Mother Nature’s Gift … a Good-Weather Day

Sunday, 16 December
Hunting Island State Park — South Carolina
Temps: Lo 55F / Hi 67F (13C / 19C)

First, let me finish off yesterday.  Even though we didn’t go out to explore Beaufort as planned, we did go out to run a few errands and also have dinner at the 11th Street Dockside, a restaurant in Port Royal.  It is a casual seafood eatery that overlooks shrimp docks on Port Royal Sound.

At low tide, these boats aren’t going anywhere; their masts serve as overnight
roosting spots for the pelicans flying about.

The Dockside only serves dinner; we arrived at 4:30p when the doors opened and had
our pick of the tables.  The place filled up quickly soon after we were seated.

The restaurant was recommended to us by several locals, and has good reviews on TripAdvisor.  We give it a thumbs up as well — the service was excellent and the food was quite good.

The portions are quite large; we had plenty of Mui’s grilled shrimp with rice and
my flounder florentine with pasta left over for lunch today.

That really was all the excitement we had yesterday.  But today was entirely different and was filled with fun and cheer.

We were actually prepared for another quiet day at home since the forecast was for a “blah” day.  In fact, we greeted the day through the veil of a thick fog that hid the ocean from view.  By 10:00a, it was a different story.  The sun had burned off the fog and the sky was a beautiful bright blue.  Mui was already outside washing the car, so I went for a walk around the park to explore the back loops with the 50A hook-ups.  I returned via the beach, wading through the high tide in a few spots.

Having tackled the front of the coach, Mui’s giving the toad’s floor mats a good rinsing.

It’s a beautiful morning for walking in the high tide … or for fishing.

Since we weren’t expecting this bonus good-weather day, we didn’t have a plan in place.  So, over lunch we talked options and decided to walk the Magnolia Forest Trail and take the connector trail to the lighthouse on the outbound leg while the tide was still going out and return to the campground via the beach at low tide.  (About 2½ miles [4 km].)

The arrows show the approximate area that we hiked (and later triked).

The natural earth trails followed a hilly terrain, but were far from difficult.  Both trails wound through pines, oaks, palms, and palmettos; and of course the wispy Spanish moss was everywhere.  There were magnolia trees as well, but not in bloom this time of the year.  I bet the tail is even more beautiful when the flowers are blooming.

I love the contrast between the spiky palmettos and the wispy Spanish moss.

Once we reached the lighthouse, we headed out to the beach where we ate our snacks and did a little people watching.  There weren’t many people out — just a father and son throwing around a frisbee; a mother and son shelling; a family strolling along the sand dunes.  We contemplated the ocean for a while, commenting on how calm it was today, but never forgetting that beneath that placid surface powerful currents were at work, eroding the beach.

We’re two hours from low tide, and there is a wide expanse of beach now between the
ocean and the lighthouse, but it’s a different story at high tide.  Once the waves crest
the dunes, it’s just a couple hundred yards at most to the base of the lighthouse.

Although the water was out considerably, we still had to deal with the “River Jordan” (photos here) on our way back to the campground.  Our makeshift bridge from Thursday had shifted into a tangle of other debris, but we figured out the right tree trunks and thick branches to use as stepping stones and made it across without being dunked.  Then we hurried back to the campground to gear up and go for a trike ride on the beach.  Riding along the shoreline, the water lapping at our wheels; detouring here and there to check out things small and big.  What fun!

Left: a beautiful shell on the trunk of a toppled tree catches Mui’s eye.

Right: We thought this horseshoe crab was alive, but when Mui went to return it to the ocean, we realized that wasn’t the case; all that was left was the top shell.

Thanks to a recent post by Sherry, I recognized this as a “living” sand dollar.
It was stranded on the beach, so we returned it to the sea, giving it a fighting
chance to survive one more tide cycle.

Ring-billed gull going for a walk in the surf!

As the sun dipped low on the horizon, we called it a day and returned to the coach.  With rain in the forecast, we decided to take down the screen shelter before it got wet again.  We have just one more day left here, so it needed to come down tomorrow anyway; we’ll just sit on the beach instead — if Mother Nature decides to gift us with another good-weather day.