Over the Christmas vacation just a few short weeks ago, my family and I piled into our new to us black Ford diesel truck and drove over 700 miles to have a Hilton Head vacation. We had gone a couple years ago during the same time period so we knew what to expect.

This time, we found a house to rent just a very short walk to the beach. We had stayed in a condo the time before. The house in Sea Pines was nice but pricey. We had enough sharing the cost so that it was do-able.

Get this, the name of the street was Laughing Gull. How cute is that? There are all kinds of catchy named streets in Hilton Head. I found the house through VRBO. I checked out lots of different ones before I settled on Laughing Gull.

Here’s our rental. Of course we had to check out everything as soon as we arrived including a walk to the beach. The path to the beach was in the back, like an alley and every home had a walkway to it. It was only 4 houses from the beach.

Hilton Head home

Checking out the Hilton Head Island home property

Checking out the house property while finding the path to the beach.

Back view of the Hilton Head Island rental home

Back view of the Hilton Head Island rental home on Laughing Gull.

discovering the beach at Hilton Head Island in Sea Pines

We found the beach!

For us, a Hilton Head vacation is a relaxed spot that we don’t have any plans to do things in. Don’t get me wrong, there are things to do, but we are low key.

Just eat, relax, repeat.

One thing that we do is bike ride. I don’t know who decided “Hey! Let’s make HHI (short for Hilton Head Island) a never ending bike path!” but I’m glad they did. Literally the entire island has miles and miles and miles of safe biking trails.

Hilton Head bicycling

Bicycling in Sea Pines

I knew from last time to book ahead and have the bicycles waiting on. Especially since we would be arriving on Christmas Eve. It’s a good thing, too. Everything except CVS and Walgreens was shut down for Christmas Day. We used Bicycle Billie’s for our rides and they treated us right. We even got a winter discount! Woo hoo! Another win for the Hilton Head vacation!

So everyday we’d sleep until we woke up and they lounge around and finally walk to the beach or bicycle for a while. Sleeping in to me is just one of life’s most luxurious things to do. Towards the end of the week though, I started getting woke up by a leaf blower! Not my idea of a nice thing to wake up to. One guy sounded like they were right up against the house – I was ready to kill someone. I’m that person in the morning that you don’t want to talk to until I’ve had my tea.

If you’ve never been to HHI, it’s very beautifully landscaped. I mean like everywhere is landscaping. I can’t tell you how many times we passed things up because every business is hidden in all the landscaping. I’m sure they must have codes for colors and how high signs can be. It’s all very neutral. Not sure I would fit into that very well. While I love my house, I’ve always dreamed of having a purple painted house. I may not get a purple house but I did paint the outside wall of my studio purple!

Christmas Day, we exchanged a few little gifts. My son Asher got a chess set – which he turned out to be pretty good at. and a Scrabble board game. So we played Scrabble for several nights at the kitchen table. The chess set doubled as a checkers board on the other side and we played that, too.

We watched Shark Tank every night and an Indiana Jones marathon and various shows. It was just easy going, relaxing vacation. Sometimes you just need those. With the unlimited wi-fi, my son was beyond thrilled and kept his nose in his new computer most of the tv time.

The weather was just great while we were there except one day it rained in the afternoon and with that it brought a cold front on our last day. Compared to our southern Indiana cold winter weather though, the 70˚ temperatures were heaven.

walking on the beach

First walk on the beach our first day in Hilton Head

Thanks for sharing my vacation memories with me! Time goes too fast.


paintings by Jaime Haney

Learn more about me on the ‘About’ page in the menu at the top. I’m an artist – a painter mostly and an avid gardener. I paint a variety of subjects including birds, koi fish, my gardens, ponds and flowers as well as anything having to do with nature especially trees and tropical scenes. I also enjoy painting abstracts and have started created more and more of them. My most favorite thing to try to achieve in my painting is is mystery.

If you would like to keep up with what I’m doing, I have a newsletter e-mailed about once a month that gives you special status for invitations, birthday greeting and more. I’d love for you to add your email to my Friends and Collectors list!

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