Day 47 – My knee, which had been like a roller coaster of pain (a few days of a little pain followed by the not-so-good days where walking was quite painful) has been less painful for a stretch of days now, basically since we left home. I am continuing with icing it & taking anti-inflammatories, and I do my PT exercises daily. But I was doing that at home. Therefore, I contribute the lesser-painful days to sitting on my behind for hours at a time. The drive south was many hours seated while we were driving. Since we got here, we’ve gone exploring by vehicle, again seated for decent periods of time. When I have needed to walk, it’s been with a cane. Rob’s back & shoulder issues which started in November from overdoing it at our land in Maine, are also doing better since his level of heavy activity has dropped, and he does a long series of PT exercises every morning without fail. Hopefully, we’ve learned our lessons: the old gray mare, she ain’t what she used to be, LOL.
At 7 a.m. this morning, it was raining lightly & 58 degrees. Last night the weather forecast looked good for today. You can never tell! We waited around for awhile to see if the rain would stop. When it got down to a bare drizzle, we packed our lunches and left again for Ernest F. Hollings ACE Basin National Wildlife Refuge (NWR). We were hoping to find someone in the office so we could get driving maps of the tours. Going to and from the NWR we took side roads, some of them not paved, small country roads that gave us a real feel for this old southern area.
Ted C.!!
“The ACE Basin consists of approximately 1 million acres of diverse habitats including pine & hardwood uplands, forested wetlands, fresh, brackish & salt water tidal marshes, barrier islands and beaches. The basin’s unique estuarine system is the largest of its type in the state.” (from The ACE Basin Project, map & brochure, 2017) The A.C. & E. in ACE stand for the Ashepoo, Combahee, and South Edisto Rivers, the three Rivers that surround & travel through the huge area. The ACE Basin represents one of the largest undeveloped estuaries on the east coast of the United States.
As we started traveling down the Live Oak tree-lined road to the old mansion that houses the NWR office, it had started raining again and it was very cloudy & muggy, 66 degrees. We were glad we made it there yesterday afternoon when we were able to get some good pictures of the grounds in better weather conditions. The grand old house where the office is located is known as The Grove Plantation. It was built in 1828. The property changed hands many times over the years until The Nature Conservancy purchased it in 1991. The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service purchased the Grove in late 1992 as part of the ACE Basin NWR. This house is one of the only three antebellum mansions in the ACE Basin that survived the Civil War. But unfortunately, no one was at the office, so we drove off to explore more areas of the ACE Basin without the preferred map & paperwork.
Going north on a small two-laned road, we passed several tiny towns. (The thing all these tiny towns have in common is lots of Churches of many denominations.) We passed by a marshy area and Rob abruptly pulled over. He had spotted a large white & black bird in the marsh. It was the endangered American Wood Stork. In the timeframe it took me to get my camera and my trusty cane & hobble out of the car, he had unintentionally scared the Stork into flight, but he still got a great picture.
Wood Stork, Parkers Ferry Rd, ACE Basin, SC
We spent the day driving all over ACE Basin. We were able to spend more time today at Donnelley Wildlife Management Area (WMA). It is one of several WMA’s & NWR’s within the Basin. Yesterday when we drove through, at the end of the drive we passed by a kiosk & picked up a map of the driving tour. Today we did that tour, and we were glad we did come back! Alligators & Roseate Spoonbills galore, oh my!
Click on any picture below to see a slideshow.
It rained lightly most of the afternoon, very humid, and the high was 70 degrees. Bugs were out but not biting yet. We felt we’d done an excellent job of at least covering half of the ACE Basin these few days. We decided to head back to Edisto, but wanted to drive by the marsh where we’d seen the Wood Stork this morning. Lo & behold, there were four of them near the road at the marsh again. We got some pictures even though two flew to roost in a tree. They’re quite skittish.
On the way back to the RV, we stopped again at the ACE Basin NWR office at Grove Plantation. Third time’s a charm – we got some maps & info for next time. Then we drove to the Edisto Beach State Park Environmental Learning Center, which is fairly close to where we are camping. They had just closed but we’re thinking about going there tomorrow & we got the hours they’re open. We got back to the RV close to 5 p.m. and made dinner. A good day despite the rain!
Hi Vicki & Rob,
You really got Ted going with that street sign.
Carol
xoxo