…just returned from a few days in Charleston. I’m going to throw this post up as a warm-up for finishing the Living Faith devotions I have due…soon. Ahem.
Beach days every day. Just as in Florida, it’s wise to go in the morning, because you can predict that rain is probably going to fall in the afternoon, and indeed, on two of our three days it did. Babysitting for my grandson every afternoon and evening. A good visit!
But first, on the way down…I had thought we would stop at Mepkin Abbey, but once Friday morning came around (we stayed Thursday night in Santee…cheap Best Western hotel, thanks to our many nights in Best Westerns…out West), I decided that a visit to a swamp would get people up and going with more enthusiasm than a visit to a Trappist monastery.
Next time….
It was the Four Holes Swamp in the Beidler Forest. It’s just a quick jot off of I-26. Very easy to get to, and a good walk to see many cypress, birds, lizards (my son caught one and was…er..privileged to have it reach around and bite its own tail off as an escape route while in his hand) and this fellow, whom we watched swim and hunt for quite a while…from a safe distance on a wooden walkway.
Didn’t see any gators this time, although they told me inside there were a couple in the lake.
Two mornings at Isle of Palms. It’s a pretty crowded beach, but clean, with good showers, changing rooms and so on. Good surf. (That’s it, above)
The third morning, we went to Sullivan’s Island, which is a much nicer beach – a bit more isolated and not as crowded. It doesn’t have facilities, though, but since the surf was calm that day, no one got super sandy, and the ride back in the car to the hotel was quick enough so no one got uncomfortable and the car didn’t get filthy (-er).
Sullivan’s Island is right across the bay from Charleston. You can see Fort Sumter and Charleston when you walk to the end of this stretch of beach. And of course, this is also a regular sight…..
Many deceased jellyfish on this stretch.
Metal-hunter wading in the water behind my son.
A live sand dollar, burrowing into the sand.
Our other good wildlife sighting was a glass, or legless lizard. It was in the middle of the road as we walked to Sullivan’s Island, and at first glance, we thought it was a snake, but my Herpetologist took a closer look and pronounced in a legless lizard, and when we returned and compared a photo to our memory of what we’d seen…yup, that’s what it was.
(Edgar Allen Poe spent a little more than a year of his life on Sullivan’s Island. Read why here.)
Last night, I went out and walked part of the way over the Ravenal Bridge. I intended to go out this morning and walk the whole thing, but didn’t get up early enough. Next time, along with the Abbey.
Mass at the Cathedral Sunday morning. I had wanted to go by the Emanuel AME Church and pay our respects, but of course it would have been impossible to go down there on Friday, and there were funerals through the weekend, so that’s another next time, for certain.
On the way back, we made a quick stop and visited the ever-gracious Rachel Balducci – the boys took a basketball break with her boys and since part of our conversation involved the number that social media has done on our writing brains, it’s appropriate that there’s no Bloggish, Instagrammic, Twitterish or Facebook evidence of the meeting, but trust me…it happened. Even if the Internet Forest isn’t listening, a tree does fall….
Charlotte was Both 