Slow and Low

Long time readers may have noticed we’ve been moving a little slower than we once did. This was partly a conscious decision on our part, and partly a consequence of needing to stay south until it warms up. And it has not warmed up yet.

I like the slower pace most of the time — we’ve ended up spending about two weeks everywhere so far — but one unintended consequence of both moving slower and making reservations is that you really can’t dodge the weather. In the old days I used to study wind and weather maps to figure out where we should go to stay warm or cool, but when you have immutable reservations, and everything else is booked solid for months anyway, the weather becomes something that happens to you.

Our first week at Huntington the weather was beautiful. Warm enough to spend some time out on the beach, though not quite warm enough for bathing suits.

Then, the day we were supposed to leave an ice storm rolled through. Judging by the way the chain stores around town shutdown early you’d have thought it was the end of the world. Most of the locals seemed imperturbed, but for some people these days any slight inconvenience seems to be the end of the world. What actually happened was that overnight the world was coated in a thin layer of ice. Beautiful, cold, and windy, but hardly the end of the world. It was all gone by evening.

We got up early to see the rime of ice on the marsh, the trees. The birds were imperturbed, picking in the shallows for food as they always do.

We were due to head out that day, back down to Edisto, but while the storm was mild, the cold was real. The high for the day was only 34 and there’s no heat when the bus is running. Suffice to say that I wasn’t really looking forward to the drive. But I didn’t want to throw away the money we’d already spent on the reservation. I called the park headquarters though and a very nice ranger was more than happy to refund our reservation. I walked over the Huntington Beach park office and pretty soon we were good to stay for another week.

It ended up being a cold week. We spent a good bit of time in the bus, with the heater cranked to high and still wearing jackets. It’s a good cozy home though.

If it’s going to be cold, it might as well snow. At least snow makes the cold more fun. Luckily for us the cold delivered. We got a little bit of snow almost exactly a week after the ice. It wasn’t much, this is South Carolina after all, but it was enough for the kids to get out an play in for a few hours. We also got to see some snow on the beach, which is always a strange sight to me.