkin’” bowl of BUTTER! We were actually all muttering that it was a huge amount of butter and the waiter said “You’d actually be surprised how many people ask for more butter.”
Now I LOVE butter – I have the hips to prove it! - but I know when to say when, and this was just an obscene amount if it. I felt my arteries clogging just by looking at it!
The food was pretty tasty and we all left stuffed and happy – thankfully, we only sampled the HPs and sans butter, so our arteries were left relatively unscathed.
Unfortunately it was still raining when we left to head back to Beaufort, so we napped in the car (except for Larry!) on the way “home” in order to rest up for an evening of wine, Rumicube and Dominoes.
The evening was topped off with several rounds of Dominoes, with Scott and Larry “arguing” over moves and Gwen and I just laughing, sipping wine, and laughing some more.
Easter - April 12th
Apparently the Easter Bunny likes to vacation in Beaufort, because when we came downstairs on Easter Sunday all the eggs we had decorated the night before had "mysteriously" disappeared and there was an Easter basket on the dining room table! No one would own up to it...but we eventually discovered that Gwen hid the eggs and Scott, unbeknownst to all of us, had purchased Easter goodies at the Walgreens we had stopped at the night before. Scott was very "sneaky" because somehow he pulled this off right in front of the 3 off us without anyone realizing it!
We managed to get ourselves ready for church relatively quickly and went searching for a church for Easter Mass - I didn't look up local churches because I thought the Catholic church a block down the street was going to have Sunday mass - later I found out that they built a larger church on the outskirts of Beaufort - unfortunately after the fact.
So we hopped in the car for when we thought would be when churches would be having service (10ish) and went searching for a church. We tried to go to several Catholic churches (all the churches seemed to be on one road) but each one we went to either was completely full or already in service. We were able to find a Lutheran church, which I felt good about because Scott is Lutheran.
I had never been to a Lutheran service and it was just lovely - very welcoming with fabulous bell ringers (not sure of the proper name) who played beautiful music throughout the service - it was just all around a nice thing to be able to experience a different church's service. You realize, of course, that if you are a person of faith, that regardless of what religion you may follow, we really are very similar and we all are a part of something larger - and that's pretty amazing.
After church we headed to downtown Beaufort and ate at what would be our "regular" breakfast place - the name escapes me now - but it was very good.
The rest of Sunday was spent just puttering, and checking out the neighborhood - of course, we also managed to go to Walmart again because we kept either running out of things or forgetting we needed something - pretty much what we did for the whole week - Walmart was a regular jaunt!
Heading to Beaufort & Sleeping at the Aquarium - April 11th
The day was beautiful as we headed to Beaufort. We took the back roads (actually we didn't have a choice) which we love, but unfortunately we might have overwhelmed Gwen with the long drive, but Gwen was a trooper!
The "problem" with the area is that it's not that the distance from Charleston to Beaufort is long, but because you are dealing with inter coastal areas, you are weaving in and out of waterways and can't go in a straight line to your destination.
But I did get in another one of my "fixes" - there's a roadside stand/store that we've been to before that sells homemade pies, spices and peach cider (yum!) - I just love anything "foodie." So when I walked in I did my typical once-around and grabbed what I could, especially the peach cider. I wish I could buy the cider in IL because it is so good - it makes you think of summer!
Sometime later we arrived in Beaufort, which is a small "city" on the inter coastal - just beautiful. I wouldn't necessarily plug it as a full-fledged destination area even though it has certain aspects - restaurants, nearby beaches etc. It's just a quiet and beautiful area that we picked that was near Charleston and Savannah. However, it was where they filmed The Big Chill, Forest Gump and The Great Santani, so if you remember the scenery, you'll remember how beautiful the area is.
The house we rented is a historic house - apparently Beaufort's 1st aquarium, which we couldn't figure out because it's a house, but I suppose in 18-something that's where you'd have a 1st aquarium.
So we parked and started lugging all our luggage to the front door. Unfortunately when we walked inside we very quickly realized that the house wasn't clean - full of dust, the bathrooms had toothpaste spray on the mirrors - it was just gross. Which was very odd since before we went to the house we did a drive by and saw that the cleaning service was there to clean because the house was rented the week before.
Now I can be messy at times, but I'm pretty neat in general - when I clean...I clean! And hey, if it's your mess, it's not as off-putting as someone else's!
We were just annoyed because you pay a lot of money for a vacation rental and you expect it to be clean.
Well unfortunately I went into some sort of ocd-mode because I just couldn't get it out of my head that it wasn't clean - poor Larry, Gwen and Scott had to see me running around the house muttering "I can't believe they didn't clean...we need to clean."
We called the owner of the house and they were apologetic and said they'd send out the cleaning service again. Unfortunately we didn't realize there was only one key to the house, so when we left to buy stuff (including cleaning supplies, natch) at Walmart the cleaning service couldn't get into the house! So basically when we returned we discovered the house wasn't clean except for the filthy outside table.
After running around an hour or so cleaning, we were all calm because the house was clean and we could relax - and I became "normal" again and no longer was flipping out about cleaning - OK I'll fully admit that I got a little scary...but come on...the house should have been clean. Hopefully Larry, Gwen and Scott forgave me for my goofiness - I'm usually more relaxed about things, honest :).
Adding insult to injury we then discovered that the bikes that were promised for the house weren't there and the grill I do believe had never been clean - not really off to a good start!
But the evening ended well. First we colored Easter eggs (who doesn't like Paas Easter Egg Coloring and using the metal egg dipper!) and then we grilled after Larry and Scott scoured the grill. We had wine, a fabulous meal by Larry and Scott, great music and Dominoes - it was a fantastic evening, despite the earlier "bumps."
The Dress Mystery Continues & The Hunley - April 11th
Saturday was check-in for our house rental in Beaufort, SC (about 45 minutes North of Savannah, GA), so we wanted to get up relatively early to have breakfast, visit the H.L Hunley
We went to the continental breakfast at the hotel and ironically...the men who were dressed up in Alice-in-Wonderland garb were still in full garb, so we concluded that is probably wasn't a costume party the were headed to the night before - my only pet-peeve is that if you are going to wear it, you might have picked a more flattering outfit!
We then hit the road to see the Confederate Submarine H.L. Hunley Museum (www.hunley.org)in Charleston - something that we had all heard about for sometime and thought we should check it out.
In 1864, the Hunley, was the first submarine to sink an enemy ship in combat - the same night it was unfortunately lost at sea.
It's kind of an "odd" museum in the sense that there's a huge waiting area with information and displays about the Hunley that you get to walk around and view while you wait to see the actual Hunley - which only takes about 15 minutes and you couldn't take pictures, so we were a bit disappointed in.
Our one big gripe was when we arrived and went to purchase the tickets the cashier charged our credit cards, gave us the tickets and then proceeds to tell us that the next 3 tours were sold out and we had to wait 1.5 hours to see the Hunley!
Realistically the waiting area/museum would take about 45 minutes tops, so we were miffed, but made due. Hey, we did learn that they made a movie with Armand Assante about the Hunley - so that was worth it!
When we finally got to view the Hunley it was obviously sad because the entire crew perished and you saw how small the sub was and subsequently the crew were in tight quarters.
The gentleman who gave the tour was quite a character, named "Pappy", who was a WW II veteran. He was pretty amusing, particularly when, half way through his spiel he went on a 2 minute diatribe about how the federal government was ridiculous to close the Charleston Naval Base and that they were in fact morons. It was a little touch-and-go for awhile, but then Pappy recovered and finished his speech.
I'm glad we went to the museum, but we decided that once was enough.
