Back to Beautiful Beaufort, SC

It's HOT, HOT, HOT in South Carolina...89 degrees...We're trying to stay cool, running the air conditioners in the rig and going places near the ocean and marshes, like the beautiful town of Beaufort, South Carolina during the day. Beaufort really is a beautiful town with beautiful antebellum houses...There's a whole section of town called "The Point" down by the waterfront, and it's just street after street of really big, beautiful old and historically and architecturally significant houses. Geez, I really need to come up with another synonym for beautiful, but that's what they are! You can get information about the walking tour from the Visitor's Center, which is a really cool Civil War arsenal station, or you can drive around and gawk, which is what we did.....

There are great stores for shopping and there are beautiful, waterfront parks...

And Beaufort has mermaid statues like Yellowstone has bison....

Beaufort also has a beautiful Episcopal church that is celebrating its 300th year birthday this year! Sparky had a special interest in the church, as she was baptized Episcopalian...The church is called St. Helena's Episcopal Church.

The grounds immediately around the church contain a beautiful cemetery with incredible wrought iron railings, decorative fencing, and of course, VERY interesting tombstones and history. The church's tombstones were used as operating tables during the Civil War.

The inside was pretty amazing, too....Don't miss this beautiful church if you pass through Beaufort, SC....There is so much to see in the surrounding areas and because of all the islands. After viewing some of the beautiful homes and the church, we decided to drive across the bridge over to Lady Island to have lunch at a restaurant called The Steamer Oyster and Steakhouse to have a very popular southern dish called "Low Country Boil"...a.k.a. "Louisiana Boil"...a.k.a. "Frogmore Stew"...Here it is and it was DELICIOUS!

Sausage almost like a bratwurst, corn on the cob, redskin potatoes, celery, onions, and grilled shrimp with a side of cornbread...Wow! It was TERRIFIC!

We did so much today, we don't want to have you give up reading a very long blog, so tomorrow, we will tell you all about Hunting Island State Park and the lighthouse there...And, Sparky's painted buntings, and.....stay tuned, there's more!

Hunting Island State Park SC

Wait till you see this park! It's fantastic! It's gorgeous! It's lush with verdant foliage everywhere! (Good grief, Sparky, speak English!) Well, I was just trying to get away from being redundant with the word beautiful. :-) What I was trying to say was, this is one of the most beautiful state parks we have seen. It's thick with trees and abundant palms and ferns everywhere under the trees. The entrance coming into the park is like going into a primordial forest...like the forests from eons ago....(Can you tell she likes it? asks E.) Eldo does, too....

First of all, it's on the Atlantic Ocean, so there's a beach...Not a pretty beach with white sand, but a beach ravaged by previous hurricanes, brown sand, palm trees uprooted, dead and brown, but still cool. Turtles come to nest in the DUNES...These are like the beaches we grew up with in the midwest...And we like them just as much as the perfect beach with white sand.....

Second, it has a LIGHTHOUSE....

Sparky paid a paltry 2.00 to climb the 167 steps to see the great view from the top!

And third, Hunting State Park has a nature center with a wonderful variety of birds flitting around...Sparky has always wanted to see some different birds other than the usual robins, sparrows, finches, and woodpeckers you see in a midwest backyard. Her dream was to see a painted bunting..They are such a BEAUTIFUL bird! Here's a picture from the nature center billboard.

There were at least three buntings flitting around the nature center. Sparky forgot her zoom, so not very good photos of them today, but SHE SAW THEM! They were BEAUTIFUL, uh, GORGEOUS! and next time she WILL have the zoom with her!

And she saw a summer tanager! That was a pretty bird, too!

Sparky is a very happy camper, having seen a painted bunting, and more than one! (If Sparky is a happy camper, Eldo is a happy camper!) What a life we have together........and it's not just for the birds!

On the way home, we stopped at a beautiful church ruins not too far from our RV park. It was about eight miles from The Oaks at Point South at the exit off highway 21 onto 17 south. There is a sign just a few yards beyond the exit for Old Sheldon Church Road. The historical site is called the "Old Sheldon Church Ruins"....free admission to walk in and roam and take in the splendor of this old church and think about what it might have looked like in its day.....It was built in the Greek Revival style between 1745 and 1753. It was burned by the British in 1779 during the Revolutionary War. In 1826, it was rebuilt. In 1865, the locals panicked over the Civil War ending, and it was pillaged and burnt again. The ruins lie among massive old oaks and scattered graves. Colonel William Bull, one of the early governors of South Carolina, and the surveyor who helped Oglethorpe plan the Savannah city layout of grids and squares, is buried inside the church ruins.

They still hold an annual service here, and many weddings take place as well....It was beautiful!