Hilton Head Lighthouse

We ended up only having 1 morning in Hilton Head so we used that morning to visit the lighthouse. One thing that I never read anywhere was that the lighthouse was located in a community called Sea Pines. And in order to get into Sea Pines, you have to pay $6 per vehicle. I mean, this won't break the bank or anything, but it was a surprise and I definitely didn't budget for it.
Then, when we finally arrived at the lighthouse, it was a little before 10am so we sat on some red rockers that are placed around the base of the lighthouse facing the basin and waited. Well, apparently we also weren't told that they play fast and loose with their hours of operation, because they did NOT open at 10. We decided to walk around and saw that there was a pier we could walk down. As we got closer to the pier, there was a small beach that had a TON of shells so Owen took that time to collect some. We took some pictures and then headed over to the information booth to ask when the lighthouse would open. They said it would probably open some time between 10:30 and 11. We decided to walk past and it was open.
We entered around 10:15-10:20. It cost $4.25 per person. We walked up the 114 steps to the top stopping to look at pictures and random facts and to get some pressed pennies. It's pretty tight in there so if it's busy, I'd imagine it's not too easy to navigate past people.
When we got to the top, there was a cute little gift shop. You could go outside to see the views on a deck that wrapped around the entire top. After we did that, we came inside and Owen bought a lighthouse snowglobe.
And that was our trip to the lighthouse! We really enjoyed it, but definitely wish we had known a couple of these things before visiting.