Flag Day Eve

In the past few years, my family and I have established a customary celebration for my birthday. We go out to dinner by boat. Some celebrations have been more successful than others.

In fact, the first time we took such an excursion was for my 40th birthday, when we took the boat to Chimney Creek for my first (and so far only) dinner at the famous Crab Shack. We enjoyed the rustic surroundings, the baby alligators in the nearby alligator pool, and the steamed seafood. We bumped into our friends Debbie and Joel Rotkow and had a nice visit with them. And we watched the tide come in, which I always enjoy.

Around 8:30 or so, after paying the bill, we decided to make our way back home. Joel cautioned us. "Are you sure you can make it all right? The tide's coming in pretty fast."

Oh, sure, we told him. We didn't have that far to go.

What we had forgotten was that June 14th, 2006 was the day of the highest tide of the year. In fact, we found ourselves going home at the height of a neap tide, and the Chatham County waterways rose way over the marsh grass. I felt like I was in Lake Michigan. And that was before we had a GPS in the boat.

"This is cool," I told Stephen. "We can just sail straight home."

Thank goodness Stephen knew better. "We don't know what's under this water," he said. "We have to stay in the river, or we don't know what we might hit."

Oh.

So for about twenty minutes, we crept along what we thought was Chimney Creek, and the sky grew darker, and we grew increasingly unsure of where we were steering. Finally, we gave up, went back to the Crab Shack and docked the boat. We called my father in-law, who picked us up in the car and drove us home (which was another adventure because the water had also covered Tybee Road. We drove past a taxi which had floated into the marsh). We got home around 10:00 to find our back yard under water. That was a memorable birthday.

So the adventure has inspired us to take a boat to dinner each subsequent year. In the past, we've gone to Tybee restaurants, but this time, we ventured a little farther to Hilton Head, where we met our friends Beth, David, Elsie and Kit at the South Beach Marina's Salty Dog Cafe. We had never been there, and we were expecting a marina with a restaurant. But my readers who are Hilton Head experts already know it was much more than that. We actually ate at The Wreck, which is an extension of the Salty Dog Cafe. We shopped in the Salty Dog Tee Shirt Factory as well as the bait and tackle shop. Elsie got her face painted and then visited the resident parrots. Afterward, we all enjoyed a scoop of ice cream on the deck just as the live music was starting up. When we left, Lawson referred to the marina as the Salty Dog Mini Outlet Mall.

Dinner was tasty. The company was enjoyable. And the boat ride was pleasant. We left at high tide again, but this year, the rivers cooperated and showed us the way home (with a little help from the GPS).

Another successful Flag Day Eve.