After Christmas, my extended family met up at Hilton Head Island in South Carolina. Hilton Head is on the coast, just North of Savannah, GA.
With 18 people across 6 families, it took a long time to edit pictures and then get picture-specific permissions from everyone to post them, so that is why this blog entry is a little late!
We drove down to Hilton Head and it was terrible weather! It took us 2.5 hrs longer to drive there than expected (and it’s normally only a 3.5 hr drive!). We were re-routed on our GPS several times due to many many accidents.
But we eventually got there and met up with family for dinner. We wanted to eat outside as it was too crowded inside, but the only non-step access to the outside area was blocked by a large cart. Luckily we had brought our ramp in the van with us, so we were able to use it to get Brad up one step and into the area. It rained while we were there, so Brad’s tires sank into the hard-packed gravel and he got stuck! Luckily we were able to free him without too much trouble.
The next day we went to the Coastal Discovery Museum. This is where Brad took most of the family pictures. This is a small museum with an indoor area including an art exhibit and an outdoor trail including boardwalks out into the marsh. The art was really cool coastal inspired art made with interesting things like yarn and pipe cleaners! Below are the pictures of the inside of the museum.
Then we headed to the boardwalks, which were really neat to explore, but a bit chilly! We talked about Spanish Moss which isn’t Spanish, nor a moss. Instead it is native to Southeastern US states. The Native Americans called it tree beard (or hair) because it looks like a curly beard. When the Spanish arrived, they called it French hair because of the long curly French hairstyles. When the French arrived, they called it Spanish beard because of the long curly Spanish beard styles. In the end, the French won out, and with a slight change from beard to moss, it is now known as Spanish Moss.
We had a good time walking out onto the boardwalks and taking family pictures, but mostly we just hung around and chatted!
Brad got out a lens that makes things look kinda like a kaleidoscope which made for some interesting pictures! He also used a centerfield split diopter in other pictures, which adds some blur to parts of the pictures. Before that, he was using a variety of filters or optical objects in front of his lens that add color or refractive effects.
The pictures of our outside time and the boardwalks are below.
After the Coastal Discovery museum, we headed to lunch and Felix was so good! He lay under the table perfectly! I even spilled a bunch of ice on top of him, and he did a good job staying there even though there was tempting ice all around him (I picked up what I could see, but I missed some pieces!).
After lunch, most of everyone else headed to go horseback riding. Brad and I couldn’t go riding in our wheelchairs, so we hung out with my parents for a while before they got tired and headed back to take a nap.
Stay tuned for the next blog entry, which has loads of pictures of us on the beach. Yes, on the beach in our wheelchairs!