B and D – On the Road

Beach view at park

Beach view at park

Lighthouse

Pelican

Road into park

Toured the Hunting Island State Park today after getting the tire patched.   It is supposed to be the most visited state park in South Carolina.  They have an old lighthouse you can tour but we decided to pass on it as it was rather hot and from experience climbing to the top of a light house in extreme heat with very little ventilation is not fun.  We elected to just walk along the beach.  We think they must have had a bad storm in the last year as there were lots of trees down all over the place.

While walking along the beach Bruce decided to issue a photography challenge.  During our year long trip he wants to see who can get a picture of the worst example of someone in a swimsuit.  As a comparison he mentioned two previous examples we have both had the unfortunate opportunity to see.

The first was ten years ago when we spent the month of December in Florida, specifically it was while we were Key West.  We had gone to the grocery store to pick up a few items to cook for our Christmas dinner.   While in the store this woman came in, couldn’t really tell her age but she wasn’t young, probably in her fifties or early sixties.  She had over tanned her body, it looked like a dark brown leather stretched out over her very skinny body.  She was wearing a bikini and had a beach chair strapped on her back.  She was carrying a little basket selecting items in the vegetable department.  Not what you would be expecting in the grocery store.

The second example was about three years ago while we were snorkeling in Destin, Florida.  We were snorkeling right off of a beach on the Gulf side in a protected area where the water was not rough.  Periodically during the time we were there a very little boat would come into the area and they were selling ice cream. It was sort of like the ice cream trucks you see driving around during the summer except is was a boat.  Between the top of the boat and the bottom of a decorative sail there was a gap of about one foot.  Bruce took a picture of the boat and after we downloaded the pictures I started looking them over and enlarging them to see more detail.   I got a real shock when in that one foot gap I saw someone had bent over and all you could see was their huge butt and nothing on it. He had a few other shots and from those we determined it was a very large woman wearing a very skimpy bikini with basically nothing visible from the back.  She was standing on the beach and he just happened to catch her through that gap just as she bent over.  We got a good laugh then deleted the picture.

I accepted the challenge then started thinking, he took a picture of me at Ginnie Springs.  Was he trying to say something about me?

We also went to Point Royal today.  I had read somewhere about their soft shell crab festival they hold in April each year.  I really like fried soft shell crabs and since we were in the area I thought we should check out the area.  We found the beach area and the board walk but there was not much else that would make me want to come back just for the festival.

Our next effort was trying to find a place to eat.  Apparently many of the restaurants in the area are closed on Sundays.  We eventually found an open restaurant and went into eat.  I got your basic fried shrimp dinner and Bruce decided to try something called a Frogmore Stew, also know as a Low Country Boil.  It is named after a nearby area and described as similar to a Louisiana Shrimp or Crawfish boil but not as spicy (it is shrimp, sausage, potatoes, corn, onions, spices, etc.).   It was definitely not spicy and is something Bruce has no desire to try again, I shared my shrimp.

Apparently the term Low Country is the name given to the geographic and cultural region along South Carolina’s coast.