Hilton Head must be a great place to live. Everyone I met not only loves living there but brags about how long they go without leaving the island. I contrast this to those of us in Michigan who brag about how long it's been since we went into Detroit. It's always sunny in Hilton Head; at least such that the light rain on the morning of my departure caught folks by surprise. Usually the sweet sea breeze blows inland any rain trying to invade from the south. Oh there's rain during hurricanes, but it's been over a century since Hilton Head was hit head on by one.

Hilton Head is wealthy. Really wealthy. Really really wealthy. And exclusive, in the literal sense of the word. The water facing neighborhoods are euphemistically called "plantations." And with one exception, these "plantations" are private. You don't get in unless the security guard at the gate has your name on the invited list (if you have friends living there, or you have a tee time on the golf course, or some such reason). Within, the "plantations" are verdant neighborhoods with large old money homes intersperse with golf courses and marinas and country clubs. They don't want your type driving through and gawking. "I'm sorry sir, you'll have to turn your car around and head back to the main road."

I am totally cool with that. I'd want that in a vacation home. I wouldn't want every idiot stopping and staring at my house, or availing themselves of my bike paths and wooded trails. Just step off, rabble. If you want in my 'hood, I'll rent you my place while I'm away.

Although not to the extreme of the "plantations," the whole island is under pretty tight control. There are shopping centers and even a mall, but you won't see them from the main road. There will be a sign at the entrance -- size and colors strictly regulated -- and that's all you get. The rest will be hidden behind the trees. That McDonald's M is barely noticeable in mauve on cream. There is a single cross-island freeway, but you'll pay a toll if you want to use it. Look, rabble, we didn't build this island for your convenience, you know.

If you can't get an invitation to a "plantation," there are a handful of big resorts that will serve you well -- Hilton, Marriott, Westin (where I stayed). They'll set you up with beach access and amenities galore. It'll cost you in season, though. Lucky for me it was off-season. The Westin is pretty sweet. Nice rooms, lots of space, good restaurants on site, and a beautiful, expansive beach. You won't go wrong here. Plus, I got a good off-season rate. Note: December through February is off season; it's families all summer, and golfers in the spring and fall.

•This color you don't see in a Michigan winter
•Although not many people were around the pool
•Don't get many flowers up north this time of year either
•You can't find fault with the beach

Beyond that, well, you could drive on to the island for a day trip, pay to use the road, find the one public beach access point, but why bother? There are cheaper and more convenient ways to get to a nice beach. Hilton Head is about exclusivity, and if you don't intend to experience the exclusivity, you money is best spent elsewhere.

There is, to my knowledge, only one "plantation" the average joe can access -- Sea Pines. Sea Pines is, I think, the largest "plantation" and it has a couple of developed areas with shops and restaurants that need the public traffic. The compromise they have made is that anyone can get in to Sea Pines, but it costs you a fiver at the gate. It's a good compromise. The unwashed masses won't pony up the fin, and no one else will likely go to the trouble unless they have a purpose.

I was happy to get $5 access to Sea Pines and meandered my way to Harbour Town, on the southwest end of the island. In warm weather this is a great place to watch the sunset from an outside bar while dining on peel 'n' eats and cold beer. When it's chilly out (light jacket weather), like it was my first night, you'll likely sit inside. The bar was occupied by others who were escaping the weather up north. The couple next to me had rented a condo for a month -- got an unbelievable off season rate -- and were, like everyone else, just happy to be there, playing golf everyday and not having a care in the world.

Personally, I plan on staying in Sea Pines next time, when the weather is a bit warmer, and I can spend my days biking the trails and wandering the side streets looking at the gazillion dollar homes hidden behind the landscaping.

•Me, encased in frozen carbonite in Harbour Town
•Lots of empty seats in Harbourtown, too
•Spanish Moss is ubiquitous
•The sunset is nice
•Really nice
•I mean like, the best yet

The Hilton Head "plantations" are what every enclave of wealth should aspire to be. But should you tire of the gentrified easy life, Hilton Head is also a good jumping off point for discovering what is generally termed the "low country" -- an area that roughly extends along the Atlantic coast from Myrtle Beach in the north all the way down through Georgia to Jacksonville in the south. (Pedants can argue about those boundaries, just don't bother involving me.) I took the geographical opportunity for some explorations around Charleston, a little over two hours to the north.

Charleston, or Chucktown as the locals know it, is a remarkably hip and happening spot, considering their main claim to fame is historic significance. It's impossible not to draw parallels and comparisons between Charleston and Savannah, three hours to the south. Both bank on their antebellum (or at least shortly post-bellum) heritage as a big draw. Both tightly control new development to keep it in line with that theme, although my guess is that Savannah is more stringent about historic accuracy. Both have city tours going on all the time. Both have colleges in the town, thereby adding a certain youthful energy to the mix.

Strictly in the sense of historic beauty, I would have to give Savannah the nod with their leafy squares and museum quality mansions. Other than that, I might have to go with Charleston. The Charleston waterfront is much nicer (granted, Savannah suffer from being on a river deeper inland) and though the Charleston historic district seems less, well, historic, there is more of an upscale atmosphere. For example, the long strip of shops and restaurants that constitute Market Street including a ridiculously long flea market up the middle is clearly a cut above the similar area on River Street or City Market in Savannah. Another immediately noticeable difference is that Chucktownies are obviously better healed; I saw no pods of homeless sitting around, which is something you do see in the Savannah squares. Savannah does have a more pure "historic district look" over Charleston, though.

For a day of wandering about town, Charleston would be tough to beat. I eventually made my way up Market Street and along Meeting Street (the main drag) through a large central park, Marion Square, where something called SEWE was going on: South East Wildlife Expo. Various conservation and wildlife groups (Ducks Unlimited, for example) had tents set up, there was a good sized petting zoo that was swamped with kids, and someone was giving camel rides. I discovered this when I was crossing an open area and I looked up to find myself face to face with a camel that seemed a mite perturbed that I was standing in his designated path. The child riding him looked at me like I was an idiot. There were dogs everywhere -- apparently dogs count as wildlife because all shapes and sizes of them were out with their owners.

•A beautiful house in the heart of town
•Very diverse traffic
•Fire department, half empty
•Your rockers await
•Sidestepped by a Camel
•The Harbor
•Like remora around a shark, a sailing regatta

Further up Meeting Street I walked through the big welcome center to snag some info, then up through the College of Charleston campus (not much to see) then back down through the heart of the historic district to the waterfront. The waterfront has a top notch pier and long promenade along the harbor. A sweet place for boat watching. One of the big cruise ships was docked and on the far bank sat an enormous Navy ship of some sort that dwarfed a swarm of little sailboats holding a regatta in its shadow. Chucktown is fun; it's good combo of vibey hipness and charming history. But if it's real southern beauty you're looking for you'll find it a few miles outside of town.

A few paragraphs earlier when I was talking about Hilton Head I kept putting the word plantation in quotes. That's because they aren't real plantations, they're just big gated neighborhoods. Outside of Charleston is where you find actual plantations, or at least former plantations. There appear to be four major ones, of which you can get an overview online. I asked the nice lady at the visitor center in Charleston which was the one to visit if I only had time for one. She refused to answer, giving me a politically expedient line about all of them be excellent in their own way. So just based on the brochures, I picked Magnolia Plantation and Gardens. A good choice.

Magnolia Plantation has been owned by the Drayton family since the 1600s. It has a long and fairly well documented history as an actual working plantation up through the Civil War, in the post-bellum is was given new life as a tourist destination for it's beautiful gardens. It was not open to the public, but essentially run as a B&B with world renown gardens and was quite popular with European travelers. Over the course of the next century it developed a commercial nursery business which lasted through the middle of the 1900s, then is 1975 was finally opened to the public for touring. There are four essential points of interest at Magnolia Plantation, 1) the Swamp, 2) the Gardens, 3) the House, and 4) the Zoo.

The zoo is a standard petting zoo; good for the kids. And for me, too. I like animals.

The house holds some interest, but the tour is on the short side. It is not a major piece of history as there have been many main houses on the plantation over the years as a result of fires and other issues. It's a beautiful house though, and the wide, elevated, wraparound porch is great for taking pictures of just enjoying the view.

The gardens are the big attraction. Seemingly endless intertwined pathways through acres and acres of flora of all shapes and sizes -- along the Ashley River, inland to enormous ancient oak trees, past rainforest green ponds, through a maze of shrubbery, over romantically arched footbridges, blooming flowers, green lily pads, Spanish moss -- all of it pretty much unchanged for decades. These gardens have never needed to be "restored" so there is nothing about them that appears manufactured or contrived. Is it odd to describe a garden as completely organic and natural? That is the impression. You could easily spend a couple of deeply chilled hours strolling here -- better yet, pack a loaf of bread and a jug of wine.

The swamp is what remains and in contrast to the civilized aesthetics of the gardens, the swamp has a primordial beauty. Get deep into it and you'll have visions of Jurassic creatures rising slowly out the murk to make a snack of you. Reality is closer to that than you think. The place is loaded down with alligators. Big ones. The largest one they know of is a 15-footer. Bear in mind that in walking through the swamp paths you have no protection, you are the equivalent of one of those wildebeests you see in the nature films that wanders up to the waterline, oblivious to the toothy creature just a few feet away. And yet, there is no record of a human being attacked by a gator at Magnolia Plantation -- which begs the question: What are they eating to get to 15 feet long? Deer, perhaps?

The gators actually seem pretty content. I didn't see the 15-footer but I saw more that few in the 10-foot range. The plantation crews have built a number of wooden ramps throughout the swamps specifically for the gators to crawl upon and bask in the sun, presumably to dissuade them from sunning themselves on the pathways and jeopardizing the safety record. All of the ramps I saw were occupied by one or more gators lazing the day away, usually accompanied by slew of football-sized slider turtles. These are the adult versions of the silver dollar-sized turtles they sell in pet shops.

Apart from the reptiles, bird life is abundant. Variations of cranes and ducks were ample. It was making me wish I was an ornithologist so I could identify them. In fact, the swamp's full name is Audubon Swamp Gardens because the famous bird painter got so much inspiration here. But mostly, the swamp provides an eerie, otherworldly atmosphere. It is undeniably beautiful, but deeply disturbing in a horror movie sort of way. Wes Craven filmed the movie Swamp Thing here. That should give you an idea of the place. Plus all these photos I'm about to dump on you. (The swamp ones were taken just before dark, you can imagine how eerie it would be the sun drops.)

•The view from the house
•Footbridge
•Footbridge again
•A giant oak
•The path down the Ashley River
•A freindly peacock
•First flower of Spring?
•Typical gator view
•Gators and turtles and ducks getting along (for the moment)
•I stampeded these ducks to try to get an artistic backlit shot (didn't really work)
•The swamp
•The swamp again
•The swamp yet again
•Ducks in muck
•Close up, you see that green covering is actually a flowering plant, not algae
•Winding down

Travel writer Charles Kuralt called Magnolia Plantation his greatest Charleston pleasure, and that's saying something because Charleston is full of pleasures. As is all of the "low country". It's a region that doesn't usually pop up first in mind when folks are sitting around planning how to spend their scarce vacation time. Maybe it should. A 10-day trip exploring from Jacksonville up through Myrtle Beach would be as rewarding and entertaining as the same time in, say, South Florida, or a National Park tour. But perhaps it's for the best. Visitors to this area tend to be repeaters. They find things they like and, in all probability, lock up a vacation home at some point. That's probably better than a catering to a new and different load of noobs every season.

Like Hilton Head specifically, all of the low-country seems to benefit from a people who have a commitment to and appreciation of the area than most tourist targets. And that makes folks happy to be connected with the place. Personally I'm going to keep attuned to the local real estate market with an eye toward making my own connection.