The Harbour Town lighthouse was much smaller than I thought it would be. The lighthouse is iconic everywhere in the South, so I thought it was one of these massive things, but it really isn't that big. (Sort of like the sphinx in Egypt.) Still, there is a lovely view at the top. (Price $3). JA didn't want to go up (a recurring theme) and of course AM is terribly afraid of heights, so it was just JPD, ME, and I. ME didn't last for very long with her mommy.
We then drove over to the South Beach Villa shopping area, trying to find some public access point/parking for this beach. We never did find any, but we bought some ice cream ($3.25 per cone) so felt justified in using the parking lot even though it said no beaching parking.
JPD and I walked along the lovely greenway/bike path for a ways until we found an access point to the part of the beach that lies on the intercostal side. (Hilton Head is shaped like a running shoe, and South Beach is the toe of the shoe, being the the farthest eastern point the intercostal water way is a large river/bay opening sitting between Hilton Head island and the rest of the coast. When we got in the water we discovered a very fast current pulling us parallel to the beach and towards the opening to the ocean. We float in the current for about a quarter mile or more, down to the point of the "toe". Here as the current rounds the toe and meets the regular tide, it creates a pretty strong rip tide running diagonally out to sea.
Strangely, we were getting ready to walk back to our towels and stuff, we heard AMD and the girls calling our name. They had finished looking around the shopping place and had found another beach access point.
The girls found this beach better because of less reeds, and for finding shells, making sand castles, and floating in the water because this beach was sloped so gently that the you could walk out along ways and still stand up, as long a you avoided the area with the rip current.
After awhile, AMD started calling out that she could see dolphins. After a while, we finally saw where she was pointing at, probably about 75 yards off shore, just beyond the riptide. They were essentially treading water, not changing their position much at all and surfacing every 20 to 30 seconds. I assume they were feeding off the fish riding the current.
After watching for awhile (and confirming they were dolphins and not sharks), I decided to brave the riptides as far as I dare to get closer to them. Upon venturing out further, I discovered that did not go over my chest and I was able to maintain my balance by leaning into the current and digging in my feet.`After getting within about 15 yards of them, I decided not to go closer to avoid disturbing them.
There turned out to be three of them, one a baby, that stayed very close to the larger one that I assume was its mother the whole time. The third dolphin stayed farther away, but still was holding its position with the other two. At one point, a fourth dolphin came through from the intercostal waterway, riding the current and moving extremely fast. But he (or she) just went right on past the other set. For about twenty minutes, I watched the three dolphins and they stayed more or less in the same position. None of them ever jumped, they just slightly surfaced enough to breath and returned under. Sometimes I could see almost the face to the snout, often just the area near the dorsal fin. The older dolphin looked to have a scar or something caught on it that ran from the top of the back near the face to back behind the dorsal fin and under the belly. Its dorsal fin looked like it had small notches in a few places. The baby's dorsal fin was much smaller and maybe more symmetrical. I never got a super good look at its face as it was always next to the mother near her far side. The third dolphin was clearly larger and surfaced less frequently. It seemed a bit more barrel chested. Seeing three dolphins at close range (priceless).
After about twenty minutes, of standing in the rip tide (which took a fair amount of effort) a large group of people from the shore decided to join me. (JPD stood about about 10 yards further back in a place were he felt secure in the rip tide this whole time.) After this group came out, the dolphins moved away almost immediately.
As JPD and I were walking our way through the rip tide back to the shore, I was using the hand on the sand to help steady me and I felt a sand dollar and brought it up to look at. JA had been finding broken ones on the shore, but this one was alive and whole. I brought it in to shore for the girls to look at and then released it back out in the ocean.
After returning back to our hotel and grabbing some lunch, we went back out to our beach, which now had nice boogie boarding waves and we spent a couple of hours catching the waves. JPD also tried skim boarding, but wasn't really able to master the trick of it. I found an entirely intact but dead sand dollar to add to JA's collection.
By the time we got done with our evening session, it was already 8 pm and we found in our restuarant guide that most restuarants closed at 9 pm. So we hurriedly changed and then drove all our the strip trying to find a place to eat. We finally found a wing place and then had to wait something like 45 minutes for our food. By the time we got back to our hotel it was 10 pm.
