Farrell: Beaufort County shows world how to do Top 10 lists
I have a very specific recurring life-fantasy, one that involves three key items: a cup of coffee, a beige cashmere wrap and a cottage at Palmetto Bluff.
It is dusk in October. I am walking toward the waterfront. My writing for the day is done. I am happily lost in thought -- literary thought, intellectual thought, not my usual "Keeping Up With the Kardashians" thought.
My dog is with me. He is walking in lock-step and not at all pulling on his leash or causing me to spill coffee on my cashmere. He, too, is lost in thought; maybe he is thinking about organic biscuits or rustic hunting scenes or the roast chicken waiting for us at home.
Life is ideal here. It is perfectly curated, decorated and cozy. It is a movie set for a film about contentment. It is a painting about the marriage of man and nature -- a painting that can be lived in.
On my walk home, I see guests at the inn gathered around fire pits, drinking wine. I wave to the people behind the counter at Buffalos. Before I can protest, one runs out and hands me a bag of chocolate chip cookies. "Here," she says. "These should go to a good home."
"I promise to love them as if they were my own," I tell her. We laugh.
There's even a man in this fantasy. He is back at the cottage we own, lighting the fireplace on our porch. He's kind and picks up after himself and says things like "Isn't this great?"
Because everything is great -- at least it feels that way whenever I'm at Palmetto Bluff.
And I'm not alone in this thinking. Not even close.
The inn, golf club and spa have received so many accolades over the years, it requires continuous scrolling to read them all. Most recently The Inn at Palmetto Bluff was named No. 1 U.S. Hotel for Family Travel, No. 14 Hotel in the World and No. 2 Resort in the Continental U.S. by Travel + Leisure magazine.
This same magazine named Hilton Head Island the second best island in the U.S. and Canada, and Sea Pines Resort the No. 6 Resort in the Continental U.S.
Oh, since we're talking lists, there's also Hilton Head's designation as Yahoo.com's No. 1 Most Popular U.S. Island for Summer Vacations and Bluffton's top spot as Money magazine's Best Places to Retire 2015 in the "waterfront living" category. Garden & Gun's June/July issue named Bluffton among its list of 10 Great Escapes, calling it a top "Southern dream town."
Hilton Head, Bluffton and Beaufort are killing it on lists all over the place, and have been for the last two years especially.
There's the Travel Channel's "best beaches in South Carolina" (Hilton Head), TripAdvisor's "top 25 beaches in the U.S." (Hunting Island State Park), U.S. News and World Report's "4 Gold Getaways to Take This Spring," Shape magazines' "35 Best Beaches in America for Fitness Lovers," Golf Magazine's "Best Trips," Fodor's, National Geographic ... the list of the lists goes on.
If there were a Top 10 Lists of Lists list, we'd be on it -- more than once.
I get press releases regularly about the lists, many of them seemingly made-up. How do they even choose us? What is their methodology? This is ridiculous. Are we really the top place to buy a house with seven doors? Are we really No. 1 in happiest cats who get treats in the evenings? We won Top Islands Named Hilton Head 2015?!?
I kid, these aren't real lists. But if they were, we would school the rest of the country on them because we are good at being amazing.
Remember two years ago when Beaufort was named Happiest Seaside Town by Coastal Living magazine? The write-up was quite lovely, too, noting the strolling and the history and the architecture.
Yes, yes and yes. We have lots of that.
"And then," Coastal Living said, "as any local will tell you, there's the shrimp. And the sweet tea. And the mandevilla-perfumed breezes that imbue the slowed pace of Lowcountry life. All of it, in Beaufort."
We are happy on the seaside because of all this.
And then USA Today weighed in.
"In America's happiest seaside town," they wrote, "it's legal to beat your wife on the courthouse steps. But only on Sundays."
Spits out sweet tea, crushes flower, chokes on shrimp.
I picture that reporter still congratulating herself for thinking of this off-putting and nonsensical idea for a story.
"Happiest seaside town? These lists mean nothing, and I will show them this. Shall I choose the bit about the wife-beating on the courthouse steps that simply doesn't happen ever or should I check for any laws in the books that feature donkeys and bathtubs?"
Her story went on to win Top Stories About Beaufort with References to Courthouse Steps on Sundays 2013.
Mention Beaufort, and you get listed, honey.
Being named to all these lists is perhaps an embarrassment of riches, bordering on a bragging Kanye West/Jay Z collaboration, just naming all the things that make us superior: "Travel, leisure, beaches, golf, go'head try to tell me our driving is off."
Or it would be an embarrassment if it didn't feel so great. Because really these lists just tell us what we already know.
We chose right. We were born lucky.
We get to live here.
And it's not just a fantasy.
Follow columnist and senior editor Liz Farrell at twitter.com/elizfarrell and facebook.com/elizfarrell.
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This story was originally published July 10, 2015 at 6:35 PM with the headline "Farrell: Beaufort County shows world how to do Top 10 lists."