Chapter 13: It’s Only An Island If You Look At It From The Water.
We didn’t get up early. We didn’t eat a crappy hotel breakfast and then pack up our belongings and pile into the van. We didn’t drive hundreds of miles. We woke up slowly, ambled out into the living room in our pajamas, and shot the breeze and drank coffee.
Yes, this was quite an adjustment we had to make. I had no plan, no itinerary, no spreadsheet listing all of our reservation confirmation numbers or anything. It was just us and our friends and two days in a grand villa. Rough life, I know.
Our friends took care of breakfast. They opened the freezer and pulled out a giant Bag O’ Bacon from B.J.’s Wholesale Warehouse and cooked up the whole darn thing, and suddenly this adjustment to hanging out in the villa was going just swimmingly, thank you very much.
Jim Gaffigan: “Bacon’s the best. Even the frying of bacon sounds like applause.”
Mmmm…bacon…
Where was I? Oh, right. Breakfast.
Anyway, we lounged around and caffeinated ourselves and didn’t leave a single crumb of bacon behind before we finally got dressed sometime mid-morning. It was a nice, warm, sunny morning, so we decided to go to the beach.
Disney’s beach house is a mile-and-a-half from the main resort, and there is a shuttle that runs every half hour between the two buildings. There’s also a bike/walking path you can take, and of course Disney has bikes you can rent for the day at the cost of an arm and a leg. You can also rent bikes for the length of your stay if you throw in your spleen (gall bladder in the high season). As you should know by now, we are cheapskates, so we chose to walk.
@glennbo123 has a nice video in his last trip report showing the ride from the resort to the beach house. You get on the path just after crossing the bridge from the resort—you just have to go to the left around a comedy club. There’s a sidewalk that leads right under the main road and into the Palmetto Dunes community. Sidewalks lead through that community right to the Disney Beach House, just past the guard house designed to keep peons like me out of the designated rich people areas.
How’d we get past? Well, as we approached, I started bragging loudly about the $350 I spent on a meal that consisted of nothing but horseradish served on genuine sharkskin paddles. The guard seemed to buy it and didn’t question our presence. If that hadn’t worked, I would have started talking about Shakespeare and the human condition, hoping his eyes would glaze over and he’d let us in just to make me go away. The lesson, as always: fake it till you make it.
Just past the gate was the beach house.
The beach house is basically a clubhouse, complete with a pool, game area, snack bar, and beach access. It’s a nice little hang out. A boardwalk and stairs leads out to Hilton Head Island beach. The beach is a little odd, in that instead of a swath of soft sand, it’s extremely flat and hard-packed. You’d probably be able to drive your car on it without getting stuck.
It wasn’t quite warm enough for a swim, but we hung out for a while and took some photos, still hoping to find good shots for the Christmas card.
Personally, I wanted to put this photo of Snot Boy on the Christmas card, but the Fun Police overruled me once again.
There’s a little-known law in the U.S. that if you can’t swim at the beach, you must play football. True story.
After a while, we went back up to the clubhouse to complete our main objective of the day. The snack bar, Signals, is only open seasonally. On Disney’s website, it says it is open through October, so I had originally assumed it would be closed. However, I found out when we arrived that it was still open for business. Why is this important?
Signals serves Dole Whips.
You might think having a Bag O’ Bacon and Dole Whip Floats in the same day is too much heavenly ecstasy for a mere mortal to experience, but we were willing to risk it. We went into Signals and strode up to the counter. Then we had a momentary heart attack when the CM said they were only serving a limited menu.
Limited…how, exactly? Fortunately, it just meant that they weren’t running the grill that day, so they weren’t serving burgers. The Dole Whip machine was unaffected. We got to chatting a bit, and then placed our orders. And then, we made a discovery.
Are you sitting down?
I never would have believed it, but there is actually one thing in this world that is actually better than a Dole Whip Float. I know, that sounds like blasphemy. But put down your stones and hear me out. What’s better than a Dole Whip Float?
A free Dole Whip Float.
“These are on us today,” the CM said. I wasn’t sure we heard that right, but we grabbed the floats off the counter before she could change her mind.
Like Moses hiding behind the rock as the glory of God passed before him, we put a veil over the camera lens to take this photo so the sheer holiness of their appearance wouldn’t blind us all.
You might recall from our
Disneyland trip in 2014 that the Dole Whip was the first solid food that we could actually get Drew to eat. He’s still a fan.
Here are a few photos from around the beach house. The pool area (note the unheated air surrounding it):
The clubhouse area is decorated with a nautical theme.
It was a Sunday, and football season was still going strong, and I was tempted to just stay there and commandeer the TV in the clubhouse all afternoon. I would have, but then I remembered our grand villa was just as big, and all of our snacks were over there.
Plus, my Eagles were playing the Seahawks in Seattle and I wasn’t sure how much of that game I’d actually want to see.
We called for the shuttle outside in the parking lot. It pulled up, and we had a private ride back to the resort. This may have been the highlight of the weekend for Drew. For the rest of the day, he went on and on about how he got to ride in a “school bus”. And I understand. Every morning, he has to watch his brothers and sister climb onto a bus without him. And if there’s one thing little boys love, it’s mass transportation. So the chance to finally get a ride of his own was a pretty big deal.
Coming Up Next: Campfires and sing-alongs and still no insane driving distances.
Stops. I always do this "Google maps says it'll take 6 hours to get there. But I always drive a bit faster than the speed limit, so it'll take 5.5!"
Yes, there are many, many, many, many miles of flat land in the midwest and it was good of you to document so many of them so far. 
I've traveled some in that area, but never focused on the Oregon Trail........which I think is a really cool concept I may just have to explore more.
Apparently you're not the only one who struggled with that!
, and the one which I wondered if existed -- one containing photos of a Hilton Head Grand Villa! 
