Having spent a bit of time seeing the beautiful sea islands, I decided to concentrate on the center of Beaufort itself. This is, of course, another old, old town with a history to almost every building. In the "town house" where I'm staying there is an excellent book on Beaufort with several walking tours and lots of details on houses and buildings. Even the ones that look ordinary for this area (if there is such a thing) have histories and this book gives a few words on a whole lot of them.
Even the downtown shops go back to warehouses and stores that were here longer than you would think. In some cases, the old tabby walls have been carefully exposed so that you can see something of the original construction. I don't recall all the ingredients in tabby but it is a sort of concrete with sea shells as part of it and the shells are visible as shells in the structures.
I wandered in and out of shops and found in the process that there is an old fashioned ice cream parlor called Southern Sweets. Cute and it even has lemon custard ice cream, one of my all time favorites. I can see myself making quite a few stops here.
Continuing my walk, I found Waterfront Park. It seems to be the place of choice for walking your dog and, of course, in the good old Southern fashion, everyone has to say hi and ask how you're doing today. So I just sat in the sun.
What, by the way, is it about sunlight? How does this simple, normal, everyday thing make you feel so good? You sit there on the bank of the river, with the wind off the water and the warmth soaks into you. Muscles relax. Shoulders settle back. Even the "bad leg" feels the warmth and eases. Thoughts drift away. Winter and cold and the idea that you'll never get warm again are gone. There's healing for a lot of things in that warmth.
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