Atalaya with Jessie

Brookgreen Gardens entrance

Jessie has been asking me to take her back to Atalaya. I booked a weekend for us last year and she couldn't get off work. Ruthie went with me and we forgot to bring the dog crate and couldn't go into either Brookgreen Gardens or Atalaya with the pooch. I got my act together for this trip. 

In the last Atalaya post, I mentioned that Atalaya was the home of a fabulous sculptor, Anna Hyatt Huntington and that Brookgreen Gardens was started by her husband to display her work. Atalaya is located in Huntington Beach State Park near Murrell's Inlet, SC. They have an annual fall craft fair each September inside Atalaya. When the kids were small, I did that show a couple of times. Condos were available at off season rates so we made it a little vacation. While I'd work the show, Greg and the kids had fun exploring the gardens, the garden's boat ride, miniature golf and all the other delights of a beach vacation town. Jessie has happy memories of those trips which is why she wanted to go back.

So the first day there, we went through Brookgreen Gardens and took a boat tour of a river between several of the plantations Huntington's husband bought to create the gardens. The next day we visited Atalaya, much more restored than when we'd been there before. Mostly, we enjoyed taking in the local beauty and rediscovering what we'd enjoyed before. You can click on the pictures to enlarge them.

The gardens:

Atalaya:

The Park: