St. George turned out to be a fine place to stay. The room at the Quality Inn was nice and cheap, and there was free WiFi and continental breakfast. This also put us just thirty minutes from Beidler Forest.
We arrived at Beidler just a few minutes after it opened. Sunday is usually a good time to visit, as there are no school groups or loud tourists. Today, however, we were informed that a Cub Scout troup would be there at 10:00. A bit apprehensive as to what we might actually see, we headed on out to the boardwalk.
The birds were very active. We heard more than we saw, though. There were a few prothonotary warblers flitting about, but they were hard to photograph. In fact, almost all of my bird shots turned out blurry. I tried to use this as an argument for buying a nice new telephoto lens, but Laura didn’t fall for it.
We did see plenty of dragonflies, turtles, and a couple of cottonmouths. We stayed on the boardwalk for about three hours enjoying the sights and sounds.
Leaving Beidler, we decided to stay off of interstates, at least until we got to Columbia. We went through the towns of Holly Springs, Santee, Elloree, and a whole host of others. I would have loved to have stopped and taken photos at each place, but we were tired and wanted to get home before it got too late.