April 13 – 18, 2019: Much of our spring plan centered around meeting our son and daughter in-law, Will and Chrissy, at Hilton Head, SC for Chrissy’s spring break from teaching in Virginia. We had a wonderful time putzing around Hilton Head and then touring Savanah with the two of them. The next two days were spent at Pinckney Wildlife Refuse bird watching and Charleston and Fort Sumter National Historic Park. We parted ways Thursday morning, April 18th, and Tom and I headed up to the hardwood swampland of Congaree National Park, just SE of Columbia, SC.
April 14 (Sunday): We walked up to the top of the light house in Sea Pines, Hilton Head, but I some how did NOT take a photo of the light house!
April 15 (Monday): Our day in Savanah centered on wandering around the historic downtown touring Juliette Gordon Lowe’s, the founder of Girl Scouts, childhood home and then her in-laws home, the Andrew Lowe House, later that evening on a haunted tour of Savannah. Chrissy was a very active Girl Scout as is her mom, Patty who continues to volunteer with Girl Scouts. Grace also was a very active Girl Scout and earned her Gold Award her senior year of high school. So Girl Scouts has a soft place in our hearts.
April 16 (Tuesday): I was able to get out on the beach of Hilton Head a number of times to take advantage of the beautiful ocean scenery. We also took a walk on the Pinckney Wildlife Refuge where we saw a huge rookery of a huge variety of birds, an alligator, turtles and more scenery. My little cell phone camera does a pretty good job on overall scenery, but I can’t even come close to getting the birds that were in the wildlife refuge. Hummmm, maybe a nicer camera is in the future?
April 17 (Wednesday): We didn’t get to see or experience much of the charm and beauty of Charleston as it was a long drive from Hilton Head and I wanted to see Fort Sumter National Historical Park, where the first shots of the Civil War were fired.
April 18 (Thursday): We headed north from Hilton Head towards Columbia, SC to pick up a lesser known National Park, Congaree National Park, which is the largest intact expanse of old growth bottomland hardwood forest remaining in the southeastern United States. It felt like we were in a deciduous version of the redwoods in California.
The park area regularly floods and that’s some of how they get these giant hardwood trees, which we experienced in our walk around the 2 1/2 mile boardwalk. We just took off our shoes and waded through the waters on the flooded boardwalk–thankfully the snake we saw earlier was happy to move along with little provocation!
The Traveling Lounsburys 