Beidler Audubon Center

Today I wanted to get out of the house.  Mark suggested we see what Cane Bay was like.  We checked it out,  There were lots of houses and some shops, and it is getting bigger. We did not stop to see anything there but continued on to Holly Hill. Another town we had never seen !

Traveling down the road

Holly Hill. There was not much to the town

An interesting building in Holly Hill

Near the industrial area, we passed this.  A purple port a potty. I had not ever seen a purple one.  And I got dared to put it in the blog.

Swamp

At this point in our drive we were still just going to to see what Harleyville was like and head home.

Until we saw this!  Looked like it would be a great way to get some energy out!

The road to the center. It is marked slow. I could not see how anyone could go fast on this dirt road.

Going to go see what we could see

Two snakes that were happily warm in the center.

All the different nests in the Four Hole Swamp

We learned the swamp is called Four Hole Swamp. Why it is called Four Hole Swamp, no one has any memory of.

 this feeder is right outside the center.
The boardwalk through the swamp was a 1 3/4 miles.  It was all on a boardwalk, it made it an easy walk and protected the swamp.

swamp! It was not smelly.  I thought swamps were bad smelling places. This was not.

Lon got the book from the naturalist. It had a list of 20 stops along the way. Each stop had a page in the book and Lon read them aloud to us.   We did learn a lot about swamps!

There are going to be pictures of the swamp. It was beautiful

Reading us the book !

We thought it was really cool looking how they made the fan pattern as the boardwalk curved.

A three point cypress knee

A large downed tree and a part of the old boardwalk.  We wondered why the boardwalk was left in the water.
Hurricane Hugo ripped through the area 25 years ago. It tore up the boardwalk, knocked down trees, and since this is a natural swamp, they left things were they lay.

lizard!

Lon loves lizards

We were told these can change colors.

Funky looking knee

another lizard

Why Cypress knees? The answer is no one really knows. They grow up from the roots, and pop up out of the water.  We like them.

A hollow stump.

 more knees

The lake

On the board walk out to the lake, we saw some otter scat. It was the only smelly thing in the swamp!

We did see two splashes in the lake area and we are going to believe those were otters!

On the end of this chain was supposed to be a cup for people to pour out some water. It is a black water swamp, but the water is not black, it is surprisingly clear.  The water is clean and moving.

We wondered what did this

The tree grew into the old boardwalk railing. When they built a new one, they built it around the tree.

Lon thought the item 1462 Columbus was playing with boats in his bathtub was one of the funniest lines in the whole placard

the tree was too big to all fit in my camera lens

the biggest spider we have ever seen in South Carolina. We need to find out what it is. We left it alive as we walked by

Mark spotted the cotton mouth in the water under our feet.
One of the poisonous snakes in South Carolina.
He was not a danger to us, nor us to him.

A yellow back slider turtle
 We caught him just before he slipped into the water.

Lon reads the whole book to us, a section at a time.

Back at the center!  We took our time, it was really fun.

At the center, the naturalist brought out a stainless steel travel coffee mug that an 8 foot alligator got a hold of.  He brought out an alligator skull to show Lon.

Lon thought this was really cool !

The naturalist thinks Lon has a future as an alligator forensic scientist.

Even though it was bit chilly, in the low 50s, we had a great time!  It was such a cool place.

We want to see what it is like in other seasons.