Week 13 Washington DC and environs.

Since we stayed put in Washington this week we don't have a travel map for the week...

This week turned out to be a take it easy kind of week. We got up Saturday morning and decided to just stay at the Cherry Hill campground through next Sunday since it appears that this is also one of the better campgrounds relative to Baltimore. We have tickets to see the Orioles play at home next Sunday and the drive from here is estimated to be only 30 minutes up I-95 (it's ok to use the interstate for day trips). So we went ahead and booked our site here for the next week plus.

Saturday we took our first foray on the metro and went over to the Dupont Circle area where the Textile Museum is located.

The current exhibition is on Japanese textiles. The pieces are all reproductions of historical garments and were produced by a famous weaving studio. The historic pieces were examined and recreated by one of the 'living treasure' artisans. It was quite wonderful, although the splendor was occasionally interrupted by the enthusiastic docent waving her arms through the security system proximity sensor, thus setting of an alarm. There was another display of modern pieces which were inspired by pieces from the museum's own collection. We especially liked a piece of installation art made of red nylon thread strung from ceiling to wall forming a sort of twisted tube. Photos were not allowed, so we don't have an image, but it was a lot more marvelous than it sounds.

It is also the area where many of the embassies are so we wandered past several of them on the way to and from the museum. The embassies and pretty well all the other buildings around the area are quite spectacular. Lots of cool stores, we had a nice lunch at a sidewalk cafe and later stopped in a tavern for a drink before returning back to the campground.

Initial Metro conclusion: easy peasy! We bought a couple of SmartTrip cards which allowed us to travel cheaper without worrying about having the exact change every time we boarded a bus or the metro. Throughout the week, we simply charged it up when it was a bit low and away we went! Again... Easy peasy!

After returning to the campsite on Saturday, we decided that our Fuji camera was on the fritz as the zoom had been malfunctioning for awhile and now had basically stopped working. We went over to the local Best Buy and picked up a new Canon.

Sunday was baseball day at the Washington Nationals park. A bit of a bad start, to the day, as we found out the Metro bus to the Metro station runs only hourly on Sunday and we just missed one. So we had a bit of a wait for the next one with the result that we got to the ball park just as the game started and the Yankees were up 1-0 before we got to our seats. All in all a pretty dull game with a few moments of excitement where 3 of the 5 runs scored were via the long ball (LaRoche for the Nationals; Granderson and Cano for the Yankees). Our "home team mojo" was held in check by "favorite team mojo" as the Yankees won 4-1. Sorry Nationals, but that's the way it goes, you should have been playing some other team at this time!

Our trip record is now: Home team 2, Visiting Team 2.

The park itself is quite nice, but they need to work on their PR. I think Homeland Security designed their 'meet and greet' at the gates. Normally at a ball park, they inspect your bags and purses, scan your ticket and then you go through a turnstile where some pleasant person says 'enjoy the game'. Here they inspect your bags and purses and then you go to the turnstile where you have to scan your own ticket (which NO ONE can do, the problem is you can't tell whether it is scanned or not so everyone is waving their tickets frantically under the scanning device) and all the while, to make sure you are having a good time and really feeling the love, the staff member who could have been doing the scanning efficiently is instead standing about 5 feet back with a bull horn screaming at people to 'hurry up'. Already, I was rooting for the Yankees. Heck, I'd have rooted for the Martians at that point.

The ball game was also our first try of the new camera. The zoom is really cool. We were sitting quite high up and way out past third base. Kris took this picture with the zoom. Given the distance we were away and the fact that the ball was traveling at close to 90 mph, it is amazing how clearly the ball was captured...

On Monday we took the metro down to the National Mall. Found a Starbucks inside Barnes and Noble so sat for a bit while the rain settled down. If you go to Starbucks web site and look for locations in Washington DC, you get over 7000 hits!!!

Anyway, we wandered over to the White House visitors centre. Lots of interesting info stuff there. Saw a jigsaw puzzle of the White House in flames (War of 1812) and was tempted to buy it, but decided not to. The original painting is of relatively recent vintage and is exceedingly unattractive; why on earth they would have this in their gift shop is a mystery. Afterwards we walked over to the Museum of American History. We try not to get museumed out by trying to see too much so took in a couple of major exhibits. The Walk through American history exhibit showcased items and/or events that have played significant roles in shaping America; for example, Kermit the Frog...

... an early MacIntosh computer...

... Mohammed Ali boxing gloves...

... Dorothy's ruby slippers from the Wizard of OZ...

... the Woolworths lunch counter where the 1960 sit-down ultimately led to de-segregation...

...not to mention numerous other items in the exhibit. Very interesting. We remember hearing about the sit-in at the time but we lived too far away, were a bit younger and too removed from the situation to truly appreciate what these young people did.

Perhaps one of the more poignant exhibits is the Thomas Jefferson: Paradox of Liberty exhibit where the question is asked "...how can this man who wrote the Declaration of Independence and stood for freedom and liberty continue to own slaves?" Throughout his life Jefferson owned 600 slaves and at the time of his death, out of 117 slaves still in his possession, in his will he freed only seven, all seven of them being his children. At the time of his death his plantation was in debt over $100K and the remaining 110 slaves went on the auction block to be sold to pay off part of this debt. The main part of the exhibit is a statue of Jefferson with the names of the 600 slaves shown on the wall behind him...

The rest of the exhibits illustrates life, as a slave, on his plantation and attempts to follow the lives of the children he fathered.

Not far along, just off the Mall, on Pennsylvania Ave is the Canadian Embassy...

We went up onto the plaza to view the absolutely fantastic Bill Reid bronze casting of his famous Spirit of Haida Quai aka "The Black Canoe"...

This is something that every Canadian who ventures to Washington DC should/must go and see!

After viewing the sculpture, we ventured into the Canadian Embassy where we were stopped by a "guard" who wanted to know our business. Brian said we wanted to use the restrooms, but the guard said they had no public restrooms... these words were barely out of her mouth before Kris slapped down our Canadian passports and exclaimed "... you should have if we have these!...". The guard looked at our passports and directed us to a one room museum highlighting the War of 1812 (which, by the way, does not mention the burning of the American White House or offer the ugly puzzle for sale). After looking at the displays we wandered down a hallway and found restrooms.... lesson... don't let someone deny you, as a Canadian citizen, the right to pee in a Canadian Embassy restroom, and by our nature, the toilets were indeed dual flush! the separate solitudes, in another sense ;-0

On Tuesday we took the metro south of the city to Alexandria. Not sure what to do or where to go upon departing the metro, we were surprised and happy to see a free trolley from the metro station to the waterfront along historic King Street (about 20 blocks). Very nice! We took the trolley right down to the waterfront, wandered around a bit before settling on the outside patio of the Chart House Restaurant for a terrific lunch. Brian had a Crab Cake and Shrimp platter while Kris had an Avocado, Mango, Crab Stack. After lunch we wandered around the historic district for a couple of hours including the Torpedo Factory (really was a torpedo factory and is now a place where there are working artists and their studio/galleries) before heading back to the campground via the metro.

Wednesday was haircut and the African American Civil War Memorial and Museum to start the day. We sat in on a talk given by Hari Jones, the curator to the Museum. What an electric and passionate speaker. His talk challenged the prevailing general academic wisdom on the roles that Black/African Americans played as soldiers in the Civil War. What a treat, not to mention an eye opener! The statue of the memorial outside the museum lists the names of some 200k+ Black soldiers who served for the Union in the Civil War....

Later, after having our hair cut and coiffed it was back down to the National Mall and the National Museum of Art where we checked out a special exhibit on watercolours and a couple of other exhibits, the gift shops and the cafeteria for a nice late lunch before calling it a day. Kris was gratified to see that one of the watercolours had a very blobby foreground, something akin to her own artistic efforts.

Thursday was our day to visit the Library Of Congress and the Folger Shakespeare Library. Once again using the Metro, we started the day at a Starbucks coffee just down the street from the Library Of Congress. It was sort of cool to see a whack of young folks with their conference badges for the National Young Leaders Conference. As we left Starbucks we saw some poor guy get pulled over by a kzillion cops. It appeared that he happened to be from Wisconsin pulling a small trailer and that it (the small trailer) may have caused some concern. Good thing we didn't try pulling our wee travel trailer that close to the capitol region!!!

We signed up for a tour of the Library of Congress and that turned out to be very interesting. After the tour we went over to the Madison Building and applied for Library of Congress Reader Cards which will allow us access to all the research facilities of the library. WAAAY COOOL!... if and when we want to use them, that is!

After obtaining our official cards we took the elevator up to the sixth floor of the Madison Building for a nice lunch with a decent view around the city.

Friday was the Renwick Gallery (American Crafts Museum) where we saw some phenomenal examples of American crafts, including woodworking and quilting amongst others...

... followed by a return visit to the National Art Gallery where we wandered around some of the galleries displaying the likes of Van Gogh, Vermeer, Leonardo, Rembrandt, etc (just to drop a few names). Wonderful!!!

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Back to Week 12

On to Week 14

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Week 12 Myrtle Beach to Washington DC

Our general travel route for this week...

After the traffic fiasco on Friday, we decided to spend Saturday driving back south to Georgetown to tour another plantation, this time the Hopsewee Plantation about 20 minutes south of Georgetown.

This house was built in the 1730's and is in magnificent condition. In fact the current owners live in the house and allow tours to see most of it including the high attic and cellar where you can see details of the construction. Very cool. The house is the birthplace of signer of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Lynch Jr. The guide for the house tour was very well informed about the house and the history of its former owners. She pointed out that the signatures on the Declaration of Independence are grouped by geographic area, the southern states' signatures are on the left. The signatures were not all done at the same time; the document travelled around to where the signatories were located so spacing was an issue. If you look at the left hand column of signatures, you will see a blank line just below Rutledge's signature. The is the line where Thomas Lynch Sr. would have signed, had he been able. Thomas Sr. was involved in the drafting of the document, as were all the members of the Second Continental Congress. Thomas Jefferson penned the document, but contrary to popular myth, he was not the sole author of its content. While in Philadelphia, Thomas Lynch Sr. suffered a stroke and his son asked to be freed from his regiment to go north to assist his father. As officers were in short supply, his request was denied. His response to this was to go to the South Carolina government and plead his case. As many of the government leaders were his own family and friends, not only did they release him from his military committment, but elected him an official representative of the Second Continental Congress. So Thomas Jr signed as a representative, not as a stand in for his father. The blank line is where Thomas Sr. would have signed had he been capable of writing. They left the space for him to sign in later, but he never was able to.

Another interesting tidbit the tour guide talked about was the Spanish Moss hanging from the trees around the plantation...

She asked if we had been to Georgetown (yes) and did we notice the Spanish Moss there? (no)... well that's because there isn't any. The Spanish Moss is a good indicator of the health of the environment (ie sort of like budgies in an underground mine) and since they put in the large, well actually huge, steel and paper mills, all the Spanish Moss disappeared. Hmmm... just what are the folks there breathing?

After the tour we drove back north to Georgetown to wander around downtown and along the harbour walk before having a very nice lunch on the deck of the Old Fish House aka "Big Tuna Raw Bar".

On the way back into Myrtle Beach the traffic got held up for quite a while. We managed to inch ahead far enough to take a side road back to the Piggly Wiggly for some groceries then head back to the KOA. We found out later that a motorcyclist had been hit. Frankly, not a surprise, there are moped rental outfits all over the place here and there are hundreds, if not more, people on them constantly whipping in and out of traffic.

Sunday we left Myrtle Beach. We had previously bought tickets to see the Washington Nationals host the New York Yankees next Sunday so we had one week to make it up the coast to Washington. Based on our travel style of only 3 or so hours driving we could easily make it with a couple of days to spare. We had planned to stop Sunday about an hour north of Wilmington North Carolina, but when we drove into town (we also always try to take business routes through towns rather than the bypass routes) the old historic district looked real cool so we decided to stop at the KOA on the north side of Wilmington. After getting set up we headed back into town. We stopped at the Bellamy Mansion where we did a self guided audio tour of the house and grounds. Exceptional!

One of the neatest features of the Bellamy Mansion were that all the windows in the main floor parlours came all the way down to the floor and were designed to slide up to make a doorway so that people could pass directly between the parlour and the porch...

After that we drove around the historic area for awhile before deciding on a place to have a late lunch. Many choices, but we settled on the Dock Street Oyster Bar where we had some delicious, but way too hot crab and spinach dip, followed by fish and shrimp tacos... yummm! Late lunch but it pretty well did us for the day.

It started to rain again so we decided to just spend the one night in Wilmington. Leaving Monday morning, we took a detour out closer to the coast where we stopped in Surf City for an early lunch this time. We chose Buddy's Crab House and Oyster Bar right on the beach. We had some excellent shrimp wraps, an ok pulled pork sandwich (on the beach it is best to order seafood) and tried some "sweet corn nuggets" which are little balls of cream corn rolled up and deep fried...EVIL!

After that it was a drive in the pouring rain north to New Bern where there was no sign of rain. Another very fine old historic area to drive and wander around in. New Bern is the home of Pepsi Cola. The pharmacy where it was invented is now a large souvenir store selling all things Pepsi. Mostly this was a laundry day with a nice grilled steak for dinner at the KOA.

We decided to keep moving so Tuesday drove north to a campground just outside of Elizabeth City NC. The idea was to maybe stay here a couple of days and take a driving tour out to the outer banks. The campground (North River Campground) we picked was "Top Rated" by Trailer Life but turned out to be a bit disappointing. Although we can't really fault them for all the mosquitoes and horse flies we were not impressed with their attitude towards the bears that were around. We asked to be placed near the restroom as we have no facilities in our trailer; we were placed way too far away such that a night time visit to the restroom turned out to be a drive (too far to walk with the high probability of bears around). The next morning we saw that the trash container had been, well, trashed by bears with the result being a great swath of ripped open garbage being spread around. These people are just asking for trouble. It's just a matter of time before someone gets hurt and/or a bear has to be put down. One reason we chose this campground was because of the high ratings it received from Trailer Life; the rating for the restrooms being a 10*. Well, sometimes the raters get it right and sometimes they get it wrong. How can a restroom with only one toilet and one sink with no counter space for the sink and no bench or shelves of any kind, in the two shower stalls, be given the highest possible rating? No place, except for the floor, to put a toiletry bag or even a bar of soap while in the shower. We left after one night deciding to get to the Washington DC area a day early. The outer banks will still be there for the next time we are in the area. You can't see everything in one visit!

Wednesday we drove into Virginia and took a bit of a tour around the city of Virginia Beach before continuing on for the day. We crossed over and under the great Chesapeake Bay (combination of bridges and tunnels). Sort of cool. We stopped at the Information Rest Area on the north side of the crossing where one of the folks there suggested a water front restaurant in Wachapreague so we continued on and stopped there for lunch. Sweet little town with a nice waterfront. The meal was ok but we tried the house special, soft shell crab, which, if this is the best they are, then we will likely pass on them in the future. The breading was lousy, the meat mushy and the skin very tough; the waitress said you just eat the whole thing, but we found it unchewable for the most part.

We continued on to the Castaway RV Resort just south of Ocean City on the Maryland shore. Another 10* restroom rating but this time much more accurate; numerous toilets, showers, sinks with lots of bench and counter space etc. Much better. This is a holiday destination place and is in a beautiful setting. A bit pricey; we chose a spot closer to the water (just under $100 per night). Nice albeit a tad on the windy size, although it was a warm wind. A feature not found in too many campgrounds, they have a Tiki Bar on the beach where it was very pleasant to sit and have a couple of glasses of wine and chat with other vacationers.

We ended up staying a second night to give us a chance to check out Ocean City and nearby historic town Berlin. Ocean City is much like Destin Florida, a long stretch of beautiful white sand lined with apartment buildings. They have built a 32 block long boardwalk which was sort of cool to wander along although not much to see other than white sand, the ocean and one apartment building after another...

They have a shuttle trolley that drives up and down the boardwalk but they charge $3 one way. Give us a break! No wonder the trolley was empty! Silly, it costs the same to run the thing empty as it does full. Charge people a quarter and the thing would likely be full! Obviously we opted to walk for awhile before going off to find some lunch. There is a plethora of "crab shack" like places along the main drag. We opted for On The Bay Seafood where we had the excellent crab cakes and scallops along with very good sides of potato salad, coleslaw and corn on the cob. Nice.

After lunch we drove over the bridge inland to Berlin and wandered the streets of the small town. We came across a model train store where we went in and chatted with the owner and bought a few cars for a possible future layout for ourselves. The owner invited us to walk down the street to his house where he has a fabulous garden model railroad in his backyard. Very cool...

We returned to the campsite for another visit to the Tiki Bar before settling into a nice grilled pork chop dinner at our own campsite.

To end the week we completed our march to Washington in preparation for Sunday's ball game between the Nationals and Yankees. We set up camp for a few days in the suburb of College Park. The Cherry Creek Campground is a short bus ride to the greater Washington metro and the line that comes out this way is the same one the ball park is on. How sweet is that?

We arrived early enough Friday so decided to take the late day Washington After Dark tour. This is a good tour as it provides good reference for when we will be walking around the capitol area. Some of the main highlights included stops at the White House, Jefferson Memorial, Lincoln Memorial, Martin Luther King Memorial, Vietnam Memorial and the Iwo Jima Memorial along with lots of excellent narratives provided by the bus driver. Humor was injected into the tour came while we were reboarding the bus at the Iwo Jima Memorial when a woman speaking quite loudly on her cell phone, exclaimed excitedly to her caller, that she was currently at the Hiroshima Memorial. Reminded us of the Rick Mercer show segment "Talking with Americans" (anybody for a climb up Peter Mansbridge?)...

Our best pic of the tour...

and Michelle Obama's garden (and apparently she does do some of the gardening)...

 

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Back to Week 11

On to Week 13

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Week 11 Brunswick to Myrtle Beach South Carolina

Our general travel route for this week...

Saturday morning we packed up and headed north. Our destination for the day was Savannah Georgia. Just north of Brunswick we stopped in at the Hofwyl-Broadfield Plantation, a Georgia state historic site. This place was quite neat. The plantation was in the family for many years and, at one time they had over 350 slave workers. After the American Civil War they fell onto hard times. The plantation went into debt until one of the heirs married into a wealthy family and converted the plantation into a dairy which was quite successful and ultimately got the family property out of debt. The last remaining heir to the property was Ophelia Dent. She bequeathed the entire property to the state of Georgia to showcase the historical period. What was really cool, for us and others viewing the place, was that the house, although not a mansion by any means, was on display exactly as it was the way Ophelia kept it until the day she passed away, an excellent display of heirloom furniture etc. (this was one of the only house tours where pictures were permitted inside). The front parlor was where Margaret Mitchell of Gone with the Wind fame enjoyed tea with the family. What is unique about this house is that it contains its own original furnishings. Almost all the other houses we have toured have furnishings suitable for the time of the house, but they do not have the original furnishings. During and after the civil war, many of the plantation houses were either burned or used to house union soldiers. Families fell on hard times and sold their furnishings, so it is not common to see such an intact household...

Continuing north on highway 17, we ended the day at the KOA in Richmond Hills, just outside Savannah, Georgia. Since we arrived fairly early, we decided to grab a bite to eat, have a bit of pooling then go into Savannah for one of the ghost tours. When we approached the southern side of Savannah we had seen a sign for a Smokin' Pig BBQ joint that seemed to be not too far from the KOA, so we headed out to find it. We looked and looked but couldn't find it so decided to just go back and have a swim, however on the way back to the KOA we spotted a large "BBQ" sign so whipped in there. It turned out to be Audry's Bar (read "AUDRY'S BIKER BAR") but it did serve up a decent salad and burger, although the fries really sucked. As for the bikers who were there at the time, well they were quiet and kept to themselves. One rather large young man adorned with numerous tattoos was wearing a black leather jacket with a large "Probationary Outlaw" patch on his back. We sort of hoped that this day wasn't the day for him to prove himself!!!

Anyway, we had time for a nice dip in the pool before driving into Savannah for the Ghosts and Gravestones Frightseeing Tour. The tour was quite fun and we saw and heard about numerous interesting places, people and goings on which we would likely have missed had it not been for taking the tour. The only negative is that we think the tour would've been much better if we had taken one late at night, but we had a 25 mile drive back to the KOA so had decided to take an earlier tour when it was still light out. Oh well, still pretty cool.

Since the trolley company had a package deal we decided to go back into Savannah on Sunday and take the city tour which has unlimited on and off privileges. The tour company had a shuttle that picked us up at the KOA at 9:00 and dropped us back there at 4:30 which made things considerably easier. It turned out we were the only ones on the shuttle that day so it was like a private chauffeur service taking into town and back out again. Once again the tour was quite good with the drivers all giving excellent constant narratives while they managed the trolley's through some very narrow streets. Being Sunday, unfortunately many attractions were closed, for example, the gift store for the "book" (Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil). We thought about touring the Mercer Williams house but for $25 we decided the rather large crowd, small house (you only get to see part of the main floor) and short tour (limited to 30 minutes) wasn't in the cards for us, AND, they do not mention the shooting in the house which is the central part of the story of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. Miss Chantilly, who played herself in the movie owns a club in the historic center of town where she still performs and I am sure she is as outrageous in person as she was in the movie. Apparently, tourism increased by more than 40% after the publication of the book; the first publisher rejected the manuscript as being "too much of local interest only".

We got off the trolley at the Pirate House restaurant which the previous night's tour hostess had raved about. It appeared to have an interesting history including inspiration for Stevenson's Treasure Island. The trolley driver informed us "this is the place to get some South in your mouth". We went in and got seated in a small room with only 3 tables. Midway through our meal a family came in and a young man immediately pulled out his cell phone and started a lengthy and loud conversation which didn't seem to bother his other family members nor the restaurant staff but did put a damper on the already rather mediocre experience for us. The food was not even decent bar type food. When we got back on the trolley afterwards, the driver asked how we liked it and our response was "it was remarkably unremarkable at best"... we were followed onto the trolley by a couple who exclaimed that this was the best stop of the whole tour route! Each to his own! We finished the day with our own grilled steak back at the KOA and sat out under a full moon enjoying a glass of wine, or two...

Monday we continued our trip north up highway 17 to Charleston, South Carolina. It was a short few hours drive and we arrived at the lovely Oak Plantation Campground early afternoon so spent the rest of the afternoon driving into Charleston and wandering along the ever popular King Street. On the way into town, always looking for indications of "git yer bbq here" joints we spotted a large sign advertising Bessinger's Bar-B-Que so wheeled in to give it a try.

Well... the honey mustard sauce, they are apparently famous for, was quite good; the coleslaw and potato salad were good; the peanut butter pie was good: the collard greens were very bitter; the ribs were more than a bit on the tough side and the pulled pork was not pulled, but finely chopped making it look more like bits of cat food than anything... not very appetizing. All in all, another mediocre experience.

Tuesday morning we were signed up for a tour out to Fort Sumter so drove into Charleston early enough to grab a coffee before the tour. We parked in a parkade near the wharf. While waiting for the elevator to the ground floor we struck up a conversation with a woman who was on her way to work. We asked her where we might be able to find some good South Carolina BBQ and she immediately perked up and said "...out on highway 17 there is a place called Bessinger's... it's the best for South Carolina BBQ...". She went on to talk about another place but said it was part of the Bessinger family so was the same. We smiled, nodded our heads and thanked her very much for the info. HMMMM...we expect we'll find much better Carolina bbq when we are further inland in a few weeks.

Anyway, the Fort Sumter tour was interesting. You have to sign up for a tour which takes 35 minutes to get to the island, have one hour at the fort then a 35 minute return trip to the wharf. To be honest, an hour at the fort is more than adequate. Although it has been somewhat restored, it is a mere shell of what it must have been (based on pictures and text about the fort) before the Civil War. A massive concrete blockhouse named "Battery Huger" built late in the 1800's overshadows most of the original interior. There are a few interesting features such as some Union shells embedded in the walls...

and the different cannons deployed in the era, in particular the rifled cannon barrels made to fire the spiral type shells which were more accurate and longer range. On the boat ride over to the fort, the ranger had to make a speech outlining the dangers on the island and some of the rules; for example, and we quote "... this might sound really stupid to have to say it, BUT...do not stuff your child into a cannon!". Hadn't occurred to us that anyone would want to stuff their own children into a cannon...

Returning to Charleston we utilized the free downtown trolley system to take us near the College and major shopping districts such as King Street. We were both hankering for a bit of pizza so stopped at the Mellow Mushroom pizza place on King before continuing on over to the Museum of the Confederacy at Meeting and Market streets. This museum is basically a room stuffed with Confederate related, well, stuff! And the Daughters of Confederacy who run the place are very serious about their stuff. At one point after viewing "a sliver from a tree under which Lee sat", we half expected to see a sample of "... here is a General Lee booger...". This museum somewhat helps to explain the complex feelings of the south as illustrated in the Tony Horwitz book "Confederates in the Attic" where it is suggested that the south will arise again one day. If at first you don't secede, try try again. It seems to be a bit like Quebec in Canada. History will tell.

Later that day we ventured over to the Southside Bar and Grill a short drive from the campground. A decent sized crowd, lots of sports on numerous TVs. The owner, Doug, dropped by our table to see how we were doing and we had a good chat with him. Nice place.

Wednesday we awoke to a very rainy day. We took our time getting ready to go out as the rain was slowly abating. We started the day with a drive over to Johns Island for a Starbucks at the Piggly Wiggly (yes, the Piggly Wiggly, a fairly upscale grocery chain in these parts). We are Big on the Pig, as their posters proclaim. Then it was off to find the Magnolia Plantation and Gardens. We did a tour of the old slave quarters as well as the main house... can you guess which this one would have been...

Magnolia Gardens are interesting in that they have been open to the public for tours since the 1870's. The last plantation family owner had tuberculosis and was recommended to work outside in the fresh air for his health. With some of the former slaves who stayed on after the war as free men and also worked in the gardens they created a real masterpiece. They are fully recognized as the master gardeners and some of their descendants still work at the gardens...

All in all, it was very interesting. Unfortunately it started raining fairly hard again (hence no pic of the main house) so we opted out of wandering around the gardens and the swamp, deciding instead to head into Charleston and tour another old historic antebellum house, the Aiken-Rhett House. This house is now owned by the Historic Charleston Foundation and they have chosen to take a conservation approach rather than a restoration approach for this house, meaning that it remains in a somewhat disheveled state, however this gives you a great perspective as to the construction and keep of the house and associated out buildings. After we went down to the foundation's gift store where Kris picked up a very cool silver rice spoon. Then we went up the street to the Hyman's Seafood Restaurant where we had a very nice seafood dinner. While there the owner came by and we chatted for awhile. That's twice in two nights, very good customer relations. Later we headed back to the campground and over to the Southside 17 bar and, yes, Doug the owner came by and chatted again for awhile. This night they also had a very good band playing.

Anyway, the Aiken=Rhett house was so interesting we decided to stay another day in Charleston so that we could visit the Nathaniel Russell House, another historic house owned by this same foundation. This federal era house has been restored and is being preserved in a state as it would have been back in the early 1800s. Another fabulous tour.

Afterwards we wandered around some of the old streets of Charleston. One of the neatest architectural styles we found in Charleston is that of the Charleston Single House. Notice the porches are on the side of the house...

Later we headed back to the campground, the bar and, yes, a chat with Doug the owner. Doug explained the reason for the porch on the side. He said it was because the houses were taxed based on the size of the front (or street) facing side. So they built the houses so they were small on the street side and much longer back into the property with the porch on the side. They are very cool.

Friday we headed north farther up the South Carolina coast. Since it was the beginning of the weekend we decided to make a reservation for Friday and Saturday night at the KOA in Myrtle Beach (the KOA website suggested that reservations are always a good idea at Myrtle Beach)... We stopped for a brief rest stop in Georgetown, about an hours south of Myrtle Beach. What a delightful place Georgetown is. The historic downtown and waterfront was a very pleasant place to wander. Many of the old houses have placards on the front porch indicating the year in which they were built. The oldest we saw was in the late 1700s. We stopped and chatted with a woman sweeping her porch. She explained the efforts they have to make to keep their historic house looking good and some of the bylaws requiring older houses to be maintained. She and her husband were planning to raise their house about 4-6 feet within the next few years. Later we saw a plaque indicating the height of water in the "flood of the century" when most of the waterfront downtown would have been under about 6 to 8 feet of water so we had an idea of what that couple was thinking.

Carrying on to Myrtle Beach, we arrived mid afternoon to some of the worst traffic we have seen on this trip. After setting up the wee trailer at the KOA, we decided to go and find a nice place by the beach where we could have some munchies and a glass of wine. Leaving the KOA we headed north on the main drag, The King's Hwy, where the traffic was so heavy, it took over an hour to go about 13 blocks. We finally bailed on that and tried to backtrack along the Coastal Blvd closer to the beach. Same thing. The traffic is so bad, they actually have bylaws here banning "cruising". We eventually came upon the 2nd Ave Pier which has a restaurant and bar overlooking the beach. We decided to give it a try... outcome: ok wine, less than mediocre food, but a great view...

Initial impressions of Myrtle Beach... an example of development run rampant with few if any controls. Seems a bit like the strip in Las Vegas except with a much younger crowd. Likely the locals stay far away from the beach front area. According to the Wikipedia entry for Myrtle Beach, they some 14.6 million visitors each summer...OMG!

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Back to Week 10

On to Week 12

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Week 10 Kissimmee to Brunswick Georgia

Our general travel route for this week...

After a couple of days in Kissimmee it was time to move on to our next stop for the Memorial day weekend. Again, as the north Atlantic coastal area of Florida was apparently "booked solid" for the holiday weekend, we had booked the KOA at Starke, Florida for 3 nights to take us through the rest of the weekend. Keeping to the plan of staying off the interstates whenever possible, we travelled north through the Ocala National Forest on highway 19 then northeast to Starke. This was another very pretty drive and considering it was Saturday morning of the long weekend, there was really no traffic to speak of. Along the way we spotted a small roadside restaurant (well, more like a shack) with a sign advertising "real pit BBQ".

By the time we saw their sign we didn't have time to slow down and make the turn in so we had to drive about 5 miles past before we found a place to turn around with the wee trailer. Hmmm, would it be worth it... well it was, Kris had a large salad and Brian had a huge plate of ribs (it was actually only a half order but still huge).


As it turned out, being inland was not a bad thing all in all. As the weekend approached so did Tropical Storm Beryl as it came in off the Atlantic for a direct hit along the north Florida and South Carolina coasts. If we had of been able to reserve a spot at St Augustine, where we planned to visit, we would have been right in the middle of it. The storm disrupted many coastal area Memorial Day weekend plans with many event cancellations. For us, inland about 100 kms, the effect wasn't felt until Sunday evening when the storm clouds started to roll over...

The rain began later Sunday but wasn't too bad (we have had a lot heavier rains at home) then cleared Monday morning when it was just overcast for most of the morning and all afternoon. Late Monday evening the rain started again and it was continuous heavy throughout the night and into Tuesday morning. We were far enough away from the restrooms that during the night Monday we drove to the restrooms when required. Tuesday morning it was just swimsuit time while packing up as everything else would get just soaked.

So what to do when the weather starts to get a bit inclement? Sunday morning while Beryl was still a ways offshore, we drove into Jacksonville, did some window shopping at a large mall, bought a couple of more swimsuits at a Dillards outlet store and stopped at a BBQ place for lunch. The BBQ place was recommended in our BBQ Bible but it really wasn't much better than any of the chain BBQ places we have seen. For example the brisket was a bit dry, the sausage seemed to more steamed than smoked and the ribs and smoked chicken were basically ok. Not as good as the little roadside place we stopped at on Saturday.

When we got back to the KOA in Starke it was still only mid afternoon and there was still no real sign of the approaching storm so we figured we'd get in a bit of pooling. The KOA folks figured differently... approaching storm... no pool. Turned out the rain didn't hit for at least 4-5 hours after that.

Monday morning we decided to drive down to Gainesville where we drove around looking at some of the old southern antebellum houses. Very nice. Seeing as it was a holiday Monday most of downtown was closed but Harry's Seafood Grill and Bar was open so we dropped in there for lunch. Kris had a couple of most excellent fish tacos and Brian had what is now considered the best hamburger of the trip. We also tried some Creamy Sweet Corn with Grits which were very tasty.

Arriving back at the KOA mid afternoon with large patches of blue sky overhead we thought, once again, that we might get some pooling in. Not so fast there bucko... the KOA folks decided not to bother with any pool maintenance and had the pool locked up tight. Another 4-5 hours of reasonably good pooling time down the drain! It's one thing to be cautious but we thought they were just being lazy!

Anyway, Tuesday it was time to move on. Somewhere. Looking at the weather channel, it was obvious that we were in for more rain didn't matter which direction we headed. We even looked towards Atlanta but wouldn't make the Braves current homestand and they were on the road for a week and a half after that, so no sense heading that way and we didn't really want to head west yet at this time. So we decided to head directly east and go to St Augustine afterall. St Augustine is the oldest European settlement in America (1595), so has some cool history to it. Since it was a relatively short drive we thought we'd get out there late morning, have a drive around and decide whether or not to stay or to just head north if it was a case of rain here or rain there. It had started to rain quite hard during the night and was still raining in the morning. We ended up donning swimsuits as we packed up everything and got the trailer hooked up to the car. Well, after an hour of driving in the rain, the skies cleared and we arrived in St Augustine to partly sunny skies and it seemed like a good place to stay so we found the North Beach Camp Resort and set up for a couple of days... turned out to be an excellent place with huge private camp spots...

...and their pool was open!

Tuesday afternoon we drove into the historic district, had a nice lunch on the outside balcony of an old hotel then wandered along St George Street, a pedestrian only walkway with some cool old buildings along with the usual tacky tourist shops. We both bought a pair of new sandals. After working up a good sweat in the muggy hot weather we headed back to the campground for a dip in the pool and it was very nice. Later we walked across the highway to the Atlantic beach side, chatted with a couple of fellows surf casting (they caught a couple of small salt water catfish while we were there), then walked over to the Reef Restaurant and Bar for a couple of glasses of wine, calamari and crab cakes. Not to mention the cool view over the beach and ocean...

While sitting there we spotted a couple of dolphins swimming by. Cool. We chatted with the waiter and asked how blustery the weather was from the storm. He said it wasn't as bad as expected as the center of the storm hit a bit north and most of the rain and wind came more from the inland side than the ocean side. Talking with folks at the campground later we found that most of the campground emptied out Sunday morning before Beryl hit land. The campground had high winds and lots of rain but no real damage to speak of. Just some branches down.

Wednesday we went back to the historic district. We signed up for a walking tour for later that evening. Back when we were in Vicksburg we bought an annual National Parks pass and were pleased to hear, when we decided to tour the Castillo de San Marco, that it was part of the park system. Very interesting...

This fort is the oldest masonry fort standing in the continental US. The fort withheld seiges and withstood every military attack against it for over two hundred years, primarily when this area was under Spanish control.

By the time we finished walking the fort, it had become hot and muggy out so we decided to try a relatively fancy looking Spanish restaurant for lunch. The lunch was ok, but we found it hard to believe that the only dressing they would provide for a salad was a strong garlic dressing (the waiter grudgingly said they would provide some oil and vinegar).

After going back to the campground, for a late afternoon swim, we returned to the historical district for the History, Mystery, Mayhem & Murder Walking Tour. The walking tour was quite good especially since Alan, the guide, was a very good story teller as well as pointing out things the average passersby would miss. It was fun. After the tour we decided to stay in the historical district for late night munchies. Well, hardly late night, it was all of 9:30. We went into several taverns and all were basically empty with very loud music so ended up going back to the place we had lunch at the day before. Even they were on a limited "late night menu" so we settled on an order of crab cakes and a quesadilla which ended up being quite good so all's well that ends well.

Thursday we packed up and headed north to Georgia. From St Augustine it was a bit difficult staying off the freeway, but we followed highway 1 (the one we saw at mile marker 0 in Key West) into the center of downtown Jacksonville where it was a case of lots of zig and zag...turn here, go one block, turn left, go two blocks, turn right, go one block etc etc. Even so it was quite interesting and we got to see the inner bowels of Jacksonville. Not a bad looking place all in all.

Eventually we got through the city and hit the countryside heading north west toward the Georgia border. Just over the border we hit Folkston, a small community on the eastern edge of the Okefenokee Swamp. As has happened on previous occasions, we spotted a small building with a BBQ sign out front. As on those previous occasions we had to keep going to find a turn around, and once again it was all worth it. The Smoking Butt BBQ place (couldn't find any reference to it on Dr Google) is a little trailer with a good size smoker out back. The woman running the place explained how someone had come in a bit earlier and cleaned her out of the racks of ribs (she can only do 3 at a time and the next ones wouldn't be ready for about an hour) and her squash casserole so we couldn't try either of those. Kris settled on a smoked chicken dinner with beans and smoked cabbage.and Brian had a chopped pork dinner with potato salad and devilled eggs for all of $16 total, this was one of the best bbq lunches we have had in a long time. These little hole in the wall road stops are often the best...

After lunch we continued on to Brunswick, our stop for the night and week. After setting up at the very nice Coastal Georgia RV Resort we drove into Brunswick and toured around the old historic part looking at the gorgeous old houses. Some were a tad rundown but these must have been pretty cool in their day. After driving around a bit, we stopped in at the local Winn-Dixie grocery store for some dinner items. Walking around the store we discovered that we have indeed entered "grits" country as they had the better part of an entire aisle devoted to the stuff, in particular the instant varieties...

We opted for some pre-cooked peel and eat shrimp along with some good salad fixin's.

After dinner we wandered down to the lake at the edge of the RV park. We chatted with some local lads who were fishing. They didn't have much luck on this day, other than retrieving a couple of lures they spotted from the edge. On the dock, we found some fish/turtle chow (could have been bran buds for all we knew) so thew a few pieces in. Within a few minutes we had a crowd of a dozen or so Diamondback Terrapin turtles and numerous fish looking for the handouts.

Friday we toured the Georgia Golden Isles. We had a nice lunch of crab cakes in The Village on St Simons Island. The Village is a trendy little tourist shopping area about 2 blocks long ending on a cool pier where we watched several dozen people fishing and trying to net mullet with not a lot of success on this day.

After lunch we continued driving around St Simons Island and came to the old Fort Frederica. Near the entrance of the visitor center there is a large live oak with a whack of Spanish Moss hanging from it (a common scene in these parts)...

We no sooner started walking the 1/4 mile from the entrance to the remnants of the old fort that the thunder and lightening started. We opted to stay dry and headed back to the car. At least we got to watch the video telling the history of the fort. Instead of walking the fort we decided to drive out to Sea Island where we found it to be an exclusive private resort island with no riff-raff allowed... so we turned around... and then the rains began. It was a torrential downpour for the entire 15 minutes it took us to drive off of Sea Island and St Simons Island back to the mainland. The rain started to let up so we decided to tour Jekyll Island, formerly known as Millionaires Island and now a state park with a $5.00 fee just to get onto the island. We decided to pay the price and drove the loop around the island. On the east side we stopped at a very nice park area with access to the beach. This is where we finally dipped our toes in the Atlantic. The water was very warm indeed. We didn't have towels etc with us otherwise we would have done some ocean dipping even under the black looking clouds still approaching...

...probably just as well, within a half hour the torrential downpour started again as we were leaving the island. All in all, the islands exude what can only be described as this place being where a good portion of the "one percent" can afford to live.

Brunswick is also the home to large coastal marshlands which we found to be particularly beautiful...

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Back to Week 9

On to Week 11

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