Beaufort SC

 Beaufort is about a 1 hour drive from Hilton Head. It is pretty close as the crow flies but you need to drive West and then East to go around a large inlet which is the same one that the beach is on where we are staying. This whole area is a mix of land and sea water with the only hills being the man made bridges. The elevation of Beaufort is 10 feet.

We stopped at the Cypress Wetlands which is a small park just outside of Beaufort. This park is small but very good! There is a long walkway that takes you out over a pond that has many alligators and birds. We ran into a person who said the birds flock back to the pond around sunset. We saw an Anhinga (bird) swimming under water and then poking its head up every once in a while. Strange swimming bird because it has lots of feathers. We saw one of these with its wings spread drying them earlier in the week. Lots of alligators in this area and lots of turtles. The turtles were very close to alligators and didn't seem to be worried about it. Also some baby or very small alligators here. It was hard to leave this park so fast but we only had a half day to explore today so we moved on to town.

Beaufort goes back to 1711 and the first stop was a church that had graves going back to the 1750 time frame. Lots of very well maintained mansion type houses in this town similar to Savannah. The Eastern part of town in particular had a very nice historical section. A lot of the houses had gas lights in front and one had gas lights on its porches also. I was wondering if these houses stay in the same families for years or if they change hands some of the time. It would take a lot of resources just to maintain one. One house had a tree with a branch that went down almost to the ground, back up and down two more times to form an arch over the walkway leading to the house. Picture below. We had dinner at the end of the day and watched the sun set at the waterfront park. 

Another fine day.

Anhinga - hard to see in this picture