I have not slept well at all on this trip. But this hasn’t been my usual “just can’t sleep” insomnia. This has been restless limb syndrome (RLS), which is far worse. I consider it a form of sleep deprivation torture. With RLS, I actually feel tired (unlike my normal insomnia). And I actually feel like I can get to sleep. But every time I’m just on the verge of falling asleep, my upper arms and pectoral muscles tense up, and I feel like I have to move them. This is so insanely annoying that once it starts, I don’t even try to get back to sleep, no matter how tired I feel. This has gone on three nights in a row, so’s I ain’t had much sleep thus far on this trip.

The plan for today was to board a tiny ship for a three-hour tour. A three-hour tour. You should have seen the variety of tourists on this boat! There was a millionaire, his wife, a movie star, a professor, and the rest. The weather started getting rough, the tiny ship was tossed! OK, maybe not.

The actual plan for today was to take a tour boat out to Capers Island in the morning, then visit Fort Moultrie after lunch. The ride to the island was enjoyable. I got to watch some dolphins watchin’ me. Or at least watching the boatload of humans. As it turns out, wild dolphins are like butterflies: they don’t have the patience to pose for photographers. So I didn’t get any dolphin pics, but I did get these…

Next: The Boneyard. The bulk of Capers Island is forested. During a storm some years ago, the surging sea inundated a stretch of that forest, uprooting many of the trees, and covering the forest floor with sand. The result: a “new” beach in the old forest. Or to put it another way, a spooky dead forest at the water’s edge. I recommend you listen to The Who’s Quadrophenia while viewing the Boneyard photos below.

On the walk back to the boat, I encountered the bird you will see below. Being a Westerner, I’m familiar with the ring-billed gull, California gull, and other western species, but I had to look this one up. Based on my boid book, I’m fairly certain this is a laughing gull. But he wasn’t laughing when I encountered him, and I didn’t think to tell him a joke (“Hey, didja hear the one about the ostrich and the hummingbird?”). It would be so much easier if there were just one species of gull. In fact…I wish they all could be California gulls.

After returning to port, I et some kind o’ food at some kind o’ place, then proceeded to Fort Moultrie. At this point, my lack of sleep caught up with me. I tried to enjoy the exhibits in the visitor center, but I couldn’t focus on reading them, and my knees felt like they were about to go off duty. At that moment, they were getting ready to start the introductory video they show every half hour, so I decided to have a seat and sleep through the video. But at the end of the video/nap, I still felt like I needed to sleep. Fortunately, the temperature outside was much better than it had been the previous couple days and I had a nice, shady parking spot. So I decided to take a nap in my car before resuming the musem / fort. I’ve taken many a nap in this car over the years, so there’s no reason this shouldn’t work. And yet, I couldn’t get to sleep in the car. Thus I decided to head back to the hotel to hopefully get an afternoon nap on a bed. However, after only a couple of miles, I felt fully awake. I seemed to be fairly close to the Arthur J. Ravenel bridge, so I decided to get some less-distant pics of it than the ones I had gotten from the boat this morning.

Next, it was time for NHL Playoffs. So that’s a wrap for Day 4.