Driving Highways

[xoxoxoBruce]

Cool, I'd never heard of a bay lake.

Not Waccamaw, down in the swampy Coastal Plain. Waccamaw turns out to be among the biggest of the Carolina Bays, a series of half a million lakes and wetlands sprinkled from Delaware to Georgia. They’re called bays not because they open onto the ocean, but because of the sweet, loblolly, and red bay trees that fill them. They have an oval shape, oriented from northwest to southeast. Most are wetlands; some are even dry, but larger ones — like Waccamaw — stay filled. They have unique ecosystems, and people love to theorize about their origins and worry about their futures.