Yawn...another day waking up to an empty Hotel room. Looks like Sandra has more family to take on the big walk and breakfast. With Mark and Pam now here, it's a full-house with Steve, Connie and Karen to complete the wolf pack.
I decided to spend the morning, all 2 hours of it packing in anticipation of check-out and the road trip; it was my way to avoid the early morning exercise. When in hotels, I liked to be packed up well ahead of checkout; then celebrate my accomplishment of fitting it all into the bag. Of course, I do this two times just to make sure the first packing was not a fluke. Sandra burst into the Hotel room with 10 minutes to checkout and started collecting her clothes from all over the corners of our temporary home and jamming it into the suitcase she brought; no folding required. She apparently does not need the two hours I require to solve the space/time problem. We met everyone down in the lobby eventually and began the Hogwarts Sorting ritual where it was decided whether we were Gryffindors or Slytherins. We ended up in Mark and Pam’s back seat with Sandra's monster suitcase in between us...yup, we were Slytherins.
The funny thing about the south is all the interconnected web of highways that lead to the same place. Technology hasn't reached many of these places, and with our being accustomed to Google Maps, we were fading in and out of connectivity. I made the mistake of mentioning an old Twilight Zone episode where a couple drives into a town where all roads leading out of town bring you back. Ha Ha...good one I thought. "Recalculating" then voiced itself over Pam's phone. Opps, Jinxed it. Yikes! we were at some crossroads in the middle of a one building town with no cell service; albeit one lousy bar. I'll never judge Steve and his paper map again. We decided the good plan was to go to the one building in the town, which fortunately was a Post Office. Sandra launched out of car to heroically ask for directions. I mean, me and Mark weren't going to do it...being men and all. We were perfectly happy to flip a coin for our direction. We did take the opportunity to utilize our rights as citizens to use the federal premises as our private bathroom. At least priority Two was taken care of in quick order. Now back to Priority One--getting out of this geographical oddity. Turned out the Post Office was unmanned (of course); but Sandra was miraculously able to get the Map function back on her phone with One bar! We were off, and I flipped Rod Serling the bird as we jetted out of that One Building town.
Somewhere along the way we were separated from Steve, Connie and Karen. So we'll never know if Steve's paper map experienced the same adventure we encountered. The rest of the trip was filled with scenic pastures of dirt, cows and weeds. As we approached Hilton Head, the scenery changed from pastures to highfalutin resorts and perfectly manicured golf courses. If our phones were capable of 11 Bars, I'm sure it would've registered in this resort town. A few traffic circles here, a few traffic circles there we finally arrived at our beach house. Wooo! It's a big one! Has a pool; some bikes, and a clean fridge ready for holding cylindrical recovery cans.
After we got all our suitcases placed in our rooms and a general walk through of this very spacious house; I turned to say "Nice job, Sandr...?!". Wait! Without a beat I see the back of her at a full sprint to the beach to start maximizing her time in the sun. Oh well, should've seen that one coming.
I ended up pumping the tires of one of the bikes provided and made off to the Piggly-Wiggly for beer and chips. After all, we all deserved the wind-down; and the fridge was empty. The next few days should be nice.