I got into town yesterday afternoon under heavy rain. I would have called it torrential, but in my time down south, I recognized this as what they refer to in the weather forecasts as "showers." In other words, I could see past the windshield.
My plan had been to get in a couple of hours before the 4:00 check-in so I could scout the various restaurants and other types of food emporia that I had been researching, choose a spot for lunch, do my grocery shopping and then check-in. The rain drove me into the first restaurant on my list that I could find, which was good enough. I settled down to a lunch of fried chicken, grits and fried green tomatoes at Annie O's and by the time I was done, the rain had stopped.
Being me, and despite my maps and notes, I had been completely turned around since I had gotten to Hilton Head Island, but it's an easy enough place to maneuver, and after 60-some years of being easily turned around, I took it in stride. Which in fact led me to the Hilton Head tourist bureau, which I had wanted to stop by for a map but hadn't been at all looking for, and more happily to Hilton Head Ice Cream, which I had hoped to find at some point but had given up on. Let me just say this: I will be back for another cone of Espresso before I leave.
The Fresh Market was not cozy and personal, like the market I discovered near Belleair Beach last year. It was big and packed, and had lots of great stuff to choose from, and the prices were fine. My biggest complaint was that when I asked the deli person the difference between one plain old roast beef and an Italian roast beef, she said "I think the Italian is more rare." She may have been right about that, but I was an idiot for going along with that. Of course it is spiced differently, but then again we were in South Carolina, not the land of great knowledge of things Italian. The desserts were lovely, and there was a good selection of breads, including one that said "hard crust" which actually was.
Which brought me right up to check-in time. And the sun was out.
Brigantine Quarters is at the end of a winding path which includes the third right at a traffic circle -- they love their traffic circles here on Hilton Head Island (they make my head spin) -- and another right at some point to the end. It was a short trip from Charleston by my standards (2 1/2 hours) and the improved weather conditions made me a whole lot less wrung out than I am usually by the time I get to where I'm going. Which is why, instead of calling for my traditional first night pizza delivery, I decided to head out myself. How hard could it be?
Here are some of the problems:
Knees. The nice woman in Wyoming who rented me her unit misremembered and assured me there were no steps going into the front of the unit. Wrong. Add to that the fact that I don't travel light, and you have lots of trips up and down stairs to unpack.
General Discombobulation. Once in the car, I had to get out of the car and make another trip up the stairs and into the house for the guest pass, without which I could not get back into the resort. Then it occurred to me that I had left the resort map in the apartment, and decided that if I got lost finding my way back, I'd at least have dinner with me and wouldn't go hungry.
Eyes. I have a pair of glasses that are only for night driving, because they are too strong to see anything up close, and a pair of old glasses that are for everything else, which makes my world fuzzy around the edges as well as in the middle. So I was exploring a place I didn't know an hour or so before dark, and without a map to get me back.
But I did have my notes and maps to get me to Giuseppi's Pizza and Pasta. So I headed in the general direction, supposedly for .8 miles. Except that there were four lanes of traffic, and a divider with full grown trees in the middle, strategically placed so you could admire their beauty while not being able to see what was on the other side. After I went about three miles, I decided to do a turn around and look for what should have been a fairly good-sized Shelter Cove Road. There were signs for "Shelter Cove Community" and "Shelter Cove Something-Else" but no Shelter Cove Road. When I finally turned into one of those, it looked like the right half of it was closed and out of business and the left side of it was dug up and under development.
So I decided to check the map.
I drove behind the closed-up building and pulled in,...
...checked the map and decided that I had no idea where I was but I was fairly sure I had to turn back. So I backed out and got myself back out to the main road and turned in at a place that was a Mall with a capital M. It looked, however, like I was on Shelter Cove Road. So I drove along slowly looking at signs with names of shops, or shoppes, passing a Security car and thinking, "I should ask." When I got to the end of the shops and shoppes, I turned around, found the Security car, nearly turned in the wrong way and then found the right way and parked behind him.
He sent me back the other way on the main road, past the Mall. Which led me to a Piggly Wiggly shopping center, in a strip mall, so that looked promising. I slowly meandered the length of the shops with no luck. Past the Pig. It looked like I was getting to the end of the run, and then I saw another shop at the end. It was Giuseppi's! And it was mobbed. And I was exhausted. I very nearly went home at that point to call for takeout, but decided that would be really idiotic.
So why didn't the Security guy mention the Piggly Wiggly Shopping Center detail, I wondered.
I did go in, and waited for not too long, and ended up with some delicious smelling pizza and fried zucchini, and a meatball sub (hoagie which I believe is a clue as to where the owner relocated from). Grumbling about how my arthritic right hand was having a hard time opening the hatchback. Slightly concerned about finding my way home -- where is it that I'm staying? I backed out of the busy parking lot and headed out.
And realized that adjacent to this busy parking lot were the empty spaces that belonged to the abandoned building where I had parked to attempt to get my bearings.
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| Earlier that evening...JUST TURN AROUND! |
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