The Tidelands of South Carolina

We had a 45 minute wait to be seated at the popular Pawleys Island Tavern. With my wife's consent, I headed over to the nearby tidal marsh and photographed a couple in a canoe as they glided through the reflection of the setting sun.

An egret, at left, waits for a handout.

Anna and Archer Hyatt Huntington founded Brookgreen Gardens in 1931, preserving the native flora and fauna and displaying an important collections of figurative sculpture - 900 pieces - by American artists. The gardens, on the site of a former rice plantation, are located near Pawleys Island, off Highway 17.

Fox squirrels (Sciurus niger) are the largest arboreal, or tree squirrels.

A humid day in July, perhaps 90 degrees. What must have it been like for slaves to have worked these fields, while their masters relaxed in their summer homes on Pawleys Island, a few mile away.

An al
Alligator floats just off the Haror Walk pier, in Georgetown.

I photographed these two creatures of the sea, locked in an embrace, on the beach at Pawleys Island.

This is a female golden silk spider, Nephila clavipes, a species of orb weaving arachnids. While the males are diminutive, females can reach about two inches in length. We found this spider, along with several others, with their webs attached to some trees, off Highway 17. A few minutes earlier muy wife and I had accidentally walked through a web, and I found myself brushing one of these giant spiders off the front of my t-shirt. I'm not sure who was more upset, the spider or me!

An egret, after feeding on crabs and fish, perches atop an ancient pier piling and views its surroundings in the tidal marsh near Pawleys Island.

Pontoon boat wake on Cap'n Rod's tour of the river plantations, out of Georgetown.

The beautiful Kiminski House, built in the late 1700's on a bluff overlooking historic Front Street and the Sampit River waterfront, inlcudes a wonderful collection of antiques. The house is now a museum, open to the public. The old chairs pictured here grace the front porch.

The elegant Georgetown church, built sometime around 1750, reputedly with brick from the ballast of British ships, was twice occupied by army troops: by the British during the Revolutionary War and by Union troops during the Civil War. Note the "old school" enclosed pews.

At the Prince George Winyah Episcopal Church.

Beach houses face the Atlantic, on Pawleys Island.

Long ago, plantation owners and their families worshipped at the All Saints Parish Episcopal Church at Pawleys Island. I spent a few minutes alone in the little church, still in use, on an early Sunday morning.

A boat dock faces toward the tidal marsh separating the island from the "low country" mainland of South Carolina.

Before the Civil War, at the end of May each year, plantation owners and their families would move away from their plantations, and would not return until November. They left because they feared contracting malaria. (Plantation employees and slaves had no such option, of course.)

Pawleys Island is less than four miles in length and not more than a quarter mile wide.... 
View More Located a few miles north of historic Georgetown, the island - beginning in the late 1700s - was a favorite retreat of the planter famlies. Today, the little island is still a popular resort. Hundreds of "arrogantly shabby" beach homes, most of them available for rent, cover the island.