Sorry for the lack of posts on this blog but my family just got back from a week at Edisto Beach and before I get back to my normal topics of Politics and Science, I’d like to take this opportunity to share with you what it is like to vacation in the lovely Palmetto State.  Full Disclosure – While I’m not a native of this beautiful state, I have lived here for 13 years, my children are natives and I plan to stay here until I die so I have adopted this state as my ‘home state’ and I have the right to brag about it for a while.

South Carolinians are blessed to live in a state that has wonderful beaches and great golf courses and there are well known locations that are visited by those outside of South Carolina – Myrtle Beach, Charleston and Hilton Head, just to name a few.  But when my family really wants to get away and enjoy the raw natural beauty of the coast, we head to Edisto Island.

If you are looking for putt-putt parks, go-kart tracks and massive bars for your beach trip then go to the those more popular places mentioned above but if you are looking for a secluded island getaway with family fun and adventure as nature intended, then Edisto is your place.

I’ll give you a flavor of what our week consisted of in pictures and you can decide for yourself if this is the vacation that your family desires.

First off, there are no high rise hotels on this island so your options are limited to renting a house or a condo but when you look at the prices of these rentals (especially if they are not on the beach), you’ll find that they are just as affordable as a hotel on other typical beach resorts.  There is one grocery store, a couple of pizza places, a kick-ass breakfast place and a few sea food shops but outside of that, you’ll need to plan on cooking most of your food for the week.  Ok, now for my week in pictures. 

Here was a link to the house we rented and here is the view we had from our front porch.

Because of the secluded nature of the island, the night sky is amazing and if you’ve never had the privilege of seeing the Milky Way in the night sky, this is a place that you can definitely do that.  Houses facing the beach have to keep their lights off to not interfere with the baby loggerhead turtles getting confused when they hatch and the beach at night offers a spectacular view of the night sky and during the summer you can see the Milky Way stretch from Sagittarius, thru Cygnus and ending in Cassiopeia.  It is truly amazing and it’s a shame everyone can’t see this from their home due to light pollution.

Most days we spent on the beach with the kids and you can get a flavor of the beach from the following pictures.  The beaches are not very populated and in many cases you’ll feel that you have the whole beach to yourself! 

When South Carolinians go to the Edisto, they frequent the local fish shops to get fresh sea food for their dinners and there is nothing better than a Low Country Boil which consists of corn, sausage, potatoes, onions and shrimp.  Here is a picture of the spread we feasted on one evening.

We love our golf in South Carolina and there is a great course on the island which has a challenging 5,782 yards from the White tees and 6,130 yards from the Blue tees.  The course has lots of water and if you have trouble hitting it straight, bring a couple sleeves of balls!  Below is a pic I took from the course we played last week.

We picked last week because the PGA championship was being held at neighboring Kiawah Island and I took the kids to the tournament on Thursday and Friday.  That course was amazing and here is a pic of the challenging 17^th hole which, on Friday, played 223 yards over water with a stiff 30 mph wind from the Southeast.  Standing behind this tee box and watching several pros grimace at their tee shots made a amateur duffer like myself feel better!

You can’t go to the coast without partaking in a chartered fishing trip off the coast and I took my kids with me on this trip. Below is a picture of the 20 lb shark I caught on this trip (I’m the guy on the left) and although we through this guy back, the fish we did keep made for a great dinner that night!

So there you have it.  In the span of a week we played on the beach, ate fresh seafood, played golf, saw a PGA tournament, caught fish in the ocean and (most importantly) made tons of great family memories.  There might be other places you can do that but for my money, there is no better place than South Carolina and especially Edisto Beach.