Myrtle Beach Trip: DAY 2 - Fort Sumter

We started our second morning with another walk on the beach! We saw many of the same gulls and sandpipers that we saw the day before. North Myrtle was still wall to sea umbrellas but on our portion of beach, Rick and I met 6 people in the hour and half we walked the sand!

Brown Pelican - these guys, just off the threatened list, are the only non-white pelicans in the world!

Laughing Gull (juv)

Ring billed gull (juv)

Papa convinced us over steaks the night before that a trip to South Carolina wasn't complete with a day in Charleston, so after our beach walk we jumped in the car to head down the coast. Our "tourist site" of interest was Fort Sumter, where the civil war started.

Snowy Egret, these pretty little birds sport black legs and bright yellow feet, which makes them easy to identify, they're sometimes known as "the birds with the golden slippers"

USS YORKTOWN - our ferry docked right next to this enormous aircraft carrier, but we did not tour the boat itself

The engineers at Fort Sumter mixed sea shells into the mortar used inside the columns

Ricky investigates a huge canon at Fort Sumter!

The flags at Fort Sumter. 

Each of these flag has flown over the fort at one point or another.
The highest flag is our current US flag,
the dark flag exactly opposite that is the South Carolina state flag,
the flag with 2 red and 1 white bar is the first confederate flag, the "stars and bars"
the mostly white flag is the second confederate flag,
the flag furthest back is the 33 star flag of the union,
the flag in the front is the 35 star flag of the union (addition of Kansas and West Virginia during the civil war)

Our ferry and the ruins of the Fort Sumter wall

West Indian Buckeye - these were fluttering ALL over the fort!

A map showing the locations of the forts in the Charleston Harbor during the civil war. The first shot of the civil war was fired from Fort Johnson at Fort Sumter (union occupied).

The effects of the war on Fort Sumter

A model of Fort Sumter 

This gorgeous Osprey had a fish and was eating while the crows below kept hopping up to try and steal a bite from him. 

Yellow-crowned Night Heron

After Fort Sumter, Rick and I were pretty done with crowds, so we wandered up the road to the Francis Marion National Forest. We were hoping to find some Red Cockaded Woodpeckers: endangered status, but no luck. Instead we found clouds of enormous mosquitos.

We also found the dock for the Bull Island Ferry (we visited the island Thursday)

Great Blue Heron

Great Blue Heron - this guy did not care that I walked up to take his picture

Our first Alligator in South Carolina, spotted at the Bull Island Ferry pier!

A great white egret flies over the estuary

cliff swallows gather on a phone line

the oak trees down south are MASSIVE and covered in gorgeous spanish moss!

We wandered back to Myrtle Beach, Papa was at his monthly poker game at a friends house, so we wandered up to Barefoot Landing (a shopping center/ boardwalk in North Myrtle) to do a little souvenir shopping and grabbed some supper at Joe's Crab Shack before calling it a night.