This will be a short blog to finish off our 10-day stay along the southern end of the South Carolina coastline. We do enjoy the beach campgrounds, so once again a repeat from 2019, Edisto Beach SP. If you want shells, this is the place, there are so many!!! After our Charleston busy touring days, we just spent time writing the blog and doing beach walks for our 4-night stay.  Here is our Shell Hunting 101 course:

• Always take a plastic bag to carry shells in, even if you think you’re not going to the beach. You’ll probably end up there and find so many great shells your hands will hurt trying to carry them back.
• Wear waterproof shoes, just as you find the perfect shell, a wave will come to attack your feet.
• When you find the most beautiful shell you’ve seen, it probably contains a live sea creature. Take a picture and gently toss it back into the ocean. You’ll be thanked by finding the second best shell some creature has given up.
• When searching by the ocean make sure to look up now and then, you never know what you might see swimming by.
• Every day the beach looks different, the tides bring in new shells so walk the beach daily.
• At the end of the hunt do a review of your shells. Keep the best and return the rest to the beach.
• Shelling is great exercise, lots of bending, walking, weightlifting (if you collect lots) and jumping/running to escape the waves.

All the above has been thoroughly tested over the multiple beach state/national parks we’ve stayed in on this trip😉 On the beach at Edisto we did find lots of live sand dollars and we had learned if they had any colour (other than white) and if they had any cilia (tiny hairs) along the edge or on the underside then they are still alive and you should put them back in the ocean. On Edisto Beach we found lots of sand dollars to save but also lots of whole dead ones we could collect. On the day we left Edisto we stopped into the Nature Centre before heading out. The Ranger was checking the temperature of the tanks and told us about the alligators, turtles, and let us pet the snake.

On our way to the next park, we stopped in the historic town of Beaufort for lunch and to have a look around. We picked a place called Plums and were lucky to get a table in the patio looking out over the park and the Beaufort River. Sharon had a Cranberry Mimosa and a Shrimp Salad sandwich with a huge amount of shrimp on it, I had a local Amber Ale and a Flounder Po-Boy sandwich, also very good. We walked around the historic town area and Sharon got some chocolates in the ice cream/chocolate shop.

Our next beach state park was another repeat from 2019, Hunting Island (5 nights), to get some exercise finding shark’s teeth! Our first day we did a 6 km hike along the beach and saw the outside of the lighthouse (the inside was under renovation so we couldn’t hike up like we did the last time). It was also our most successful day of shark teeth hunting as we found 19 teeth! The types we found included Sand Tiger, Bull, Mako, and Lemon shark (we got them confirmed later at the Tybee Marine Science Centre).

One of the reasons we really like Hunting Island SP is they have the beach, the lighthouse, and they have hiking/mountain biking trails. The next day we did an 18 km MTB ride around the park, a little chilly at 42 F daytime high. We went to the Park Headquarters, to the marsh lookout, to the nature centre (which was closed), to the pier, over the new bridge to a small island where we could ride along the beach, back along the lagoon trail, and finished off going along the beach to the campground. Most of the trails were empty except for the ones by the nature centre.

We had some very cool nights at Hunting Island with one dropping down to 26 F! We had winterized our macerator, and we used our tank heating pads to avoid any damage from the below freezing temperatures. We did an 8 km beach walk the one day, finding another 2 sharks teeth, and then a 3 km walk on the last day. The night after the below freezing night we had just finished dinner and suddenly we lost our shore power. We thought we just blew a breaker but in fact that wasn’t the issue. We went through various diagnostic steps and eventually realized that our 30-amp shore power cable was partially melted. What this meant was that we had to use our house batteries for the next 2 days as the campground didn’t allow you to run your generator. We made do using the propane furnace for our heat source (instead of the electric heater) and conserved our electrical usage. Normally we would have been able to count on some solar generation but the site we had was surrounded by tall thick trees, so we didn’t get much recharge in our batteries. If we had been closer to a major centre, we likely would have driven out to buy a new shore power cable but that wasn’t viable from Hunting Island. More to follow on how we resolved this issue in the first Georgia blog. So, except for the power issue, we had another great stay at Hunting Island SP. This park will always stay on our list when coming along this coastline.