Horses, Submarines, and Casual Trespassing in South Carolina and Georgia

After leaving Charleston our next stop was Beaufort, SC (pronounced BEW-fort, unlike North Carolina's Beaufort, pronounced BO-fort). On the way in we saw dolphins, alligators, and the house from the Big Chill, which we had, coincidentally, only recently watched for the first time.

We anchored near town and dinghied to a sandbar to hang out, and learned quickly about the incredible tidal swings here - every 10 minutes we had to pull the dinghy farther up the beach and within a couple hours the huge sandbar was almost completely underwater. The next day there happened to be a free music festival at the waterfront park so we enjoyed that and then a delicious dinner in town at the Old Bull Tavern.

As we made our way south we increasingly found that doing 'outside' hops on the Atlantic, rather than making our way down the 'inside' ICW, made more sense. Not only did we avoid shallow areas and having to time bridge openings, but many of the hops were shorter and more straightforward. The trade-off was the inlets - we timed these carefully and still got pretty beat up a couple times. The boat could certainly handle it but us and the cats were a little green. A couple long days underway brought us to St. Mary's, GA, which is right across the border from Fernandina Beach, FL, which we also visited. St. Mary's has a submarine museum that I was eager to visit after recently finishing Dead Wake by Erik Larson (an excellent read, as are all of his books), about the sinking of the Lusitania by a German U-boat. At the museum were able to sight our boat from a real submarine periscope.

After seeing the museum, we were wandering through town when an old man named Paul pulled over to the side of the road to say hi and joke with us a bit. Upon learning that we were visiting St. Mary's for the first time, he offered us a ride to the Crooked River State Park. We agreed and hopped in for what ended up being an afternoon-long odyssey that included touring his man cave, hunting for gopher tortoises in the park, and a healthy amount of trespassing into vacant properties in the greater St. Mary's area. It was certainly an insider's tour!

Also near St. Mary's is Cumberland Island, a national park and amazing place to see wildlife. The ruins of a former Carnegie residence can be seen, and their former horses now run wild and 'own' the island. We saw many of them, most with young foals, as well as a snake, raccoon, wild pigs, an armadillo, and a gopher tortoise.

The beach here was pristine and you could see many sea turtle tracks leading to their nests.

It's definitely worth a visit here - it was nice enough that it almost made me want to go camping - the heat and the bugs quickly disabused me of that notion, however. Next stop is Florida!