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Beaufort and Hunting Island, South Carolina
Beaufort and Hunting Island, South Carolina
Visiting friends has brought us twice to Beaufort, a charming town on the coast between Charleston and Savannah. On our first visit in October 2016, we weren’t able to camp on nearby Hunting Island as planned due to the havoc wreaked by Hurricane Matthew.
I was not crying about the alternative lodging - our friend arranged a great deal at the Old Beaufort Inn, and we loved this historic and gorgeously-appointed inn right in the heart of Beaufort.
On this trip we were able to stay at the state park campground on Hunting Island. We were blown away by its dense, lush maritime forest of saw palmettos and live oaks culminating at a dramatic sandy coastline of live palms and bleached trees downed during the hurricane.
The entire Hunting Island/Beaufort area is stunningly beautiful - vast tidal flats awash with willowy sea grasses and long-necked shore birds. Our friends’ evening view is the pictured floating dock amid this splendor. Heaven is everywhere - except when it’s not of course, and the hurricane winds howl!
Fortunately we had none of that on our visit, and while we got some rain, we were lucky to enjoy a golden sunset for our anniversary dinner at the excellent Saltus restaurant, which backs to a charming plaza overlooking the Beaufort River.
Would we come back here?
Would we come back here?
We would absolutely come back. The place is beautiful and there were many things we didn't get to do, such as kayaking and paddleboarding. It also looked nice for windsurfing, but appearances may be deceiving and I'd want to research it more before taking off only to break my neck on a sandbar, or something.
The campground itself is very nice. A bit crowded--akin to a private campground, in that respect--but the water views from the beachside sites are amazing. And the sites off the beach are a bit more secluded, so it seems you get either space or beachfront, but not both. Maybe that's fair.
One camper who said he was an environmental ecologist told us that the park service was clearing some of the maritime forest and he hinted darkly that they were profiting from the logging that resulted. I don't know how true that was and have made no attempt to research it. It still looked nice to us.
Verizon LTE signal was decent. No wifi.
Would we live here?
Would we live here?
We certainly wouldn't live on Hunting Island. More realistic is the question of whether we'd live in Beaufort. I would pick Beaufort over any southern city that we have visited so far though both Asheville, NC and St. Augustine, FL would offer some healthy competition. Bottom line, though, is we aren't likely to move to an area where we have to decide whether to evacuate every time a hurricane looks in our general direction.
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