Day 8: October 17, Huntington Beach

I had set my alarm for 4:30 the night before, so that I could get rolling at 5, but after putting Huntington Beach into my GPS and realizing it was less that a mile away, I simply brushed my teeth and went back to sleep for a while longer till 5:30. I got rolling at 5:45, and got to the park a little over 5 minutes later. The ride on the highway was quiet and traffic moved over nicely for me, as I thought they would. I bet most of them were wondering, "What the heck is that?" There was already a car waiting in line at the park, and I thought maybe sunrise on the beach watching must be a popular activity, but it turned out to just be an employee. I got in free with the SC state park pass my family bought last year, and blindly guessed my way to the beach in the dark. Riding over the Causeway was really nice: it was a huge expanse of marshland that was lit only by the stars and the lights from Murrells Inlet a few miles down the road. I actually stopped for a minute at one of the covered observation areas and just enjoyed the sounds and smells of the ocean in the peaceful dark of the early morning.

About an hour later, after watching a really beautiful, if really cold sunrise on the beach, I headed back to sneak into the campground to take a much needed hot shower, and saw a raccoon walking up the stairs into the bathroom building by the beach like he owned the place! I followed him up and found a nice pile of fresh poo right there in the middle of the stairs like he was trying to tell me something. After getting to the top and looking around, wondering where he went, I saw him on the roof! I only got to wonder how he got up there for a second before he gave me look and scurried into a little hole in the wall. This was going to be a problem: this place has smart-ass raccoons that are used to people.

Originally, I was just going to pop into Huntington Beach Park to take a shower and then head off to Georgetown, but the thought of getting back on the highway and leaving this peaceful sanctuary was causing me a great amount of stress. I had another few hours of doubt in my ability and desire to finish this trip, but after calling my mom and looking at the scheduled park activities for the day, I started to feel better. I would hang out here for a day or so: if I really was done, this would be a good place to wait for the weekend when they could come get me, if not, then this was a good place for the rest day that I had been trying to get for several days now.

So, I went on the bird watching tour, and took my time in the nature center, and got a lot of attention from the other visitors about my trip. It was nice to finally really talk to someone, as I hadn't had a real conversation with anyone in a few days. Around 2, I got a campsite. The woman checking me in was not very helpful in comparison to the wonderful help I got at Myrtle Beach. She looked at me like I had two heads when I asked her about trees at the campsites for my hammock, and sent me out to look at the available sites myself, without a map (I had to stop and ask other campers to look at their maps when I couldn't find my sites the first time around.) I would have thought that she had never been out to look at the campsites before (must not be part of her job description.)

After all of that was straightened out, I took my dirty clothes to the bathrooms to get them washed up. I was pretty proud of myself for getting this out of the way so early in the day so that my stuff actually might have a chance to dry before packing up in the morning. Then I set up my hammock: I had chosen a site with this huge live oak tree that had a branch that came down low enough to climb on. I decided I wanted to hang from that branch. So I made it happen.

There was a brochure in the gift shop advertising their bike rentals and the trail that paralleled the highway going from Myrtle Beach down to Litchfield. It was part of the East Coast Greenway! Part of me wished I had known were to pick it up in Myrtle to come here the day before, but the other part of me knew I was being too stingy to want to fork out the money to stay in a legit campsite. Anyway, there was a bike shop on the route, and I decided it was the perfect excuse to go out and do a little pleasure riding on the trail. The guys at Cyclopedia were awesome. They were very friendly and adjusted my disk brakes, which had started rubbing again. They were amazed (as most are) that I was doing this by myself, but were more excited for me than anything. I was gifted a big handful of gluten free energy bar bite things in "menuka honey" before I headed back to the park.

The sun was starting to set, and I thought I would make use of the gift shop building, as it was about three stories tall, with outlets and lights and bathrooms, so I stuffed some food, clothes, my hygiene kit, and notebook in a bag, along with all my chargers and headed over to work on my journal. The thought of that blasted raccoon front he morning was in the back of my mind, but it was only about 10 by the time I headed back to camp. And there it was on all its glory, as I came around the small bend in the trail to find my food scattered all over the ground and two glowing eyes looking up at me with a puppy-been-caught look on its face. I hissed and ran at it and clapped, and it reluctantly headed for the woods, stopping to look back at me a few times to see if I was serious, forcing me to come at it again.

Luckily my pannier was not ripped or torn at all, but there were slobbery teeth holes in nearly every packet of food I had, and my instant potatoes and hot chocolate mix was everywhere, mixed in with the sand. "Great," I thought. "Not my whole camp will always smell like food no matter what I do." So I went through my stuff piece by piece and threw away anything that was damaged. Jonathan, from the next camp over, came over to tell me I was welcome to keep my stuff in his truck tonight and I gladly accepted. I also begrudgingly decided to move my hammock over to a different empty site to try to avoid any more encounters with that obnoxious coon.

I got invited to their fire for tea and hot dogs, and he told me that he had done his fair share of bike touring as well, and had already attempted to chase off that beast for me once that night before I came back. Unfortunately, we also had to defend his campsite from the dang wildlife. At one point, I was shining my light right at it and it kept coming right at us anyway! OMG! He got his hatchet to throw at it and I went to get my pepper spray. I would rather save it to use on a person or scary dog, but if I had to spray a coon to teach it a lesson, so be it.

We stayed up till about 1 am with him retelling stories of all of his travels, mostly through the northern states, from what I remember, but it seems as though he'd been about everywhere. He agreed that SC was probably one of the least friendly bike states as far as touring goes, after I told him my experience about heading into Conway. (Surprisingly, nearly every single South Carolinian I've mentioned this to acts so very surprised. They think SC is extremely bike friendly. In the more touristy cities like Myrtle Beach, I can see this, but I consider it more tolerance.)

After I finally turned in, with a belly full of chamomile tea, I slept like a baby.