Edisto Island: Vegas goes to the beach!

Ahhhh... crashing waves, perfect palmetto trees. My idea of a vacation.

Welcome to Edisto Beach State Park. It's on Edisto Island, which is obviously on the coast. It's just under a 4 hour drive from home, so we left from work and spent the night at the last "major town" before the coast, Walterboro. Trust me, there are no more towns til Edisto. The island is big, and you cross a big bridge to get there, and it's surrounded around the edge by marshes (think alligators and pelicans) and forests. The beach around the island has nine zillion houses you can rent. It looks like a good vacation spot, if you had more than one day to spend there. Even better if you don't have to pay to rent a house because you're only there for the day! :) See photo below for location in the state!

This is a loggerhead turtle nest. They do night watches twice a week, too.

Vegas enjoying the beach in the shade.

This is a maritime forest. Looks a little different than my upstate forests, doesn't it? All full of Spanish moss, little palm trees, and HOT with NO breeze. The radio said the heat index was 108 yesterday. All I know is with the air on in the car, in the shade, the temp was 102. Although supposedly these trails contain alligators, snakes, bobcats, and osprey, all we saw were a handful of birds and a few mosquitoes. I think all the wildlife was way smarter than us. I think we made it like 2 miles before we decided to go back before we passed out and became alligator snacks for later. If you ever visit this forest, do it in like March. Or maybe December.

So after a couple miles of maritime forest, and a wilted puppy dog, and no alligators, we sat in the airconditioned car to eat food, then went back to the beach. So much better at the water... What I know is that I used to drive 4 hours to go to Lake Michigan. Now I drive 3.5 hours and get to see ATLANTIC OCEAN on my GPS screen. LOVEIT. :)

These, I promise you, are not seagulls, but flocks of pelicans. There were lots of flocks of pelicans, all going the same direction. Do pelicans migrate? Where were they going? They looked like something out of Jurassic Park. Crazy.

So Vegas likes the sand, and we didn't get heat stroke. But she sure ended up salty and sandy! :) So I think we're going to visit some more of these lowcountry beaches. And see which one we like best. Maybe y'all can vote on which pictures you like best! We'll see.