Huntington Beach State Park December 2011

After visiting Brookgreen Gardens the night before, we visited Huntington Beach State Park in Murrells Inlet, SC. It was the home of Arthur and Anna Hyatt Huntington (a prolific sculptor who created many of the sculptures in Brookgreen Gardens) in the early to mid 1900's. It is a beautiful area, with 3 major portions to visit: their home, Atalaya (Spanish for watchtower, named that because of the central watchtower/cistern); a very nice stretch of beach; and a nice wetlands area that many species of birds as well as some alligators (didn't see any this trip, but we have in the previous visits) call home. It is a beautiful park that I highly recommend visiting.







All the windows are covered with ornate ironwork fabricated by Anna to protect them from hurricanes.

Brookgreen Gardens December 2011

In December Donna and I visited Brookgreen Gardens in Murrels Inlet, SC for their annual Nights of a Thousand Candles event. Brookgreen is an amazing place to visit any time of the year; it is filled with beautiful gardens and a mind-blowing collection of outdoor sculptures. But in December it gets even better, when they open for the evenings and decorate with a ton of lights and candles and have all sorts of musical entertainment throughout the grounds. There was a lady roaming the grounds playing the bagpipes; it was really cool hearing her up close, but also very cool hearing her off in the distance.

We arrived around 4:00, so we got to explore a bit in the daylight before the sun went down.










There were also some indoor displays, one of which this year was an amazing collection of 100-plus-year-old carousel animals; there were around 15 of them, all in spectacular shape.






Once the sun was down the real treat began.












They had a catering tent set up, where we had some excellent barbecue. It and the indoor displays were good opportunities to warm up and then head out for some more chilly adventuring. It was a very good evening. These photos are just a very small amount of what all there is to see; it's truly an amazing sight to behold. We stayed the night in Murrels Inlet and then visited another great location the next day, which I'll cover in my next post!