Vacation Education

We are spending this week in South Carolina on Hilton Head Island. This is the first time I have been here. I've been very pleased with the area. The beaches, the pace, and the general atmosphere is great for taking time away from regular life.

While here, we've had the opportunity to do many things that have been good for fun and education.

On Sunday we visited Coastal Discovery Museum. There were many things to be done at the museum. The best part, of course, was that the admission to the museum was 100% FREE. I love FREE stuff that provides entertainment AND education.

We played dress up and pretended we were colonial kids.

We looked at a really large skeleton of a sea turtle. Seriously, we could have used that turtles shell to build ourselves a really awesome cave.

We walked through the butterfly pavilion and saw "flying flowers" and the caterpillars that make them. (Translation: We saw monarch caterpillars and swallowtail caterpillars, along with a handful of butterflies.)

We walked out on two different boardwalks that stretched out over the salt marsh. This, by far, was my favorite part of our visit. I thoroughly enjoyed walking out over the marsh. It was low tide when we made our visit, so the water was way down. We were blessed by visions of thousands of fiddler crabs as they went about the business of life. It was absolutely amazing. I really could have sat and watched those crabs for hours. Marisa was with me on this one. She would have gladly sat and watched the little crabs going about their business for quite a long time. Unfortunately, Kira and Daddy were way too impatient for that. They figured that twenty minutes of fiddler crab life was plenty enough for them.

When we were making our way back to the car, I came across an interesting creature. It appeared to be a caterpillar, but it was shaped like a scorpion. I couldn't see any type of stinger and whenever I touched it with a stick it would curl up like a grub worm.I did find some photos and learned that this was, in fact, a caterpillar. It's the caterpillar for a tussock moth. The one we saw was red/black fur and a red head with black antennae and tail.