Daufuskie Island Adventure - Slice of Life Challenge

I had an amazing experience today - I went to visit Daufuskie Island, an island right next to Hilton Head, only accessible by boat.  The fun part about this - it would never have happened if Katherine hadn't commented on one of my posts that I really should try a unique restaurant on Daufuskie Island, Marshside Mama's.  I value Katherine's opinion, so I started investigating how to get there, and from that, a plan emerged.

From the moment I stepped onto the dock at Daufuskie Island, I knew it was going to be a special experience.  It was in no way a hustle-bustle kind of dock; rather, the only boat unloading was my water taxi, and the occupants were a husband and wife coming to plan the building of their house on the island, a man from Atlanta coming to spend a long weekend at his house, and me.  At the end of the dock, our transportation awaited.  We would all be leaving in golf carts.

My boat captain, Captain Jim, handed me a map of the island and off I went.  It's hard to describe how absolutely "away from it all" one is while on Daufuskie.  From the time I left the dock until I saw the first golf cart that someone else was driving took almost five minutes.  And when people did pass me, they waved and said hi.  When your vehicle can't go faster than 30 mph, that's relatively easy to do.  I have no idea whether I was passing other visitors to the island or islanders themselves, but that feeling of a small community was ever present.

Using my map as a guide, I puttered around all the different parts of the island, stopping from time to time to either take a picture or to check out a historic site.  I've decided to do a partial picture travelogue to help the reader experience some of the special sights I saw today.

This is Haig Point, the first part of Daufuskie Island

 - this is my view from water taxi

Marshside Mama's restaurant

My view while driving my golf cart

The beach!!

An eagle's nest on the road to the beach

Mary Fields School where the author, Pat Conroy, taught the Gullah children of the island for 1 year. His room was on the right side.  To read more about this experience, read his book The Water is Wide.

I started this journey when I wanted to try to figure out how my husband and I could have dinner at Marshside Mama's based on Katherine's suggestion, but it morphed into so much more than that.  It became that one of a kind day that I will hold dear to my heart for a long time to come.  I'm so grateful to Katherine for putting an inkling of an idea in my head, and then answering follow up questions as I got more and more intrigued.  The power of our slice community is pretty amazing, and extends past the boundaries of just who we are as writers.

As always, thanks to Stacey and Ruth at Two Writing Teachers for hosting the Slice of Life Challenge!