Away ... And Back

It's like a world away, though quite the tourist destination; Bluffton, South Carolina. We’d never been but I recently hooked up with an old friend on Facebook and we were stunned to find that we both now lived in South Carolina, and just a couple of hours apart. A quick invite, a low-key holiday weekend, a call to the pet-sitter, and we were gone.

I got Key West relaxation vibes almost instantly, for the Old Town reminded me so much of that place … without the decadence and gay guesthouses, cuz you can’t have everything.

It was nice to catch up with an old friend, and nice to see a new place, and wander though the town and the shops and the bars and cafes. We’d eat breakfast at the Creperie—something savory for me, something sweet for Carlos—and then take a coffee and wander through town and down to the river; we drove out to Hilton Head early one morning to watch the sunrise, and it was so peaceful and quiet; we checked out the shops and bought a wrought iron crawfish and some gilded oyster shell salt and pepper bowls. Everyone needs those, right?

My friend took us to the Burnt Church Road Distillery, where you can taste all their homemade concoctions in The Sanctuary—my kinda sanctuary. I thought of Maddie as I sipped a Devil’s Elbow Cucumber Pepper Gin Martini … and tasted bourbons and whiskeys and vodka, oh my.

All in all, it was a quick weekend away, and even though it was a holiday, with COVID rearing its ugly head in South Carolina again—after a week being open a great many schools are already going back to virtual because of outbreaks, do not get me started on that—it was relatively quiet and masked and social distancing and, again, a world away.

Just when I needed one.