Day 45 – Bright sun, no clouds, 44 degrees, gorgeous out at 7 a.m. this morning. We were taking advantage of the clear day to start exploring the area. We packed our lunches and headed out, turning south out of the Live Oak Campground and going to the separate part of Edisto Beach State Park that houses the Beach Campground & offers Ocean access. This campground is smaller and more popular than Live Oak where we are camping due to its proximity to the Ocean. We drove through and looked at campsites when we were here before; we wanted to see how it looked now. Still crowded and still very little privacy or trees. We only saw one campsite that we even remotely liked.
This was the farthest south we’d previously been on Edisto Island, so we drove further into town and then followed the road to the community that lived on the sand dunes right next to the Ocean. The road goes on quite a distance as it circles the Island and the homes by the water. We liked this community much better than the others we’d driven through along the Ocean in NC & SC. It was not so mansion-developed, and the homes were not so close to each other that you reach out & touch your neighbor like the other seaside resort towns so popular in the Summer. We got the feeling that people actually lived in these homes year-round rather than renting the house out all Summer. They’ve left up plenty of the beautiful Live Oaks with the hanging Spanish Moss. It’s a nice area; we like it here.
In 2017 we’d stayed at an overcrowded independent campground for two nights. It was located fairly close to Charleston, SC. We took a long day to drive south, going to Botany Bay, Edisto Beach State Park, Ace Basin National Wildlife Refuge, Caw Caw Interpretive Center, and Bear Island Wildlife Management Area. It had been a rainy, cloudy day and while we liked all these places, there wasn’t enough time to do much more than drive through and check them out for future visits. Today we went north again to Botany Bay Plantation and took the time to really enjoy the place. While last time, we were mostly looking at what was left of the old plantations, we did see our first alligator of that trip off in the distance. This time we looked at the scenery, looked for alligators, and of course, for the birds. It was nice and perhaps we’d see more animal life another time. Not highly successful in that department this morning, but it was a really nice drive and we’d come back again.
Click any picture below to see a slideshow.
Then we went north and stopped to eat our lunch by the bridge that crosses over the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway. We decided to go to the farthest place on our list for the afternoon, Bear Island Wildlife Management Area, about an hour away. In 2017 we loved this place and on the way out when it was getting dark, we saw our first Wood Storks, very large birds stalking around the marsh and Bald Cypress trees. We hope to see them again this time.
We spent the entire afternoon at Bear Island. It was wonderful. We saw four alligators, basking in the sun. We saw so many birds, too. The high today was 70 degrees. A few bugs were flitting about, but few were biting. We took lots of pictures and encountered only a couple of people: some fishing and others birdwatching. Very peaceful. We hope to come back again this trip, and maybe that time we’ll see the Wood Storks.
Click any picture below to see a slideshow.
We got back to the RV close to 5 p.m. There were more people camping today, but plenty of sites were unoccupied. All was quiet. We made a loaf of seed bread for our sandwiches & had nachos for dinner. A very nice day!
Beautiful photos, as always. Don’t get too close to those alligators!