Hunting Island State Park: Inspiration behind the Paintings
I’ve never been much of a beach person… yeah, I like to visit, but give me the mountains ANY day over the beach. But, it’s a good thing I‘ve committed to doing this “painting every state park in South Carolina” thing, otherwise, I would have never gone to Hunting Island State Park. Hunting Island definitely gave me a lot more love for visiting the beach! And, from this little weekend trip, I’ve done five paintings so far!
Coleton and I decided we wanted to camp close to the ocean before it got too hot to do so, so we packed up our camping gear in the car and headed 2.5 hours south to Tuck in the Wood Campground. We wanted to stay in the state park itself, but you have to book way out in advance to get a spot. We were pleasantly surprised with Tuck in the Woods though! Clean bathrooms, spacious campsite, and beautiful forests around us.
We got there in enough time to try to catch the sunset at Hunting Island, so we quickly set up camp and then headed 15 minutes south to the beach. We didn’t catch much of a sunset at the beach, but we did on our drive back to camp! I just love the marsh landscape of the low country, especially at sunset.
The next day, we went to Hunting Island to explore. As we pulled into the park, I realized we had forgotten our state park pass! 🙃 Thank you to the kind gentleman who let us into the park without it! As we were driving into the park, I immediately fell in love. It is like being in Jurassic Park! The thick layer enormous palmettos on either side of the road with palm trees towering overhead, mixed with a few pine trees. It was impressive! I knew I wanted to get a picture of the light house to use as a reference photo for my painting, but it took me a while to find an angle that I liked. The lighthouse was unfortunately closed, so we weren’t able to walk up to the top. We’ll be back!
The bike trails around the park were just stunning. I found out afterwards that we biked through one of the filming locations for Forest Gump! We biked to Boneyard Beach to see all the driftwood, and that beach exceeded by expectations! The huge twisting shapes and bleached branches of old trees was such a unique scene.
After a full day of exploring Hunting Island State Park, we headed towards Beaufort to check out the town. We stopped at Cypress Wetlands in Port Royal on the way and saw an incredible array of wildlife - alligators, turtles, lizards, and all sorts of birds. We also got treated to a surprise show of the Blue Angels practicing for their upcoming show!! We stopped at Colleton State Park on our way back to Columbia that evening. We didn’t explore that state park enough for me to write about it, but it was pretty! We will definitely be back to canoe that. I still got some reference photos while I was there to paint.
I made five paintings from this trip! One from Hunting Island, one from the sunset on Saint Helena Island, two from the Cypress Wetlands, and one from Colleton State Park. All of them are in the gallery below!
