Tavels with Laurel: Paddle on Bay Creek

One on my newer friends, Laurel, lives in South Carolina, so I made her house a stopover on my migration to my winter home in North Carolina. I spent three and a half days with her and got in a little paddling. 

She keeps her kayaks at Edisto Watersports and Tackle, which is on Bay Creek and about two blocks from her condo. Lindsey, one of the owners, is also her friend, and Laurel sometimes guides kayak trips for her.  Lindsey loaned me a kayak twice and assured me I can have one any time I show up. Lindsey wanted to paddle with us and Laurel invited several other friends to join us. We ended up with five women and one husband. We got on the water in mid afternoon. 

We did a short trip down the creek and into the sound, where we spent some time just hanging out and enjoying the dolphins and birds, and then paddled a short ways into Mud Creek before coming back. 

Loading up

Heading Out

My friend, the Super Duck and other new friends

Creek and the surrounding marsh

All sizes of boats use these waterways

Lindsey, owner of Edisto Watersports and Tackle and The Coffee Shop at Edisto Beach. and a wonderful person

Laughing gull (left) and herring gull (right)

One of a small pod of dolphins we spend a lot of time enjoying

The bay water are unusually dark from recent floods that put a lot of tannin into it.
The wash from the boat shows it well. 

Chilling and chatting

A long view of a few birds feeding the exposed mud flat at low tide

Coming out of the creek, Laurel looked like she was winning the race

And oystercatcher in its favorite habitat - Laurel also collected a few
 oysters to steam for supper

Besides helping to run Edisto Watersports and Tackle, Lindsey also has started a little coffee shop, The Coffee Shop at Edisto Beach.   The ambiance in there is wonderful and the view marvelous, with a bank of windows overlooking Bay Creek and the marsh on the other side.

The business also serves as a community center with artists offering classes in knitting and painting, and in things like live music in the evenings.  Laurel and I dropped in for the first half of Trivia Night when people come in teams to play. Laurel and I joined the Hokey Pokeys, a team of all guys, until we helped them upgrade.  We had to leave for another engagement, but had great fun.

When this blog comes out, I'll be preparing to paddle with a friend I only know through my blog and my Flickr account.  I'll tell you all about it soon. And the following day, I'll be reporting to Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge. So I'll soon have a lot to tell. And if you know the area around Coastal North Carolina, please advise me of places I need to see and things I need to do.  I've been so busy having adventures,  I haven't had time to find out about new ones.

My South Carolina Visit to a New Friend, Part II: A Visit to Botany Bay WMA

Laurel is one of the most dynamic people I've met. She must have noticed that I don't handle doing nothing well, so she blitzed me with activities. By the time we finished our paddle and lunch, she still had another place to take me for most of the afternoon. Before we left, we had time to take a little break to give the animals time to take their midday naps, and to allow us to get over lunch. Then we drove a few miles from her house to Botany Bay Plantation Heritage Preserve/Wildlife Management Area.

The road to it is one of the most photographed roads in the state.  I, of course, had to take a few more photographs of the beautiful trees arcing and interlacing over the dirt road. I used my fish eye effect to make it even more round.

We started by visiting the bird feeders at the office and the surrounding vegetation. The best bird there was a female painted bunting.  Then we went to the site of an old plantation house. The house burned down but an ice house remains. It was one of the prettiest buildings I've seen.

Honey bee working the rampant wisteria

Laurel at the door to the ice house

Sp

One of the views I admired

After driving around the refuge, looking for birds,  and enjoying the views, we went to the beach.  It has a boneyard, where the ocean is flooding out trees.  A few are still standing, but many are laying on the ground.  Some look like works of art. I amused myself, while editing the pictures, by making several versions of this one.  This is the posterized version.

Tree roots in the boneyard

People are not allowed to collect any shells or artifacts here. So people pick up the shells and then use them to decorate sand houses, attach them to trees, or arrange them on the fallen trunks of trees.

Shell - decorated tree

Wilson's plover racing the waves

Anemone in world's smallest tide pool - a rotted piling 

One of these is not like the others - all are growing on downed trees

The day's most perfect shell - a knobbed whelk - I snuck its picture out

Day is almost done and so are we

Thus ended the first day of my visit with Laurel. And a fine one it was.