a wide place

Harbor Island.

Thanks to the generosity of some friends at church, our family is spending the week on Harbor Island, which is located between Beaufort and Hunting Island. Each year, I’m grateful that our flexible schedule of pastoring and homeschooling lets us vacation in September, rather than during the busy, blinding-hot tourist weeks of the summer. It’s…

Julie

September 14, 2023

2–3 minutes

Thanks to the generosity of some friends at church, our family is spending the week on Harbor Island, which is located between Beaufort and Hunting Island.

Each year, I’m grateful that our flexible schedule of pastoring and homeschooling lets us vacation in September, rather than during the busy, blinding-hot tourist weeks of the summer. It’s enabled us to use friends’ beach houses or condos and to get a discount during the years we rent our own spot.

But each year it also gets a bit more complicated as we have to miss various classes and co-ops. Now we have two high schoolers who can’t afford to miss a whole week of school. So, along with six people’s worth of suitcases and duffel bags, puzzles and games, food and drinks, they loaded their books and laptops into the van.

We were even more crammed this year because we got to bring our pup, Kira, along. This is Kira’s first taste of the beach and she loves it. And we all love her loving it. She was very confused in the beach house for the first 24 hours or so . . . pacing the length of the open-floor living space, afraid of the carpeted staircase, startling every time the ice make churned or AC switched on, whining when the whole family wasn’t gathered together in one close-knit space. But from the very first exuberant walk, she took to the sand and water and long empty stretches of beach. And now she’s settled right into our rhythm of lazy hours in the house too.

Thankfully Judah and Amie have the option to attend their co-op class through Zoom, so they were able to sit in Tuesday and Thursday and have worked an hour or two each day keeping up with school.

Other than that, we’ve spent delightfully slow days sipping coffee, reading, taking long walks on the beach, learning how to play pickle ball, swimming in the pool, exploring Hunting Island State Park, reading some more, playing Risk, napping, driving into Beaufort for barbecue and ice cream, and soaking in every moment on this quiet, wild, marshy island.