Late Start but Full Day

Hunting Island State Park

Site 90

Beaufort, S.C.

Slow morning.  Not sure why.  I was up at 7:15 and waited until 9:00 for David to begin his coffee ritual.  By the time we had breakfast and were outside it was 11:00 and I felt like half the day was over.   Which of course, with sunset now at 5:25, it was.

We walked around the campground and got a feel for what really is a very beautiful park with some terrific campground sites.  Many of the sites are close together with little if any visual separation.  But others are large and treed.   Ours is small and our neighbor is in our backyard.  But the site just across from us is large and very nice.  That's what happens when you don't know the park, you have to make reservations and you show up on what turns out to be a holiday week-end.   We had no idea that South Carolina really celebrates Veteran's Day.  The kids have Thursday and Friday off and the park was full of families and other gatherings.

Here is Site 89 across from us.  Nice site.  No one was there when we came in on Thursday but they had resesrved it for the week-end.

There are over 200 sites in 4 loops and we walked the whole thing looking at the really amazing variety of rigs that were there.  Here are some we thought were cute and different.

Doubt if anyone is going to full time in this.

Here is an ocean front site.  One of the few which didn't have to be moved after the big storm that took out one of the roads in the ocean front section.  I'd like to have this spot for sure.  An ocean in my front yard would be perfect.

A path out to the beach was just down from the rig above so we went out to see what it looked like

As you can see the ocean is definitely encroaching and taking the trees out with it.  But then that's what happens on a barrier island.   Little by little it moves the sand from one end to the other.  Or with the help of big storms, more quickly.

Another ocean front site.  These two class A's had different opinions of which end they wanted facing the water. 

We'd never seen outside steps like on this truck camper.  Enlarge this picture and take a look.

Love the lamp that goes with this little Scamp.

We kept seeing these blue flags in front of several rigs on various loops and then we found their headquarters.  I think there were more individual flags at sites than there are names on this big sign.

But I like their name and it is appropriate for this park that's for sure.

Along the back loop there were 4 sections for walk in tent camping.

These are quite secluded and of course you have to pack everything in to your site.

Back in my backpacking and tent camping days this would have been my choice of site for sure.

And although I've done weeks at a time of tent camping, full timing in a tent just sounds way too difficult to me now.

But for those of you who won't be full timers and who love to tent camp.  This is a great place with large secluded sites like this empty one

After walking all the loops we went out to spend some time on the ocean front.  Here's the view looking  North.

The view looking straight ahead

And the view looking south where most of the damage occurred.  You can see the lighthouse in the distance.

And here is my pick for sign of the year.  For those who don't know what this sign means,like I didn't, I'll explain it tomorrow with another picture.

After that hike we had some lunch and set out for the visitor's center to get trail maps and whatever other information they had.  The sun was just at the wrong angle to get a good picture of this lovely building and the boardwalk leading to it.

This pond was on the left side of the boardwalk and in front of the center.  The green is duckweed which apparently a resident mother alligator likes as home base for raising her family each year.  She was no longer in residence when we got there but had been seen all summer long.

The visitor's center exhibits told the history of the island and of its lighthouse as well as all about the various habitats located on the island.  Enlarge this habitat map to see where the campground is.  It's located north of the freshwater wetland on the ocean.

This state park was the second one created and opened in 1938.  Many of its roads and trails were created by the Civilian Conservation Corps during the early depression.   I loved this picture of an early RVer camping here.

Because of the drought these duckweed ponds on the left as we left the center were pretty dry.

Due to our late start, we closed the visitor's center down and went back over to the ocean front where I got these pictures of the reflection of the sunset on this lovely day.  Must have been a magnificent sunset over the salt water marsh on the island's western side to have created this beauty for us on the East.  Perhaps we can get there for the full show tomorrow.  Check back and see!  :-)