Beaufort and Hunting Island

We had planned on visiting Cypress Gardens on this day but because of flooding the year before the gardens were closed for repairs so we decided to head down the coast and explore Beaufort.  In my research for our trip people had said to visit Beaufort but I really thought it would just be more of the same...boy was I wrong.  I would suggest to anyone visiting the area to go to Beaufort.  Where Charleston had the charm of the typical row house mansions Beaufort had the dripping moss and the HUGE mansions you imagine in the plantation south.  I mean check out the moss on this one tree alone.

We ended up parking just off the main street among the mansions and were amazed at the size of these homes and the beauty of such a different world then we experience back in Utah.  I was literally walking in the pages of the Notebook.

This next one was seriously so HUGE.  It was called the castle and was on a dead end street and had the river all on one side of it.  It had to be well over 10,000 sq. feet easy and is a private residence still today.  It looks like it is just one big square but if you look close you can see the side wings that come off the main colonnade.  

This is what the streets looked like with these HUGE...did I mention they are big...mansions lining the sides.

Downtown Beaufort was charming and had a little seaside upper class beach feel with little shops and quaint restaurants.  We ended up eating lunch at the restaurant behind Anna in this next photo and then went and relaxed on the swings that look out to ocean beyond.  

After Beaufort we drove down the highway a little more and over two islands to the most outlying island in the area, Hunting Island.  I had heard there was a good lighthouse on this island and Anna and I can't resist a good lighthouse.  When you turn onto Hunting Island it is like you hoped on a plane and left South Carolina and ended up in Costa Rica.  It was a different world altogether with palms and huge sea pines towering above you and green everywhere you looked.  

We saw a Blue Alligator that had made it's home in the pond and (the sign said) had raised several broods here.  She was maybe 4 to 5ft long.  

The lighthouse used to be kept by two families that lived on the Island and shared a duplex type home keeping the light burning 24 hours a day.  

We learned that the lighthouses along the coast of South Carolina are all black and white but the patterns are different so those out at sea could know where they were based off the pattern of the lighthouse.

The beach at Hunting Island was so different the other beaches we visited.  They had the maintained portion for beachgoers, seen below:

and then the unmaintained beach which gives you an idea of what the beaches looked like to early settlers with trees going up right to the ocean waves.  My dad said there is an old Louis L'AMour book where one of the Sacketts hides on the beach here and it helped him to see how easy it would be for someone to hide in all the debris.