Sunrise to Sunset

Have you ever awakened well before your normal or necessary time and cannot go back to sleep?  What do you do?  If I really can’t return to slumberland I get up and start my day early.  That’s what happened this morning.  And when I looked outside after dressing, I knew what I had to do.

The sky was just beginning to turn multiple shades of pink, red, and yellow. Our room is 100 yards off the Atlantic Ocean beach. It had been a long time since I rose to photograph a sunrise and this one promised to be a winner.

53 degrees Fahrenheit outside but no wind. I didn’t even need a jacket. As I approached the dune walk-over I met a young father with his several week old baby.  I asked if this was babies first sunrise.  “No”, the dad replied, “We’ve been rising every morning like this all week.”  Mama was getting some well deserved sleep back in the room.  Good for dad!

I walked onto the sand and spent the next 20 minutes recording one of the most glorious sunrises I’ve ever photographed.

So its still before 8 am and I know Mona is still sleeping so I decide to see if I can do this morning what I could not do yesterday afternoon.  If I could not get to see Confederate Fort Walker by road, I would enter by the back door over the beach.  

I walked north along the ocean about 2 miles to Bay Point, where the Broad River becomes Port Royal Sound and where Fort Walker was built facing Fort Beauregard, across the bay, in a failed attempt to stop any Union advance in 1861.

My search for signs of the fort were once again frustrated as whatever remains must be behind the $500,000 and up summer ‘cottages’ that line the dunes in the gated Port Royal community. Nonetheless, I knew about where the fort had been and whatever was left would be nearby so I photographed that. 

As I rounded the north point of Hilton Head Island I found the most marvelous collection of seabirds cawing, cackling, and feeding on the water’s edge.

When I returned to the room I found Mona up and reading and we shared breakfast and Scrabble (I won!) before our next adventure together.

Halfway across the Hilton Head Bridge to the mainland is Pinckney Island. Named for the famous South Carolina Pinckney’s of Revolutionary and Civil War fame this island had been their farm up until the Civil War.  The plantation house had blown away in a hurricane in 1824. 

  

Today Pinckney Island is a beautiful salt marsh and jungle wildlife preserve.  We saw a few long legged birds, tiny snails and crabs, and lovely marsh and woods views.  What a relaxing place to take a walk on a comfortably cool morning.

Back home for lunch and we had company!  The Nearhoofs stopped over just to hang out for a bit. We still had the second half of our $100.00 restaurant voucher from the Marriott sales presentation on Tuesday to use before we leave Sunday morning and they recommended a place they had visited for the first time just this week.  The Old Fort Pub. 

This is the restaurant I had seen next to Fort Mitchell on Skull Creek yesterday afternoon.  They headed off for their next appointment (we don’t have too many of those!) and we called for a reservation at the Old Fort. Jim and Jeanie had recommended we go just before sunset and we were so glad we did.

 

Our table overlooked Skull Creek and we had the same view of this glorious event that Union soldiers had every clear evening as they manned the embanked artillery in the old fort next door 150 years ago.

 

Sunrise to sunset, what a lovely day!

-Ken