Day: May 23, 2022

Huntington Beach State Park, 2500 acres of land, includes a freshwater lagoon, saltmarsh, maritime forest and beach. The park has a nature center a campground, boardwalks, hiking trails, beach and an historic landmark, and Alytalia Castle. It was originally the land and summer home location of Archer and Anna Hyatt Huntington. The “castle”, their home, is open to the public to tour and also for weddings and events.

The campground includes 173 campsites with water and electricity. There is a newer section which is all fully paved sites with full-hook-ups (water, electricity and sewer). Those sites are closer together and that section has a laundry facility. We stayed in the older section at a  spacious, fairly private site.

The park is a popular birding destination , with over 300 bird species that have been seen in the park.  We had five great days at this park. We really enjoyed the beautiful beach, pond, salt marsh, birds, crabs and alligators.

It was great to be at the Marsh Walk with no pandemic restrictions and a little more activity than last year. We also had perfect weather. Next stop – Cedar Island, NC!

(For more photos, see the post for Apr 23-29, 2021)

Skidaway Island State Park is about 15 miles from Savannah. The park has several hiking trails, a visitor center, gift shop and 87 pull-through campsites with water, electric and cable. We spent our first day hiking and checking out the visitor center. We’ve heard that the noseeums can be bad there, but we had no problem in cool, breezy weather.

Our second day, we drove into Savannah. Last year, we  spent 2 days walking  through all 22 squares, the riverfront and Forsyth Park (roughly 10 – 11 miles, since we walked to some areas twice). This year we decided to take a trolley tour, expecting we might learn more about Savannah. Most trolley tours allow you to get on and off the trolleys all day, so it’s a great way to see the entire historic district in one day. We didn’t feel that we learned $40 dollars worth of history, but we did get to see most of the area more quickly.  We walked along the waterfront, listened to some live music and met up with our friend, Linda, who happened to be in the area. It was fun to catch up with our friend from the Detroit standup paddle race days.

It was a great place to spend a couple of days, on our way to Murrells Inlet.