This year, the scout troop decided to camp out at the beach in the middle of winter. We went to Edisto Beach south of Charleston, SC the weekend of January 27th-28th.Our family had gone to Charleston area once before. In the middle of August. It was hot. And it stormed like crazy when we were there. I still really liked the area and had always planned going back when it wouldn't be so hot.
Going to the beach in the middle of winter actually sounded pretty good.
We knew that it would mean that Benjamin was away from home on his 17th birthday, but I figured we could make it up by going out for dinner in Charleston.
Our first sign of trouble was when we lost our direction in Walterboro, SC. It was late in the evening by the time we arrived there. The young men's president was driving the lead van with one of his counselors navigating. They must have gotten off track on the map, because they started driving very slowly through town and started taking some erratic turns. In hindsight, I should have pulled over and gotten everybody together to get better aligned. Unfortunately, I didn't.
Then the YM president pulled a U-turn in an intersection. The scoutmaster and I followed suit. A minute later, a police car pulled up beside me with his lights flashing. I pulled over in a bank parking lot. The other two cars, kindly came back to the parking lot. We all had our licenses and registration checked, and we got a stern lecture from the police officer about how in Walterboro people didn't drive like that.
We got away without tickets, but we felt sheepish and grateful that we were let off with a lecture.
A couple minutes later, we were following the directions on the scoutmaster's GPS. The GPS must have gotten its wires crossed because we ended up in a field that was straight out of a movie where unsuspecting travelers get lost and then roughed up by the locals. We quickly got out of there and back on our way.
By then, we were ready to get to the beach without further incident. We still struggled to get necessary directions from the scoutmaster's GPS, but we eventually made it to the campground and the beach.
It turns out that Benjamin was beginning to get a fever by that time. After all the adventure making it to the beach, we actually considered returning home due to Benjamin really not feeling well. The YM president and I gave him a blessing and decided we'd see how things were in the morning.
In the morning, Benjamin was feeling well enough for us to stay.
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We had a great time at the beach. The weather was perfect--not too hot, but not cold either. We largely had the beach to ourselves. As a storm had blown through a couple days before, tons of shells had washed up to shore. It was probably the best shell collecting opportunity I've seen. We took home a shoebox full of shells. |
One of the things we did while at Edisto Beach was to go to the Environmental Learning Center where we learned more about some of the things we had seen at the beach. The staff there was incredibly friendly and gracious. We were given entry into one of their classrooms when a class wasn't in session. In the classroom, they had a finch that they were rehabilitating. The finch had taken to the staff there, but was typically uneasy around visitors. However, a couple of us were surprised when the finch came and landed on us.In the evening, Benjamin and I headed out to eat in Charleston to celebrate his birthday. Unfortunately, by then his fever had been roaring. We ended up just getting him into the car and trying to get home as quickly as we could, so he could get some much needed rest.
It was a tough ending to a great weekend, but I think we were both glad to have gone. The beach was terrific.
