The only place on Parris Island that really sparked my husband’s memory was the parade deck.
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It was a cold and windy day but he wanted to walk the entire thing.
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The fancy grandstand wasn’t there in his day.
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But he remembers being drilled and marched until he couldn’t see straight. D.I.’s screaming, recruits passing out from the heat, being overwhelmed and overtired, getting slapped when he said yes sir.
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He swore he’d forget his mother’s name before his drill instructor’s.
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The required selfie, wind blowing so hard I had hair in my mouth.
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I walked around the Iwo Jima Statue and left the husband alone with his memories.
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Those bricks he’s looking at are memorials. Engraved with the names of fallen Marines. A lot of the boys he went through boot camp with never came back from Vietnam. I think my husband sometimes wonders why he was the lucky one…
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A while later we finished our tour of the base.
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And decided to stop at the PX for a bite to eat.
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Naturally, the food court was closed. But I was cold and wanted to buy a sweatshirt so we shopped.
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The husband really wanted this funky bottle of vodka for the man cave bar.
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We even tried to find a small box and some bubble wrap to smuggle it in his suitcase on the flight home… but no luck. The saleswoman said we could order it online but in Maine it’s illegal to mail liquor.
Boo to that.
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Moving on, the husband checked out the price of Dress Blues.
And when we passed the challenge coins? I had to laugh.
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Two full rows of Trump still for sale, while Obama and Biden were almost sold out.
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It was a good morning.
My husband always wanted to go back and I’ve always wanted to see the place he talks about with such reverence.
Our home base for the anniversary trip was a two bedroom condo at Wyndham Ocean Ridge on Edisto ( Ed-iss-toe) Beach. Mid way between Charleston and Hilton Head…
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It’s a quiet, laid back mostly residential beach community without all the tacky water parks and touristy crap cluttering most southern coasts. It’s the undiscovered country and that’s just how we like it.
When we arrived at the resort and checked in, we were given a unit on the golf course. We travel through our timeshare so sometimes it’s a crap shoot where we’re placed. But seeing that my husband has the gift of gab and makes friends easily, we were quickly reassigned to one of the deluxe units in the best area. (Me dropping the 40th wedding anniversary bomb may have had something to do with it as well. 😉 )
If it hadn’t been January, in the height of the off season this wouldn’t have happened. The Bay Point association is the primo spot of the entire resort and people book them two years in advance.
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The peninsula itself is Edisto Beach with private homes all around. The areas in green are the resort and it was a crazy set up. One second you’re on the resort, the next you’re on a private road. As you can see by my arrow we were right at the tip on the water.
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Our condo was in the middle on the top floor, which in reality is only the second but you have to climb 4 flights of stairs to get there.
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It was clean and spacious.
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With a decided seaside decor.
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It was newly remodeled with carpet that looked like waves.
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And had a pretty sweet view from the bed.
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And speaking of views…
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One look out the balcony and I was a happy camper.
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Off season with an entire beach to ourselves. It doesn’t get much better than that.
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Second bedroom. No, we don’t use it… but if you book a two bedroom unit you get two baths and that my friends is the key to a long and happy marriage.
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Master bath. This was mine in case you were wondering.
😉
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We settled in and unpacked.
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Very pleased with our South Carolina home for the week.
The year was 2015 and it was my first Christmas without my mother. I’m an only child, my father died when I was 15. Losing my mother hit me hard and I was feeling unhinged. Alone. And not at all in the holiday spirit. Decorating the house and hosting my husband’s ungrateful family was more than I could bear…. so I went to a travel agency, told them how much I wanted to spend and asked them to find me something interesting within driving distance.
Which is how we ended up spending Christmas week in the Pocono mountains of Pennsylvania.
We generally like our accommodations out of the way and quiet… and brother, that’s just what we got.
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Welcome to the Pocono Manor Resort. A massive, secluded, surrounded by mountains and rolling hills, giant stone edifice I won’t ever forget.
It was dark and overcast when we arrived. Mountain fog surrounded the grounds and the silence was eerie. No cars in the parking lot, one dim light by the front entrance.
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And while the interior was fully lit and beautifully decorated…
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It was as silent as a tomb.
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A very large tomb.
Built on 3,000 acres in 1902 as a summer vacation residence for wealthy New Yorkers, families lived here for months with no reason to leave. Boasting an 18 hole golf course, tennis courts, a full spa, riding stables, fly fishing pond, indoor and outdoor pools, multiple restaurants, game rooms, library, theater, and it’s very own post office with private zip code… it was a world unto itself.
And when we visited December of 2015?
We literally had the entire building to ourselves.
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No, I’m not kidding. For the first 5 days of our week long stay it was just us … and every time I walked down this hall to our room? I expected to see the twins on tricycles because we were staying at the Poconos version of the Overlook Hotel.
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Yes, there was staff.
Ghostly staff, because you hardly ever saw them.
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We wandered room after room and never encountered a soul.
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Every morning we had breakfast alone, in a room that probably seated 600.
Creepy?
You could say that.
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We sat alone in the theater…
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And watched It’s A Wonderful Life.
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Hoping the lights would come back on when we were through.
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Long, endless, empty hallways with only the sounds of our footsteps for company.
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Ho! Ho! Holy Hell it was bizarre.
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It was a place frozen in time, although it had just undergone a 5 million dollar renovation.
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I never did manage to get a photo of the entire place…
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You couldn’t really, it was too big.
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But it was definitely a magical and quirky way to spend the holiday.
Sadly this amazing place caught fire and sustained substantial damage in 2019.
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(not my pictures)
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It’s been closed since then with various plans to rebuild.
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Horror of all horrors? The latest developer to be interested is the Margaritaville Corporation who want to build a village of tacky housing.
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They say they will “honor the memory” of the Manor but I don’t think plastic palm trees are going to cut it.
😰
Now it’s your turn.
Share a happy, funny or strange Christmas memory with me.
I’m currently planning a week long getaway to celebrate our 40th wedding anniversary which is a few months from now. If you’re a long time reader you’ll remember we went to Sedona Arizona for our 35th and the day of? Yours truly came down with an awful case of altitude sickness and spent it in bed.
Alone… and nauseated.
Which is not how one should celebrate a wedding anniversary.
I’m staying closer to sea level this time around and hopefully won’t feel like barfing all day. That definitely kills the mood.
Anyway…
I booked our resort, I booked our airfare and just settled down to do some price comparison on rental cars. Trust me, this is a necessary evil as the same vehicle can vary greatly in cost from company to company.
I’ve always found Hertz and Avis to be the most reasonable. Budget? Not hardly, they were $400 more per week!
As I was scrolling down for the premium/elite/luxury SUV we usually rent I came across this;
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Can you see it?
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A mystery car.
WTH?
And if it’s a mystery how do they know to charge $668?
That’s the stupidest thing I’ve seen in a long time.
As well as the ceremony at the Beirut Memorial, my husband’s squadron hosted a reunion dinner. And as you can imagine, being surrounded by old Marines telling stories is just about my husband’s favorite place to be.
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From left to right… Corporal, Gunny, Captain.
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The next day it was a picnic at the marina on base.
More old comrades, more stories.
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And while they were on the air station? A chance to refamiliarize themselves with the big toys.
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The V-22 Osprey, an 80 million dollars per nightmare of an aircraft. My husband worked on this program when the Marine Corps first adopted them to replace his beloved CH-46 helicopter. 30 years of R&D and they were still falling out of the sky. We had one crash down the road from our house when we lived in North Carolina and Marines were refusing orders to fly in them. Meant to assist troop deployment in the Middle East, it was discovered the intake clogged with sand which rendered it virtually useless. I’ve read they’ve finally worked out the kinks. Time will tell.
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A CH-53 Sea Stallion. The first heavy lift transport helicopter to be refueled in the air. I’ve been in one of these, they’re beasts.
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The Bell UH-1 Iroquois, otherwise known as the Huey…. the workhorse of the Marine Corps and beloved by Vietnam Veterans like my husband.
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The twin engine AH-1W Super Cobra with its blades folded down. This is a lean, mean, made for attack machine.
(Believe it or not yours truly can identify which of these choppers is flying over her head by sound alone. That’s what you get from living in a military town for 16 years.)
Even though air travel isn’t half as much fun as it used to be.
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It’s odd how much I miss those rubber chicken dinners now that all you get is a packet of dry as toast cookies.
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But while the views out the window can be spectacular, I do prefer driving when it comes to setting your own schedule and stopping at will for local points of interest. Some of the best things we’ve found and seen have been well off the beaten path.
Cruise ships? Never. Floating germ factories crammed full of people with whom I don’t want to converse no less vacation.
Trains? Like them for day trips but no cramped overnight bunks and minuscule bathrooms for this chicka.
How about you?
What’s your preferred method of travel…
Where there's only one step from the sublime to the ridiculous.
River's world..... 