Wednesday, June 27, 2012

Final Parting Shots of Hilton Head - I swear

The family and I have long since returned home and jumped back into the normal routine of daily life. Because I work night shift from 11:00pm to 7:00am I will tell you its been like getting hit with a sledgehammer for me. The first two nights back I felt like a certified zombie, even though I was sporting a nifty tan. But anyway wanted to post a few more pictures and I swear to God these are the last. Above you will see Broad Creek Marsh at high tide. It was so easy to get back in tune with the tides after living inland for so many years. I know it has to do with the smell of the marsh at lowtide. It puzzles me to the extreme to hear people complain of that "bad smell." Low tide to me is one of the best examples of life.

The family and I have visited Disney's Hilton Head resort many times over the years and this little sailboat has always been in the same place. For several years it was covered with a film of mildew making it look almost abandoned but this visit I could tell someone had finally cleaned it some. I will admit that everything else looks like it is in the same position so I doubt the owner has taken it away from its marina berth. During the visit in 2007 when we took a dolphin excursion the pilot of the boat taking us to see the dolphins showed us a segment of Broad Creek where sailboats had been anchored and then abandoned. At the time there was a "relatively" simple process to file a claim with the county to take ownership of an abandoned sailboat. If I understood the tour guide abandoned sailboats were "cheap" to take over but the costs to get them back up to decent shape was where the poop hit the fan. But I read a newspaper article last year that Beaufort county got fed up with the number of abandoned boats and passed an ordinance where they take possession of  such boats and quickly sail them off.

My last day on vacation I went walking before Dragonwife and Darth Wiggles woke up and found a bunch of trash washed up on the beach. It highly pissed me off since I am a treehugger and ocean lover. Besides the empty oil bottle I found a bunch of food wrappers and one plastic six-pack holder that is infamous for killing sea turtles who think they are pieces of jellyfish, which they like to eat. What pissed me off even more was that when I finally turned around and started walking back to the Disney beach house the people I passed were looking at me like I was crazy for carrying trash in my hands. One old guy, probably a republican, started to say something but since my normal facial expression has been compared to that of an angry Army drill sergeant he very quickly turned away. 

Half-assed picture of a sunset over the marsh. Truthfully Hilton Head is a little too snobbish for me. Its overly filled with uppity conservative golf types who think the world is one big American playground. I prefer the loose and easy going Keys but a beach bum like me will take what he can get when the other choice is to remain marooned in a landlocked suburbia. Be that as it may, I did meet a lot of fantastic people and the vacation itself was very relaxing. 

12 comments:

Pixel Peeper said...

It absolutely disgusts me when people toss trash where it doesn't belong. I've been know to run after people, telling them, "Oh, you dropped something that belongs to you" when they threw a cigarette butt or whatever.

Well, THIS time Hilton Head was the better choice - one of my co-workers was in the Keys and it rained so much many roads flooded.

Life As I Know It Now said...

Yeah, you missed out on the bad weather and your cleaning up that plastic probably did save some turtle down the road.

Oh, and the DMB concert was excellent btw. :)

Windsmoke. said...

I know what you mean when you go back to work and start night shift after holidays it takes a while to get back into the routine. I agree after doing many night shifts myself you do feel like a zombie on another planet. People who throw rubbish in any waterway are just to down right lazy to throw it in the landfill or recycle bin and its those people who will wonder why all the wildlife has disappeared and will want to blame everyone else :-).

Alaska with attitude said...

That odor of low tide alway draws me to the sea.

Randal Graves said...

C'mon, you know that lugging your trash from the beach to the nearest can a mindboggling 50 feet away is akin to traversing the Alps on elephants in the middle of a blizzard. Have some sympathy.

Akelamalu said...

I've nver understood people who dump their litter randomly, why can't they just carry to the nearest litter bin or take it home? If I see anyone dropping litter I can't help but tell them to pick it up. It has resulted in many an argument but I just can't help it. :(

Unknown said...

Trash on the beach sucks. The little lost sailboat reminds me of my efforts to revive a 27' Chris Craft runabout maybe 35 years ago. My she was yar!

Ranch Chimp said...

Well at least ya'll had some fun beside's the trash and uppy- yuppy- puppies crowding ya. I actually prefer the laid back Keys atmosphere myself Bum or those remote place's, so I share your like's there ... here in Texas the popular place's when I lived in Houston for instance were Galveston beaches, but I had also other less toury place's I would go to, had a friend with a beach house in Seabrook, we would get crab's to boil, smoother in cajun sauce and let the booze flow through the night.

Later Guy ....

Ranch Chimp said...

I hear the Key's though Bum has changed alot since when I lived down there, and really got more heavily commercialized these dayz, my daughter went there not long ago when she was in Miami on business, she decided to take an extra week in Florida to go browsing ... even Miami Beach I hear these dayz is now some pop culture mega market ... I remember it when there was all night beach parties rock and roll club's, etc.

Ranch Chimp said...

BTW ... some beautiful pic's you posted saturday 23 June Bum!

Robert the Skeptic said...

We have all this stuff (trash) washing up on the beaches here in Oregon from the Tsunami in Japan. We even had a whole dock wash up just west of us. Nobody has told us if any of this stuff is radioactive.

goatman said...

Tire tracks -- they allow you to drive on the beach there?

Have you any way to gauge the change in sea level over the years there?
I read where the east coast is getting an unusually high increase due to the arctic melting and ice floes slowing down the offshore northerly current.

If anyone doubts the global warming they need to step out my door into the 107° steambath.