Sprkus

Tiffany and I arrived arrived in Hilton Head, S.C., the evening of Sunday, May 6, to clouds, a temperature somewhere in the 50s and 20-30 miles-per-hour winds.

We went online to view the island’s forecast for the next five days only to see: .

The one in the forecast was for Friday, the day we were leaving.

Weather back in our home city of Columbus was expected to be better than the weather in the Head.

Expectations were low.

So we ventured out to get some eats, ran into Seacrest and retired early with plans on getting an early start.

At the crack of dawn we got up, hit Java Joe’s for the first of many consecutive breakfast trips, and hunted down a clothing store to purchase some warmer attire. Tiffany found an Old Navy, but it didn’t open till 9. It was 8:35. I told you we got up early. So… we waited.

After Tiffany we spent all morning shopping, it had warmed up and the sun had come out to play.

There was much rejoicing.

By 11 a.m., we were relaxing at the Tiki Bar next to Holiday Inn’s pool sipping frozen drinks. There were still wind up to 30 MPH flying around, but it got just warm enough to strip down to our beach rags and soak up the sun.

Tiffany had forgotten the sunscreen, so I simmered in the sun for an hour before we found SPF 15 at the hotel shop. I put it on just in time, cause I burned, but it wasn’t that bad. Yeah, my feet swelled up a little, but who’s keeping score.

On a side note, I used SPF 45 for the rest of the vacation.

That night we discovered the Frosty Frog and Hinchey’s, two watering holes we would frequent during the trip and even spent some time on the beach at night.

The next morning we woke up a bit later and looked out the window It was sunny again. Even nicer than the day before.

There was more rejoicing.

After I spent 20 minutes plastering on the sunscreen, we hit the pool again for a few hours.

The forecast was still cloudy and gusty for the week, but around noon every day the skies opened up for some prime beach bumming. Or pool bumming, that is — the winds made the beach a sort of consistent sandstorm.

The third day we set out to find Harbour Town only to discover it was in a section of the island called SeaPines you had to pay a $5 fee to enter. Weird because it wasn’t a park or some other sort of individual entertainment collaborative, just a bunch of private housing with more touristy stuff to see. I guess they figured people would just pay it. We did.

Anyway, we were following a line of other cars that were driving right through a kiosk area with a guard without stopping. We just shot right through the kiosk area with the other cars only to hear “Hey!” from somewhere behind us. Yes, it was the guard. And yes the other cars had special stickers. And yes we paid our $5 after apologizing.

What if we would have just kept going? He didn’t have an automobile nearby. Would he have chased us on his bicycle? Would he have put an out an APB to find my Civy? Would they have found us? Then surrounded us? Just to say thanks and walk away when I hand over an Abe Lincoln?

So we saw Harbour Town and the lighthouse. We also dined at the famous Salty Dog Cafe. I’m not sure why it’s famous exactly, but we’ve now been there.

Later on we strolled along the beach and even wrote our names in the sand. Don’t worry, keyboards are puke resistant.

I wound up becoming a great little trip. We probably visited about a month too early, but it all turned out well in the end.

All week we were itching to go out and whoop it up a little at one of the bars, but it’s just not that kind of place. The town seemed to shut down around 10 p.m. when all the grandparents had to go to bed.

So we were excited to run into Nick and Danielle the evening before we were leaving, a couple from Dayton we had chatted with at a bar couple nights earlier.

We had been planning on crashing at 10 p.m., waking at 7 a.m. and getting an early start on the 12-hour drive back to Columbus.

We didn’t make it to bed until 1 a.m.