We started the day watching a young alligator trolling for breakfast between finger piers in Thunderbolt. Twenty-eight miles and five hours later, we were impressed by a deep-sea catch being landed at Skull Creek, Hilton Head Island, where we’ll be docked tonight and tomorrow.
The charter captain said they’d been fishing the Gulf Stream. I imagine they’d been 50 to 75 miles offshore, a whole other world from our little intra-coastal puttering. There are many fish havens offshore the Southeastern U.S., but the Stream is a world unto itself, bringing clear blue water, a river in the sea, heading north after bending around the Florida peninsula from the Gulf of Mexico.
The charter and guides were busy laying out the fish to admire before cleaning and filleting them. I believe this is a snapper-grouper and Mahi mix, but don’t quote me.
Envy the people who are eating those filets tonight. Envy the alligator eating fresh crabs and shrimp from the creeks. Envy the heron who’s eating his own fat fish as he struts down our dock.
Envy the shrimp I got for dinner after I rented a car this afternoon, for a quick trip back to Statesboro tomorrow. While I Ubered to the airport Enterprise, dealt with Hilton Head’s roundabouts and rush hour snarls, and shrimp-shopped, Pete took his bike and Katie for a nice, long run. Maybe four or five miles, he said.
Skull Creek Marina sits inside a gated community of sprawling, not-quite cookie-cutter homes with manicured lawns heavy on pesticide-green grass and developer plantings: lantana, ornamental grasses, and azaleas, and South Carolina signature palmettos and oaks. This golf community has miles of winding roads, cul-de-sacs, dead-ends, and streets that loop back on themselves.
Imagine my surprise when, two hours after I left and having taken my own wrong turn to find the marina, I passed Pete and Katie still biking and running along. All of us were still a mile from the dock. They caught up with me at the parking lot.
Katie was still charging like a whippet on steroids. Pete’s watch says they went 8.1 miles. Later, over shrimp, I asked if he’d downloaded the island trail map.
“What?” he said. “You had a trail map?” It seemed obvious to me, but even if he had downloaded one, this remoter side of the island is beyond its borders. Tourists don’t come up here much. They’re farther south, near Harbourtown and Spanish Wells. Near the golf shops and beachwear shops and yes, the seafood markets and rental car companies.
Katie sucked down dinner and has been asleep ever since. Dreaming of alligators, no doubt. And brightly colored fish, and herons as they stalk their own dinner at the end of the dock. And asphalt trails that go on forever and ever, always on land.
Irish Hurricane 