Day trips around Coastal SC

Had a couple hours to kill, so I decided to take a longer trip to Cypress Gardens...the warmer weather rewarded me handsomely

CRITTERS great & small...and some ugly, too.


This is a little guy...about 3' long. He looks bigger 'cause I was about 10' away at full zoom...




And slightly bigger (like 8' bigger)...



What is it with squirrels and not sharing?






I love the water reflection in this place...




COLOR BREAK!!













And a cool old well pump...love rustic old things like this...and barns, houses & tractors...

Hey Mike (its Stalin),
forgot what SC looked like. Been forever since I have ridden down there. Nice shots.

Hey Dude! Thanks, Man. Funny that I've lived in SC nearly all my life, and until last Oct, I had never been to Cypress Gardens.

Good to see you over here!

Great pix Mike~!
2 weeks.

Have you noticed that our threads are neck and neck for hits?
It seems that the same amount of folks like the Lowcountry and Michaux State Forest.

Hey Jax, looks like we have the same spring getaway in the works, just diff times. I will have to look up this Mike guy, seems like he has the handle on Low Country cool. I'll be visiting in Goose creek late April, gotta check some of this out!

Small world, Lawrence...I live in Goose Creek. Drop me a pm when you get here....

Hi ECR,

Beautiful pics. Mind if I show up sometime and follow?

Not at all! Come on up here...

I used to live up in Goose Creek by the weapons station, worked there too, Navy and all that. Man, I loved SC, what a beutiful place. I can't believe how it has changed for the worst with the massive build up of homes and people, particularly near Charleston. Sad! It has lost its unique charm, that southern charm. However, there are beutiful places and sites to see. One of my most favorite places on this planet. Thanks for the pics, they bring me back many years to happier times.

well done ECR!! A great report with supurb photos. I sure hope that I can explore that beautiful area someday. Thanks again for sharing

TC

Really enjoying this tour , check ourt cypress gardens when it's at full bloom ( which should be soon) the combo of the blackwater and azaleas blooming are spectacular

Ya gotta take lots of bug spray then

Thu
Mar 24

Sunny


71°
45°


1 Week! :)

Heading out tomorrow for an all day ride...just gonna get lost and clear my head. Hopefully will get some decent pics...

Snapped a few pics, but mostly just rode, tucked down behind the meager fairing on the ever faithful KLR. The first batch of pics are hardly coastal SC (up near Columbia on US176), but the last few are from Shem Creek, in Mt. Pleasant.

I would have loved to rummage around inside this old place, but if the porch floor was any indication of the condition of the floor inside the place, I would have fallen thru...









These are from what I'd geuss to be an old sharecropper's cabin along rural 176...





It was getting on into the afternoon by this time, so I headed to Shem Creek in Mt Pleasant for some sunset action...

An old shrimp boat on the docks



A not so old powerboat. A Harbor tour on this thing would be fun, I bet!



And finally, the setting sun along the coast @ Shem Creek...






Time spent



in the Fortress of Solitude is always good

Just got to work after an all day ride around ACE Basin/Donnely Wildlife Preserve & Bear Island with JaxObsessed.

Was great to meet and ride with ya, Jack

Pics tomorrow...

\
Great to meet you too Mike, I had a great day with excellent company and photo/riding adventure!
I am on dial up here. I'll post lots of pix when I get home.
Thanks again.

I just got back from the low country, one of my favorite places on earth. Thanks for sharing these magnificent pictures with us - what camera and lens did you use for these?

Soboy,

Most of these are taken with a Canon 20d, with either a kit 18-55mm or a 75-300mm Canon lens. I recently purchased a 50mm f1.8 for macro & high detail shots. Thanks for the compliments!

So, I met up with Jak (JaxObsessed), and we meandered thru ACE Basin, Donnely NWP, and Bear Island NWP.

Everybody, please welcome Jack to my little tour of Coastal SC:



He'll post up a bunch of his pics later, and provbably a few from an earlier ride thru the area.

The first critter we encountered was this little dude, sunning himself:



Running thru one of the many backroads in Donnely NWP:



On to Bear Island NWP. Here is an ospery's nest. Notice the lack of ospreys Ospreys are the most uncooperative wildlife ever. Gonna have to bring the Canon and the 75-300 lens next time. I'll explain later why I was smart to bring only the little Kodak point and shoot this go around...



Little gathering of storks(?)...Jack startled them when he caught up to me, and it produced a lucky action shot!



Then, off to the right, evidence of a fair sized critter:



Pretty fair sized gator: his rear feet were bigger than my hands by a fair margin...



OK, time for lunch...goofiness and stupidity to follow shortly

Bear Island was great, but all the closed gates were aggravating...WARNING: Goofiness dead ahead.



OH YEAH? I'm gonna stick it to the man and collapse this gate...(the inspiration for this moment of photgraphic mischief brought to you by Rivka)



Alas, It didn't work. Probably has something to do with the fact that I'm 170lbs soaking wet in all that gear....

Oh well. ONWARD....

A crane



That same crane spooked by the bikes....



Jack got bored and decided to do a headstand:



We did some more riding, and came upon some dirt mounds dumped in the middle of the road by maintenance crews as fill dirt...I decided to see if the KLR would fly. It didn't fly, per se, but I conducted a bit of a physics/anti-gravity experiment...The second time I went over, I was going at a more enthusiastic pace. I had left my tank bag open for quick access to the camera and forgot about it...As the bike and I came down over the far side of the mound, I find, much to my chagrin My Springfield XD, my amber shooting glasses (I use them for night riding, too), and my camera all at eye level, as opposed to being in the tank bag where they belong. Needless to say, the camera and the XD wound up in the dirt & got a good cleaning that night when I got home

So, we collect all my dropped gear, and head on down the road, only to find this:



My attitude promptly goes down hill, appropriately expressed by this small notation on Jack's license plate: