To distinguish itself from the town in NC with the same spelling, down in SC they pronounce Beaufort as “Beeuuufort” while in NC it is pronounced with a long “o” sound. Anyway, Beaufort SC is as Sarah's sister-in-law Tami described, Charleston but on a smaller scale. The town has some beautiful homes and most have grassy yards and live oaks. If you’ve seen the movie “The Big Chill”, it was filmed at one of Beaufort’s stately homes called “Tidalholm”. We dialed back our pace a little while in Beaufort, choosing to play tennis on Sunday Nov. 21 and strolling the shops before sharing a drink with our new friends from Charleston -Franklin and Francie- on their boat Nightingale.
High NW winds were forecast for Monday but we felt the boat would be in the lee of the shore and well protected so we decided to spend the better part of the day biking the Spanish Moss Trail to Port Royal and back, about a 10 mile loop. We stopped for lunch in Port Royal at the Fish Camp Restaurant situated right on the water overlooking several shrimp boats, then continued on to a look-out tower. The town of Port Royal is even smaller than Beaufort and seemed to attract residents to their summer “beach” on the ICW and it had some charm. For us in the off season, the main attraction was a natural cypress swamp right in the middle of the town where we saw the first two wild alligators of our trip. They were only about 3-5 feet in length and sleeping but they still seemed worthy of the warnings posted everywhere to be careful. We also spotted several moorhens in the swamp. These are birds with bright red heads, black bodies and which walked like chickens.
View of Beaufort Harbor
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