South Carolina vacation

Thanks to my mom's sister, Patricia, we just enjoyed a wonderful vacation in South Carolina.  We spent 7 days at Hilton Head Island and had one side trip to Savannah Georgia before their big St. Patrick's Day festivities.  The weather was marvelous there the entire time running from 82 to 90.  But that meant that the pollen count was also higher than I have ever seen 9000.  Awfully glad I got my allergy shot before we left. 

We make it a 2 day trip and spent our night on the road in Knoxville, Tennessee.  It was amazing to watch for what was blooming in each state we went thru.  Pear trees, redbud, azaleas, and peach trees.  As we got closer to my aunt's home we went through Johnston SC, US Peach Capitol.  It was beautiful to see acres upon acres in bloom.  Here are picks of some of the blooms.

I am also always entranced with the Smokey mountains and the Appalachains.

At my aunt's home it was as if someone had covered her cars with corn meal, but no, it was just tree pollen.

The weather at Hilton Head was Marvelous!!  I got to walk in the Atlantic Ocean in MARCH and it was actually warm.  Walking the beach was my favorite thing to do.  There were all kinds of interesting things to see.  Jelly fish, dolphins, life guard training.  Second best thing was shopping in North Agusta at Hamricks, best store in the south!

While in South Carolina I got to see my cousin Lisa and her kids and Kurt and his family.  It always makes me feel older to see younger cousins I remember as little kids who now have kids of their own.

Since we were in the south at St. Patrick's Day my aunt suggested we go to Savannah, which has the largest St. Pat's day celebration outside of Chicago.  The tv kept talking about expectations of over 1 million! people being there for the celebration on Saturday.  So we started planning on going before Saturday.  We heard late in the day on Wednesday about a charter boat that goes from Hilton Head Island to Savannah twice a week.  Unfortunately, we called too late and the boat was booked solid. So since I had my gps we drove down and I did the driving.  We took a trolly tour of the squares and houses of Savannah.  After about an hour we got off the trolly on River/Bay street to do some shopping.  About 4pm we took the trolly back to our car and headed back to HHI.  It was a nice say and the weather was gorgeous.

Coming home we spent the night in Lexington, Kentucky and were surprised to find that midweek, with nothing special going on that it was hard to find a room for the night.  But we did.  Then it was the long 333 miles left to get home.