Charleston: Folly Beach + Kayaking

Let me tell you a little bit about Folly Beach! Folly was our home base for our week in Charleston. It’s about 20-25 minutes from downtown, and definitely has a laid back, surfer vibe. There’s a very small downtown, but for the most part, it’s beaches and houses. Here’s the house we rented:

Cute, no? It was lovely, and right on the beach — about a one minute walk from our door to the ocean’s edge. We took advantage of the proximity, swimming almost every day, and some days, multiple times a day! (We even swam once at night, and once in the rain!)

This is what the beach looked like:

And here’s what it looked like at dawn:

Thanks, John, for the photo! This was the view out our back door, toward the marsh. We didn’t spend much time in that direction, because the bugs were pretty vicious.

At the tip of Folly Beach is Morris Island Lighthouse, which some of the more industrious members of our party (i.e. not me) ran to mornings.

John and I did drive/walk to it once, and we saw these pretty flowers:

The most fun thing we did in Folly Beach was a kayak tour with Charleston Outdoor Adventures. All of the Folly Beach kayak companies advertise dolphin sitings, but we were pretty skeptical. Well, we shouldn’t have been, because we saw about nine dolphins in the two hours we were out on the water! We even saw an adorable Mom and baby, and we were so close we could hear the baby chattering!!

Anyone else ever stayed in Folly Beach? What did you think? I highly recommend it!