On Tuesday, June 19, Cheryl and I drove to historic Georgetown, SC - about 35 miles from our hotel in Myrtle Beach. We had a 1pm reservation for the Carolina Rover's Shelling and Lighthouse Cruise.Georgetown is a beautiful old historic town. The streets are lined with huge oak trees. The downtown area includes a small waterfront where the boat we were taking docks.
The "shelling and lighthouse tour" that the Carolina Rover offers was pleasant - but it was also badly named. We spent about two and a half hours on a pontoon boat listening to an individual give us narration as we motored across Winyah Bay. Tidbits included:- The water in the bay is brown because plant life in the bay produces natural tannins similar to those in tea. Pirates used to come and soak new white sails in the water in Winayh Bay to turn them brown.
- The brown pelicans that populate the bay dive into the water for their food. They live to be 12 or 13 years old and then begin to develop cataracts on their eyes from all the diving. The end result is that they can't see to catch food anymore and they die.
- A Union ship, the USS Harvest Moon, was sunk in the bay and its smoke stack is visible above the water.
- In the 1800's a young girl whose father ran the lighthouse drowned in the bay in a storm. Her ghost sometimes warns sailors of impending storms...
If you go on the "shelling and lighthouse tour" to tour the lighthouse you'll be disappointed. The lighthouse is an active navigational beacon, so Homeland Security won't let tourists walk through it anymore. The picture at the beginning of this blog was as close as we got.
If you go on the "shelling and lighthouse tour" to gather shells you'll be disappointed. The North Island has lots of shells. But the Carolina Rover takes groups of 50 people there three times a day to spend half an hour picking over the shells. What good shells there are become the property of the first few kids off the boat. Extensive beach combing is limited by the fact that you have 15 minutes to walk down the beach before you have to start back toward the boat. Two or three people in our group found something other than run-of-the-mill cockle shells. We did better ourselves on Pawleys Island.The trip was relaxing, educational, and $56 (for the two of us)...
