Hilton Head Island, South Carolina

Thursday Apr 3…11:00pm

Drove to Hilton Head Island in South Carolina today. There’s no really easy way to get here, and we don’t like the scenery on the interstate highways, so we ended up going right through Savannah, Georgia and taking some backroads
to get here. Probably added a few extra miles by doing so, but at least it was more scenic. Also, Hilton Head Island is surrounded by other waterways, so it’s a kind of convoluted route to get here in the first place.

And then we found out that Hilton Head Island, which is a very touristy type of place, is also not RV friendly. They had a huge free parking lot that was empty except for 2 or 3 cars….but no RV’s, campers, travel trailers allowed. And the plantations that have a lot of the walking trails don’t allow RV’s either! We ended up finding a church and there was somebody in the office so we asked if we could park in their lot for a few hours. They said they appreciated that we asked instead of just doing so…and said yes. So we took Whiskey for a walk on the beach…at least they allow dogs on the beach…and then went for a nice bike ride. The island is very bicycle friendly though…lots of bike paths all over.

Ruth and Whiskey on the beach at Hilton Head Island

One of the many cycle paths on Hilton Head Island

 We were very surprised to find that the Walmart here allows overnight parking. The entire island has very stringent building rules…you have to do minimal damage to vegetation if you build, and there are very few signs allowed for businesses. As such, the Walmart has lots of trees in it’s parking lot. You’d almost never know the Walmart was even here if you were driving down the road. Anyhow, we were the only RV parked overnight, which is very surprising considering that there are 2 RV parks on the island and they charge $49 and $42 a night. And because of the trees, we felt like we were in our very own camping spot for the night.

Sherman, parked for the night at Walmart Hilton Head Island

Tomorrow we’re heading for Charleston, South Carolina. We’ve been in touch with a couchsurfing.com host who lives near the beach there and is going to let us park in her driveway for a couple of days while we use the public transit to explore the city.

Total Nights Sleeping in the RV… 167

April Fuel $ 98.58

April Grocery $ 96.64

April Overnight Costs $ 7.12