I rode in to South Beach (a small town in Hilton Head South Carolina) on my bike, my family in front of me already locking their bikes together.  It was a perfect day.  The sun was shining, but it was still cool.  We pulled into an area full of picnic tables.  I pulled up next to my family and locked my bike on. I loved it here, there was something about it that just made it perfect.

“Lets go get soda!” I said excitedly.  That was one of the main reasons I wanted to come here.  They have tons of soda, and I never know what to get.

“Okay.” my dad said.  My brothers, my dad, and I walked past a lot of stores selling clothes and walked to the edge of the pier and into a small store.  We looked around at all the merchandise.  This store had everything!  It had shirts, snowglobes, souvenirs, lighters and best of all, drinks.  I was so thirsty.  I got an orange crush soda and so did my brothers.  We walked outside to find our mom waiting.  Then as a family, we all walked to the center of the small town to see the parrots.  The parrots were three parrots (Captain, Kiwi, and Cherokee) that were very old, and we saw them at least once every time we came here.  Kiwi and Cherokee are light blue with yellow chests and Captain is red with a yellow chest.  We were standing and admiring the parrots in their tall spindly tree with curling and winding limbs when my mom asked:

“Do you want to walk around with me?”

“Sure.” I replied.  We walked around and walked into some of the stores.  We walked into one to find a bunch of caged hermit crabs with painted shells.

“Woah!” I said which I followed up immediately with: “Can I get one? I promise I’ll take care of it. I’ve taken care of the hermit crabs at school.” I was referring to my class pets I had in third grade. They were three or four hermit crabs that we could play with if we had free time.

“I don’t know… we already have a dog.” my mom said.

“Please mom!”

“No I’m sorry.”

“Fine” I was angry but I understood. It was kind of expensive and we didn’t really need it. We went back to the parrots, and I sat and enjoyed my soda with my brothers.  After we finished we biked back to our amazing house we were renting.  It was very nice and I loved it.  Me and my brothers shared a room in the very back of the house.  It cut through our grandmas room.  Our grandma hadn’t come to south beach with us, she stayed at the house.  Me and my brothers snuck back to our room, and watched tv until bedtime.

When I woke up we ate breakfast and biked to the beach.  We stayed for a couple hours but didn’t go in the water.  The waves were too small to play in or have fun.  We played in the sand and made mountains and sand sculptures.  Then we left to go to south beach once again.  When we got there we got a soda and walked around as a family.  We walked to the store where the hermit crabs were.  We walked inside and my mom yelled,

“Surprise!”

“What? Are we getting a hermit crab?” I asked excitedly.

“Yep. You and your brothers can choose three, one for each of you.” I chose a small one at random.  My brother Drew picked a giant hermit crab about twice the size of mine.  My brother Sam picked a medium one with a shark painted shell.  We told him he should name it Shelly Sharkson as a joke. We packed them onto a cart connected to our dads bike.  It was full of sand because we carried shovels and towels to and from the beach in it. Then our bike caravan set off back to our rental house

The next day we drove home from hilton head.  I had the hermit crabs in their cage on my lap.  I took mine out of the cage and put it on top of the cage.  Shelly Sharkson and Drew’s brute stayed in the cage.  I might have made mine traumatized from all the bumping of the car.  It almost never came out of its shell again.  I almost thought it was dead, (Of course, that was before I knew hermit crabs were nocturnal).  As we drove home I was happy, excited to come back and show everyone what I got.