For the past almost month, I’ve been in Hilton Head Island, South Carolina staying with my sister due to family health issues. We are not originally from coastal South Carolina, it’s just where she, her husband, and my mom all retired to after spending vacations there. So, we’ve been visiting for years.

I have mixed feelings about Hilton Head. I like the water – beautiful beaches and a series of scenic sounds, lagoons, and other waterways great for kayaking. I like the temperature, lots warmer than the Frozen Northern Mid-Atlantic this time of year. Not so crazy about the politics, the use of the word “Plantation” in the name of the developments, and a few other things. (Oh, and I have to say that having had my mom in the hospital here twice in the last month, the health care leaves a lot to be desired as well but that’s another story.)

Last year when we rented our own “villa” here for the month of January, I found out you could join the “kayak club” here at Palmetto Dunes Plantation’s Hilton Head Outfitters for a reasonable calendar year price. Palmetto Dunes has 11 miles of kayakable lagoons, and their kayak launch makes it really easy for a “senior kayaker” like me to get in and out quickly and relatively painlessly.

Throughout January, and during visits in April and October, and in the last month, I have more than paid for my kayak club membership in paddles around the lagoons. Eleven miles sounds like a lot, but I have been around the whole of them at least twice or three times now. Different seasons bring different colors and birds and just things you didn’t see the first time, though, so it’s all good.

Being on the water, under your own power, is definitely therapeutic for me. Quiet, just your paddle dipping in and out of the water, watching the sometimes obscenely opulent homes arranged along the lagoon slide by, looking for alligators (I’ve only ever seen one this whole time) and trying to sneak up on the herons to take photos… all good. I can forget everything else for an hour or two. How sad it is that my brother in law passed away a week after Thanksgiving. How hard it is to see my mom so frail and mostly confined to bed. How much I miss my own home and friends back in the DC area.

Here are some snaps of my watery adventures. I hope you all have a peaceful and happy holiday and get to indulge in visiting some of your own personal favorite places and activities. May 2022 bring all good (or at least better) things for us all.