4/14 Myrtle Beach State Park Ocean Beach

The campground is only about 1000' from the beach, which is nice.  Yesterday, I rode my bike and took a few photos of the dune area, beach, and pier that is part of the state park.

 

The pier was nice, but typical of all ocean piers--filled with people fishing and a few birds begging.

 

Today, I went for a longer walk down the beach to the north where there were a lot of hotels and a bigger pier.  It turned out to be a longer walk than I thought it would be.  I had tried to ride my bike, but it kept bogging down, so this beach is not as hard at low tide than some others I had been on.

Saw this fellow on my way down.

A lot of these piers are private and require you to pay a fee for walking or fishing.  It was only $1 to walk out, so that wasn't too bad.  The big hotel in the distance is the owner of this one.

It was a very long walk home!

Leaving tomorrow morning for Cape Hatteras.  Am really looking forward to this place.

4/13 Myrtle Beach State Park

I arrived a couple of days ago, but it rained most of yesterday, so I was pretty much stuck inside doing work.  This afternoon was sunny and pleasant so I decided to go for a bike ride.  I'll post photos tomorrow of the beach, but I really enjoyed the entrance and drive into the park when I came in, so I took some photos of it.  Since it is spring here in South Carolina, the azaleas and dogwoods are in bloom. 

The lady at the entrance station assured me that this was all natural and had not been planted by some garden club, as I had assumed.  The azaleas and the little white flowers grew here naturally because they had a bit of sun because of the road cut through the woods.  There were dozens of clumps of what I discovered were called Atamasco Lilys.  I looked them up and they are endangered and poisonous. They grow from bulbs and look a lot like oversized crocuses.

  

I liked these wild roses along the beach dunes.

 

Also, this morning as I was trying to watch the almost non-existance TV, I saw that a pileated woodpecker going after the bugs that he must have found in a rotten log the tent campers had pulled out of the woods yesterday.  He hung around for quite a while and let me get several pictures of him pecking away at various things.

 



This campground is not my favorite because the spots are packed so tightly together and because I cannot get any TV reception because of all the trees, but it is quiet at night and I am comfortable.  It is also very close to the beach.  I rode down to the beach and walked out on the fishing pier today also.  Tomorrow I am going to ride my bike on the low tide, hard-packed sand down to the pier to the north where the big hotels are located. 

4/13 Blog Title Change

OK, I have been thinking about renaming this blog for quite some time.  When I set this blog up, I chose the first relevant title that came to me.  Afterwards, it felt like a pretty dull title. 

One of the things that started my travel bug way back several decades ago was John Steinbeck's book Travels With Charley: In Search of America.  In 1960, Steinbeck was 58 and had written all of his great fiction.  He decided to travel America in a pickup camper along with his standard poodle, Charley.  According to his son, he was also dying.  In any case, his description of his travels of over 10,000 miles was published in 1962 and became a best seller, and I was one of the millions of people who read it and dreamed about doing the same thing--seeing America. 

As I set out on my travels, a lot of people were concerned that I was doing this alone, namely without a male person to perform all the complicated tasks like driving, hooking up, and ensuring my physical safety.  Some suggested I get a big dog to protect me against intruders.  Frankly, I enjoy my personal private time and am used to making my own decisions.  In addition, getting a dog, big or small, would complicate things and make it more difficult for me to visit places with an animal in my vehicle, so no dog, either. 

I had been wishing for a long time that I had taken more time in naming my blog, so I am now renaming it.  There will be no Charleys of any species accompanying me, so it is now "Travels Without Charley"!  (My older friends will appreciate the literary reference and who cares about the younger ones.)

4/10 Hunting Island State Park Marshes

I rode my bike four miles down the road to the park nature center.  Not the best road to ride a bike because there was no bike path of even shoulder to the road.  Cars and trucks just had to swerve around me.  On the right is the pine woods of the barrier island and on the left is the marsh that separates it from the mainland.

I stopped part way to walk out on a boardwalk and met thousands of little fiddler crabs sifting through the mud for food. I was told later that these are China backed fiddler crabs because they were oval shapped.  The males have the large claw.

And here are some clams that are shut waiting for high tide to feed.

At the very end of the island is the nature center and a fishing pier.  There are oyster beds that were planted to protect the shore.

There was a pretty little sandbar at the opening of the sound, but I was too tired to walk there.

4/9 Hunting Island State Park, SC

I originally had been thinking of going to Hilton Head to spend a few days, but this place was recommended to me as more scenic and quieter, with a better beach.  It is a long drive out here, and my attempts to stop at a grocery chain did not work out because the parking lot was so cramped.  Luckily, I always have enough for a few days, so I just kept driving.  Can you tell that I tend to take the "center" lane on a two-lane bridge when it is very narrow?  When other cars came, I slowed almost to a stop to prevent scraping along the railing.  A truck made the decision to wait at the end until I got off, no doubt so that he could use the center lane!

It took two spotters to help me get into my narrow camping spot because there were two very large pine trees just where I had to cut my wheels to back into the spot.  Photos of offending trees to come tomorrow.  Anyhow, here are a couple photos of the beach taken yesterday when I got here.

Today, I took advantage of the low tide to walk about half a mile down the beach to a lighthouse.  You can see how flat the beach is.  This made it a great place for little kids to play in the water as it was very shallow and no big waves on this day.

This is an island on the move.  You can see how the trees have drowned in this area and are now under water at high tide.  Note the barnacles.

 

Here is the lighthouse.  I climbed up the 167 steps.  Not as tall as the Ponce Inlet light, but very nice view from the top.  The arrow on the one photo shows the original location of this lighthouse.  It was build of metal plates, lined with brick, and was intended to be moveable, if necessary.  It is a couple of hundred feet from the shore, so it is safe until the island moves more.

 

 

Heading home, the tide was coming in, so I got my feet and shoes wet in the shallow waves as I weaved around the dead trees.  

 

And here is a small flock of willets.  I suspect they are on their way home to the northern Atlantic coast.





4/7 Jekyll Island Beach at Low Tide

I used my rental golf cart today to do some exploration.  I found this beach full of people because it was Sunday afternoon.  At low tide, the beach is at least 400 feet deep.

Just down the beach a bit, there was a triangle-shaped sandbar which was exposed because it was a very low tide.  What was neat is that the water was about an inch deep, but there were ripples in the sand, so you walked really on the ripples and did not get your shoes too wet.  These photos really do not do it justice because you cannot see the water clearly, but you get the idea.

If you look very carefully at this last photo, you can see there are waves breaking in the distance and people wading out to this far sand bar, in spite of the warning signs on the beach telling people that the tide covers this area 10' deep at high tide. 

Very nice walk, but I did have to wash my shoes when I got back to get the salt off of them.