Getting Caught Up–A Trip Report

 

 

I promised pictures, but I’m afraid that I’m going to disappoint you all.  I took a few pictures – but nothing particularly exciting.  You see, when you’ve been to same destination as many times as DH and I have been to Hilton Head Island, there’s not a whole lot of anything new to take photos of … nor is there much of anything new that we did to share … not that we had plans of doing anything terribly exciting … our idea of a perfect Hilton Head trip is one where the majority of our time is spent relaxing on the beach … and indulging in the fresh seafood.  And this was as close to a perfect Hilton Head trip as we’ve had.  So without further ado, I give you a bit of a recap. 

 

We left Thursday morning, as soon as I was done at DD’s … well, as soon as we said goodbyes (thankfully I was able to hold it together until I drove off … then the tears flowed!).  We took our time on the road and made it to Lexington, KY – the middle of horse country.  Of course I had to take a picture of a horse farm for T#2 who is a huge horse lover. 

 

I was tempted to stay in Lexington a little longer as there was a table of women at Panera who had gathered for breakfast and stitching … several brought their knitting and a couple brought some quilting.  I would have loved to join them!  But the beach called me … and I did get to do a little stitching … not with that group of women, but in the car, with DH.  I finally decided to get myself a portable project for our trips … and decided to see if I couldn’t do a little stitching in the car.  And I could!    I did have to look up fairly frequently, and I did have to put the stitching down when we drove through the Smokies (lest I get car sick on all those twists and turns).  Yay!

 

We stopped Friday evening in Spartanburg, SC … just a little over 4 hours from Hilton Head.  Our plan was to get to the Island just in time for lunch Saturday … and we made it. After lunch, we were afraid that it would be too early to check into our hotel, but we thought we’d go ahead and park at the hotel and go on out to the beach.  This sand sculpture greeted us as we entered the lobby.

 

We were pleasantly surprised to be able to check in and get to our room right away.  Unfortunately our room didn’t have an ocean view … if we had chosen to pay half again as much for our room, we could have had a view like this:

It would have been wonderful to have been able to sit out on the balcony and watch the sun rise … but paying that much for the room would have meant a shorter stay.  We decided that we could just walk on down to the beach if we wanted to see the sun rise … and have more time on the Island. 

 

The first thing we did was reserve a couple of beach chairs and umbrellas … so we could spend our days reading or stitching.

 

We saw our very first star fish ever on one of our walks … it was still alive, so we left it where we saw it.

 

We went down to the beach every morning in hopes of seeing the sun rise.  It was so cloudy every morning that I was worried that we wouldn’t get to see the sun rise … thankfully the skies weren’t too cloudy on our next to last day on the Island, and I was able to get a nice shot of the sun rising.

I would have liked to have gotten a shot of the harvest moon rising, but it was cloudy that evening. 

 

We also saw fishing boats that weren’t very far out to sea – another first.  One boat went by and must have turned around as we saw it coming back from the other direction … with a “companion”. 

 

I wondered if they were catching our dinner?  As I mentioned, when we’re not on the beach, we’re indulging in the fresh seafood available in Hilton Head.  When we’re that close to the source, why not? 

 

I discovered a little quilt shop on the Island and persuaded DH to stop by on our way to dinner one evening.  There weren’t a lot of fabrics that caught my eye, but I did find a couple of pretty blues.

Of course, the colors aren’t true <sigh> – they’re both darker and more of a true blue.  I suspect I might use these when I made quilts for T#1 and T#3 (coming up on my list).

 

I had to take a picture of these license plates to share with you all!

Too bad Illinois doesn’t allow numbers in the middle of letters on their plates, or I’d be ordering these for our car!

 

I was pretty productive with my hand stitching … I’m stitching up hexagons to make a Grandmother’s Flower Garden, and I have made good progress.  Here’s one of the flowers (not sewn together yet), with little patches of the outer ring (the red).

I’ve stitched up quite a few of the darker and lighter rings … I have more of them to stitch as well as most of the centers and all of the red ring hexagons (aka the “path”).  This will be a secondary, portable project – to take when I expect to have “waiting time” (for appointments, when traveling, etc.). 

 

We made it back home late Monday afternoon … with enough time to unpack, do a couple of loads of laundry, and take it easy.  It’s wonderful to be back home, and I’m certainly looking forward to seeing my Ts in a couple of hours.  But there’s a piece of my heart that remains back on Hilton Head Island.