Edisto Holidays

Edisto is a great place for the holidays if you’re not a big Christmas celebrater, and we’re not really Christmas people, so it works for us. You get mostly deserted beaches and sometimes you really hit the jackpot and it’s 70 and sunny on those mostly deserted beaches.

It didn’t start out that way though. The day we got here the rain we’d outrun on the way down caught up with us. The cold didn’t deter the kids. Spitting rain or no, they were getting in the water.

The rain went away that evening and it started getting warmer every day until we were all in our bathing suits.

Although this time around the bus was in much better shape than it was the first time we left (when almost nothing worked besides the propane, I installed the plumbing, solar, even the water tank as we went), we were still missing one key thing: our new refrigerator.

Yes, it’s true, after three years of living with an ice box we’ve joined the modern world and now have a refrigerator. Except that it was one of those things affected by all the shipping delays you read about so we didn’t actually have it when we left.

It’s a 12V RV/marine fridge so we couldn’t just head to the local big box store and pick one up. We ordered it through the company, which is in Italy, and had it delivered to the nearest dealer, which turned out to be in Wilmington, NC, about a four hour drive up the coast.

So one day I got up a bit early and drove up to Wilmington and picked it up. Unlike almost everything else I’ve ever installed in the bus this was totally uneventful from beginning to end. I picked it without issue, turned around and drove back in time to catch twilight from the Charleston harbor bridge, and then the next morning I installed it and it just worked. As I write this several weeks later, it’s still just working. And yes, it is nice to have a fridge. The ice box worked, but it had become a limitation for us, especially on the east coast where block ice is unheard of.

Elliott and I also managed to celebrate our birthday in there. He turned seven and I turned… somewhat older than seven. This was the second birthday we’ve had here in Edisto and this time the weather cooperated and we got to spend our birthday on the beach. Corrinne’s parents came to visit for Elliott’s birthday too, so I smoked some ribs and we had a big birthday feast.

And yes, Christmas happened too. We have some friends that have been coming every year for decades now, and we met up with them again for some cookie decorating and hanging out.

Our neighbors in the campground also gave the kids rides on their trike as a Christmas present, which was a hit.

And then Christmas morning, which I’d been looking forward to because I love watching them open the gifts they get each other. We’ve had a tradition for a while now of taking them to a store of their choosing (Treehouse in Athens GA the last two years) and letting them pick a present for each other. We have a budget so they don’t go crazy, but they don’t go crazy anyway. This year the girls got each other the same gift without realizing it of course so I was waiting to see their faces when they opened each others’ gift. They may not look anything alike, but they’re still twins.

I always thought I’d left the sunny and 75 Christmas weather behind when I moved out of LA, but Edisto proved me wrong this year, once we’d dispensed with the gifts, we headed out to the beach (with a couple new toys in tow).