Sea Pines

We visited Sea Pines for the first time today!  It's a very popular area on Hilton Head Island, with gorgeous forest preserves and cool horse stables to visit and ride, and a light house to climb (ok, the only light house I know of that has never guided a ship into port--it was built strictly for decor and the tourists:)  There is a gift shop at the top, and the ONLY way to bring the merchandise up is to carry it all the way up several flights of stairs.  It turns out, they usually ask people who want to take the light house tour to carry something up in exchange for free admission:)

 

We then left Harbourtown and headed over to the Sea Pines Forest Preserve, to feed the turtles and ourselves.  Let's just say we love this place SO MUCH, that we are now going to look into buying a couple of double used kayaks!

The turtles kind of sort of loved us too:)  or maybe it was the bread?  But I'd like to think it was us too, we didn't sock them with stale bread, they got the good stuff:)  (hope they like sour dough:D)

 And, we  had the incredible opportunity to step into an ancient Indian ceremonial ground---by ancient, I mean over 3800 years old!  (supposedly, nobody was buried here though:)  It's called a shell ring--only twenty such rings are known to exist on the entire east coast.  These were very large, raised rings created by oyster shells (btw, those things are literally razor sharp, NEVER step onto an oyster bed, which could very easily happen down here--and does, all the time!  Many a person goes to the ER for this!)  Then the rings were covered with dirt and soil.

 One day post Irene.  The waves were still a little big, the seas VERY rough!  Not too many people in the water (dangerous riptides often come with hurricanes)--but I did see several people on boogaboards, riding the cool waves!)

And finally, these are my pretty beach babies---getting bigger by the second:/