Day 13: To Hunting Island State Park

The rain passed through yesterday afternoon, but everything at our campsite was still soggy this morning. We waited as long as we could to break the tents down, hoping that the sun -- so hot and bright on this 95-degree day -- would dry everything off. It didn't; it's too muggy. So we spent extra time and effort shaking water off the rainflies and trying to keep everything off of the damp, sandy ground as we packed it all away.  By the time everything was loaded and the Teardrop was hitched back to the van, Keith and I were soaked with sweat.  The kids had long grown tired of entertaining themselves while they waited for us, and they were just as hot and sticky. So instead of buckling everyone into the car and getting on the road, we decided to spend a couple of hours cooling off at the county park splash park across the driveway. What a treat! I wasn't expecting much -- I mean, "splash park" could mean one of those little interactive fountains for toddlers --  but when we got through the gates, we found this:



And this:


And this:


We ate a picnic lunch in the parking lot before heading south to Hunting Island State Park. Along the way, we took an 30-minute detour to Edisto Island, where we checked out the Serpentarium, a homegrown attraction featuring displays of reptiles from South Carolina and from around the world. The emphasis here is on attraction; this was not a zoo, a museum or a wildlife park. It's more of a Duck Dynasty-meets-enormous-gift-shop type thing. We arrived just in time for the 4 p.m. alligator feeding, and then spent a bit perusing the displays of venomous snakes, which thoroughly creeped out the kids.



From there, it was another couple of hours to Hunting Island State Park. Way back in February or March, when I was planning this trip, I searched online for "best campgrounds in South Carolina," and this place popped up, along with a list of the best sites to snag. So I logged in to the state park reservation site and was surprised to find availability extremely spotty. Four months in advance, almost every site on that list had already been booked through June. So I snagged what I could find -- two nights in spot 74, next to the beach, for June 9 and 10. And those dates at this campground became one of the lynchpins of my entire itinerary, around which I based the rest of the trip. This campground, I thought, had better be good.

From the pictures posted online and what little I could glean from descriptions of this place, I had expected a campground set just off the beach in a grove of majestic 75-foot-tall sea pine trees that offer shade and protection from the wind. That is exactly what we found. But I did not expect the oodles and oodles of people who also are here to enjoy this beautiful beach. This campground is packed with people. In Charleston, our campground had plenty of bushes and low vegetation that separated each campsite and offered privacy. Here, there's nothing but these slender, elegant tree trunks, which, while beautiful and handy for tying up clotheslines, do nothing to divide the campsites. Everyone in this loop is full-on exposed to everyone else as if we're all packed in for a family reunion in one not-so-big back yard. I mean, I can't even brush my teeth at the back of the trailer or sneak my dirty underwear into the laundry bag in the back of the van with out it being a spectacle witnessed by about a hundred other folks.

By the way, most of these people have enough gear set up outside their trailers -- bikes and awnings and chairs and hoses and grills and tarps and coolers and electric fans and inflatable kayaks and extension cords -- that it looks like they've moved in for the entire summer.

Also, it's freaking hot. The breeze from the beach cools us off a little. Earlier, I walked past a tent that had an air conditioner built into it. No joke.