Hunting Island...a love story

God's country is an overused term. I've heard it describe the region that Beth and I live in, cattle country, wilderness areas, etc. I try not to use the term, but days like these make it extremely difficult not to. Let's start with how we met Hunting Island. I love lighthouses. Obsessively. I have two books that show how to get to all of them, plus phone numbers on contacting where the lighthouses in question are. You can see that on one of the pages on the right, there is a page dedicated to lighthouses. There's also another pages that I'm going to develop. Birds and reptiles. I've got two extremely thick books on birds, plus a flier on the local species. Reptiles...well...you saw the pictures on facebook. I used to catch snakes and sell them to pet stores when I was younger. Now, I just take pictures of them, and look at the pictures that my friend Mitchell Mimier puts on his facebook.
That background being given, I was looking at a map of the lighthouses in South Carolina, and came across Hunting Island. Beth and I had been in the area (Fort Fremont), but didn't know Hunting Island was in that area as well. It's not far for us to drive....unless something like this happens:

Yes, the drawbridge doesn't exactly do what you expect it to. It probably takes a little longer doing it this way (Probably took about 20 minutes), but it was a good thing they moved it. The size of the boat was impressive:

Truly an impressive sight. That mighty schooner went about 2 feet sideways for every foot forward, because of the stiff 10 m.p.h. breeze.
After waiting for an eternity, we finally made it to paradise:

I'll get to that guy later.

Beth had brought blankets to put out on the beach so we could read and watch the waves. Not much reading happened.

The Willet made a good point. I should see what else there was to see:

Then, I see something on the horizon:

Small at first, it was very faint on the horizon

Then:

Migrating birds. I looked it up later, and my bird book led me to believe they were either a Greater or Lesser Scaup. The only difference: Greater Scaups migrate in tens of thousands called "rafts".

Alfred Hitchcock couldn't have written it better himself.

I leave the coming apocalypse to find that Beth has made a new friend. I like to think that this was how the conversation went:

Excuse me, miss, do you have any food?

I see you holding your hand out. Are you sure you're not trying to trick me?

All right, hold on, I'm coming over there

COME ON! I SEE YOU'VE GOT NOTHING!!! WHAT A DIRTY TRICK!!

I'm outta here!

After tormenting the poor gull, Beth and I took a walk along the beach. Beth, with an uncanny eye for dolphins, spotted quite a few:

The last picture shows just how close they got. You can actually see the beginning of the beach at the very bottom of the last picture.
Beth also drew my attention to another bird:

 I guess bald eagles are pretty common around here.
Ok. I've rambled on enough. To finish up, we took each others' photos around dead pieces of wood. It was getting late, so I got my pictures of the lighthouse and we were set:

The last three pics are actually from the day before. We hadn't gotten there very early the day before because of errand running, but I thought the sunset pictures would make a nice ending to the story.
In the end, I took over 150 pictures, 32 of which made the cut, plenty more could have, but I can save some for another time.
Now you see why it's hard not to call this God's country.
P.S. no altering was done to these pics, except for some dust spots that have glued themselves to the mirror inside my camera. Beth removed those, thanks to Corel DustBusting Suite 4. Thanks, Babe :-)