For the last 10 months or so, Dustin and I have been anxiously awaiting the 2010 Crowley family vacation in Hilton Head, South Carolina. 

All said and done it was a great week with a lot of great memories that will hopefully last us a long time.  Most notably it was hot.  Very, very hot.  The highest recorded temperature for the week was 96 degrees which isn’t much different than Kansas City during the month of August, but for whatever reason it felt much worse.  Maybe the rays from the sun were much more intense or perhaps we were hoping that the coastal breeze would make it more tolerable.  Regardless of the reason, we found it difficult to be outside for more than 2 hours at a time unless we were in the water.

I only made it to the beach twice the whole week and Dustin only once.  There was just so much we wanted to do on the island (and again, so stinking hot) that there just wasn’t any more time for the beach!  

We arrived at our condo in Hilton Head very late and we stayed up even later discussing the trials of our travels.  So our first full day on the island was spent sleeping in, settling in and getting to know our neighborhood.  During our walking tour we came across one of those people who tries to entice tourists to attend a time share presentation.  The guy gave us a lot of good information about attractions on the island and “because you’re from Michigan” (or Ohio/Alabama/Montana as I’m sure he told other families) he was willing to give us all kinds of free things as long we showed up to the presentation.  So because we’re willing to do almost anything for free, in exchange for 90 minutes of our lives we received free golf passes for the entire week at a number of 5 star courses and 8 round trip ferry tickets to Daufuskie Island.  All-in-all this saved us about $500 for the week (because we only took advantage of one round of golf).  Not too shabby.

Other activities for the week included pool time, putt-putt golf at Pirate’s Cove,  

a 2 hour kayaking tour,

BBQ ribs, Harbor Town, The Salty Dog Cafe, movies and outlet malls. 

My favorite memory from our vacation was during our trip to Daufuskie Island.  Cars are only allowed on the island for special reasons (i.e. construction or emergency responders) so transportation is by foot, horse - or what seemed to be the most common - golf cart.  So once on the island we rented two golf carts to tour the island and were on our way.  

We decided to head to the opposite side of the island because we received an insider tip about where we might find dolphins feeding on the shore.  On our way we also stopped to look at a few of their historic buildings (and accidentally set off the alarm in one of them!).  

First Union African Baptist Church

Mt Carmel Baptist Church & Billie Burn History Museum

The majority of the island is not commercially developed and falls under the canopy of trees but to get to the dolphins we had to go through a more developed part of the island.  As we were approaching the clearing it started to sprinkle a little and as luck would have it, the sky just opened up when we made it to the clearing.  Dustin’s brother-in-law was driving the lead golf cart with Kacie riding shotgun and Deb and the kids on the back.  Unfortunately the lead golf cart had no roof above back seat and the three in the back were getting drenched.  So Lane pulled over under one lonely palm tree and as soon as our cart caught up Deb jumped under the protection of our cart and Cadence joined her parents in the front seat leaving 2 year old Ty all by himself on the back of the cart getting soaked by the rain.  

It all happened very quickly but my memory plays it in slow motion - Ty looks right, looks left and discovers that he’s all alone.  He looks up at the rain falling on his head and starts wailing as Dustin jumps out of our cart to the rescue.  Friendly accusations of bad grandmothering fly, Deb tries to defend herself and hilarity ensues.  Ty is such a happy-go-lucky kid that as soon as he was in someone’s arms and out of the rain he was laughing along with the rest of us.  Once we were able to compose ourselves we headed back to the protection of the trees and made our way back to the Old Daufuskie Crab Co. restaurant at the marina for dinner.

This became the story of the week and unfortunately for Deb will probably be one of our most vivid memories of this vacation for years to come.  But the good news is it also summons all the other warm (very warm) fuzzies from the rest of the week.

I feel so blessed to have married into such a wonderful family.  I can’t even begin to imagine spending a week (in very close quarters I might add) with people I don’t get along with.  Because this is my family, in every way possible, I don’t need Dustin around to feel at home with them - even though it is always nice to have him around - and I think that makes for much more enjoyable vacations for both of us.

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