Homeward Bound – Mar 22 - 24

Driving along, there’s lots of time to discuss routes, goals and objectives, destinations and then change them around a couple times! I had wanted to go home via the Dismal Swamp which is on the alternative ICW and then on up the Eastern Shore of the Chesapeake. There is a Welcome Center at Dismal that is very nice where I hoped we could stay. When I called, they told me they don’t encourage people to stay in the parking lot over night but they know people do it. Not a strong No! Then we starting looking at the weather and night temps and decided we needed to winterize the van that day and we needed a dump station to do it. I started calling around and the obvious, a state park nearby, didn’t have the facilities. We finally found an independent campground willing. After that job, we wanted to get a bit more distance and ended up at a Cracker Barrel in Chesapeake, VA.

Day 2 of the home stretch was through the tunnels, over the bridge and up the Eastern Shore. Because we were breaking a two day marathon into three days, we stopped at Flea Markets, Antique Stores, poked around Chesapeake City on the Chesapeake/Delaware Canal, dinner at Woody’s Crab House in North East, MD and back on the road to a Cracker Barrel in Mt. Laurel, NJ.

Tomorrow should find us home!

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Huntington Beach SP - March 21

Thursday we joined the tour at the Birds of Prey. This was fabulous. They have a big campus that is only open to the public three days a week. There is a clinic that treats injured birds that are brought in. Many of the local birds that they have as permanent residents have come through the clinic and can’t be released for various reasons. There are two bald eagles each with a wing that had to be partially amputated and a red shouldered hawk that lost an eye due to being hit by a car. Many of the other birds are the result of someone finding a chick, thinking it needed help and trying to raise them themselves. The problem is that the birds imprint on humans and can’t adjust to living in the wild. It would have been best to leave them alone. The second part of the tour was watching the working birds do flying demonstrations. This was amazing. If you are ever in this area, make the time to go!

From there, we headed about 60 miles north to Huntington Beach SP. HBSP is also a SC State Park and totally different than Hunting. The campground was very nice as was the whole park. The original plan was to stay to see the park and visit Brook Green Gardens which is just across the street. We’ll have to come back when we have more time. It was getting pretty cold so we decided the time had come to make the drive back.

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Buck Hall Rec. Area, McClennanville, SC - March 16 - 20

Buck Hall has become one of our favorite places. We joined S & E and all went to dinner at T. W. Graham Seafood Restaurant in McClennanville. Fried Oysters and Key Lime Pie all around! The next day, S, E and I went to the Santee Coastal WLMA – very buggy but wonderful birds. Later, my cousin Sarah and her friend Joe arrived! They ended up staying two nights and kayaked around parts of the Cape Romain National Wildlife Refuge. Sarah’s hope was to kayak with dolphins and they found them! There has been several times I wished I had a kayak. Something to put on the list to research. We all had dinner at the campsite the first night and headed in different directions the next.

Everyone left us Tuesday. We really wanted to go to the Center for Birds of Prey that was only open Thur – Sat.  We also wanted to head towards Charleston so we decided to stay on. This meant more lunches at Graham’s and the McClennanville Diner and shrimp for dinner and will also mean big changes in our diet when we get home. A great hike was the S. Tiwbin Trail. This was a Wetlands Management Complex designed and built by Ducks, Unlimited in the Francis Marion National Forest. What it really means is that it is an area that has been created to attract wildlife (ducks in particular) to live and breed, and open the area up for hunting during the seasons. It is really pretty, somewhat buggy and a number of big alligators along with lots of birds.

We got to Drayton Hall in Charleston which was very impressive. This is the oldest unrestored plantation house open to the public. There is no furniture which really makes it easier to focus on the architecture which is Palladian-inspired. Even though the house was used by the family as recently as the 1970’s, no bathrooms were added and the house has only had 3 coats of paint in 300 years.

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Hunting Island State Beach - Mar. 11 - 15

Time to leave Skidaway with S & E going a bit further north to Buck Hall while we headed to Hunting Island near Beaufort, SC to visit family and friends. This park is SC's most popular and profitable park and for good reason because the beach, trails, fishing pier and lighthouse are beautiful. Sadly, the campground was incredibly tight with restrooms that looked to be dated back to the 60’s. The simplest of things were missing – trash barrels, paper towels or hand dryers. Most of the restrooms had communal changing areas for the showers, some with heat and some w/out. When we were in the Everglades, our new friend Alan said that he checks out each shower to find the warmest with the best pressure. At Hunting, we pushed it a step further to find the best restroom!

Many good things too! The park pays for a fishing license for the pier making it easy for anyone to fish. They also provide fishing poles at no charge and sell bait. Harry spent a couple hours fishing without a bite. He asked each person who came out on the pier questions hoping for local knowledge but it was the first time for all. When the poles were returned, he mentioned he didn’t get a nibble. It was then the ranger said the fish don’t come in until April! Right!!

We met up with my Uncle Walker for a very nice lunch, toured Dataw Island and while on his pier, saw 3 fairly big swirls. It turned out to be a bottle nose dolphin fishing all around the pier. Very special! The following day we met up with Bill and Ann at Habersham for dinner. I understand why they disappear for months! Great visits all around!

There was one dark moment. I dropped my iPad! It wasn’t much of a drop and landed on the rug but when turned on, the screen was a bright pink with bright green highlights – very hard to read and depressing to think of life on the road without it! I know, pathetic! I googled and came up with a couple solutions. There were a number of posts about hitting, tapping, spanking different sides, corners and backs of the thing. The problem was most likely the loosening of the display cable that Apple can fix for between $250-300. Then there are tools you can purchase to take the screen off and do it yourself. Don’t think so but desperation does set in when you are isolated in a campground. I did try the tapping, etc. that didn’t work so I decided to replicate “the drop” on the other side of the iPad. It’s worked perfect since! I’m not suggesting anyone else try this!

We booked 6 nights to get us through the Saturday rush but decided to forfeit the last night to join S & E at Buck Hall.

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Skidaway Island State Park - March 7 - 10

Last time we were in this area, we stayed at Ft. McAllister.  Skidaway was a nice change with its proximity to Savannah and surrounding trails going through marshes, pine and live oak forests and along the ICW. S & E got the last site for Saturday night so we shared a site for the time we were there. The rules were a bit ambiguous on sharing and although we got a verbal OK by phone, the rangers weren’t happy on arrival and made it pretty clear it won't happen again.

This was a good stop for laundry. Lots of trails for hikes and the Interpretive Center had an awesome bird feeding station that gave new meaning to a bird walk – sit in a chair with a cup of coffee, relax and let the birds come to you. We saved Saturday to go to Savannah for their Farmer's Market, lunch and a walk through the historic district and waterfront.

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Little Talbot Island - March 4 - 6

Little Talbot in Jacksonville, FL was a convenient stop to start our journey back north. It gave us the opportunity of another great grilled shrimp dinner, more hikes, biking and a trip to the Guana Tolomato Matanzas Reserve that had been highly recommended when we had passed through a month earlier but didn’t have time to stop. 

Because we planned to spend a good deal of our time in FL, Harry got a salt water fishing license. We have found two places where the park purchases a license for their pier making it possible for travelers to fish hassle free – Gulf Shores National Park in Pensacola, FL and Hunting Island State Park in SC (more on this later).  Up to this point, the only other opportunity Harry has had to fish was in the Everglades. Guana had a nice fishing spot at the dam with locals giving him lots of advice and stories of fish caught yesterday but none today of course!  There were manatees when the tide was coming in and crabs for the catching on the other side of the dam by locals. S, E & I hiked a bit and saw some great birds.

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