Hunting Island 6/19

 

What a day we had today!   Michael and I woke up to pouring rain this morning - and now here we sit in the RV with pouring rain tonight.  Thankfully we managed to have a good day in between the downpours.

Hunting Island beach is eroding - as lots of beaches are - and because of this there are a number of fallen, or partially fallen, trees along the beach.  They are such a beautiful sight, even covered with little barnacles like they are, that I had to take the kids to get some pictures of them with the trees. 




Our kids love doing the Junior Ranger Programs in the National and State Parks, so today at 11 we had an interview with a SC Ranger - Ranger George.   He was great with the kids and talked to them a lot about the park and the animals on the island.  (We had already seen a raccoon - they are aggressive here - one was outside trying to get into our stuff last night and Michael went to scare it away and the thing growled at him instead of running off.  It shocked Michael a bit, and now I prefer to stay indoors after dark.)

Anyway, after our talk with the Ranger, we headed out to climb the Hunting Island lighthouse.  It took some time but it was worth it.  Off in the distance you can see the thunderstorm that was heading our direction - our day of exploring ended pretty quickly after that!








This is the view of the inside of the lighthouse- the stairs remind me of an Escher painting - funny that I didn't take a view from the outside!  Maybe I'll remember to do that tomorrow.

Just before we climbed the lighthouse we stopped for a break at the Visitor's Center nearby.  Ranger George had suggested that we might catch a glimpse of one of the many local alligators if we were lucky - and boy were we lucky.  We caught a glimpse of one - and then saw a baby alligator come chirping for his mama - and then the alligator started coming up out of the water to tend to her baby.  None of us had ever seen an alligator in the wild before, so we were transfixed.  The little green plants that covered this lady were really good at helping her blend in to her environment!

 We then headed to the Nature Center, where one of the Rangers let the kids touch (and Isa hold) a Salt Marsh Turtle named Buddy.  That turtle was awesome - and she was so fast! (Well, she was a lot faster than I expected a turtle would be!)  Tomorrow morning we are going to borrow ocean fishing gear from the Rangers and let the kids fish off the ocean pier - they've been catching and releasing baby sharks all week!

This evening we went out to dinner at a fabulous restaurant named Boondocks and stuffed ourselves silly with local seafood.  After we were done we headed up to the bar to watch a hermit crab race!  Hysterical!

This part of our trip has been seriously fun!  Cross your fingers that one of us catches a shark tomorrow - to see an alligator and a shark in such a short period of time - that would be unreal!