Paddle out

Another day of adventure. We had been in a holding pattern trying to get a sense of the weather. Winds up to 20 mph plus rain made us think we might take a zero and spend 2 nights at the park. But the park did not have much going except misquitos, the weather seemed feasible and then when I pulled out my snack bar for the day it said "paddle out" so we figured we better go for it. 

We made an easy 12 miles to the bait and tackle shop (the only store that we know of on the river). Turned out it was a local bar with all the characters that you would might expect in a rural river town in South Carolina. 

The trip today was quite beautiful with huge live oak, great pines, cypress, willow, sweet gum in color. There was a peace to the place. We saw ibis, a costal bird. The river and swamp are bursting with water. 

We had our first rain day with on and off showers that increased to a frog-strangler level by late afternoon. 

We are staying at Lowndes landing where the misquitos have again ramped up. We smoked them down to tolerable. An old woman at the bar who says she has lived on the river her whole life only remembers 1 or 2 times this bad in her whole life.