10th May – 16th May 2023
Before we go any further I would just like to say that I think South Carolina has the coolest state flag by a country mile.
It is not very far (just over 100 miles) from Savannah to Charleston, another place on our ‘Definitely-Must- Go-There’ list, but we still had a two night stop along the way. The main reason for this was to line up our city bookings with the weekends so that Greg & Gigi had a couple of options for visiting us. Our stop was in a lovely wooded camp in a place called Yemassee, known nowadays mainly for its proximity to the I-95 highway and its role as a service centre. Back in the day it had something to do with a war with the local native tribe, the Yemassee, and then something to do with the Revolutionary and Civil Wars, and a train depot here was the last stop for new recruits heading to Parris Island, the nearby Marine Corps training base for most of the 19th and 20th centuries
This was a fab park with an on-site bar and pizza oven, a nice pool and a walking trail around a nearby lake that contained alligators. (The blighters are everywhere.) Here we met Jason, a brave soul who was four days into a 4000 mile solo cycle trip from North Carolina to Oregan via Florida. We bought him a medicinal beer or two and vowed to keep in touch as his route may coincide with ours down the line.
Our journey up into southern South Carolina took us within ten miles or so of a place that has been in my sphere of consciousness for the past two years. I manage my insomnia by listening to podcasts and one that had completely gripped me since 2021 is called ‘The Murdaugh Murders Podcast’. This has investigated and reported the case of the fraudulent 4th generation South Carolinan lawyer, Alex Murdaugh who stole millions of dollars from his clients and hundreds of thousands from his own law firm, manipulated justice using his family influence, is associated either directly or indirectly with the deaths of three people then murdered his son and wife to deflect attention away from his crimes before faking an apparent murder attempt on his own life to deflect attention from his potential involvements in his family’s deaths. It was bizarre to be driving through the area where this case played out and it felt weird to be seeing such familiar place names on sign posts.
On our way to Charleston we finally found a car wash which was tall enough to fit us in. Big Dave and Tin Can were still covered in a layer of dust courtesy of a couple of hurricaines that went over Orlando whilst they were in storage and the dust had since been joined by a layer of dead Floridian flies. It was a snug fit in the bay but we managed to reach most of the dirt. As we were washing another truck camper pulled up in the next door bay. He had seen us as he went past so knew he would fit too. These rigs are rare in this part of the country, so it was worth a photo.
Our camp in Charleston was not IN Charleston, and indeed this was a much harder city to camp anywhere near. The best we could do was a place 18 miles from the city centre, with no real public transport options. We were resigned to relying on Ubers to get backwards and forwards. The camp itself was quite nice with a scenic fishing lake and a small pool. There was enough to do in Charleston to warrant having two days in the city and Nick came up with a plan to reduce the money and time spent in Ubers…Spend it on a night in a cheap-ish hotel in town instead! A ‘night on dry land’ is always a treat and given how hot it was, it would be great to have a base so we could freshen up and change for the evening after a day sightseeing. A fine establishment was booked: a double, ensuite room in a hostel. Called the Not So Hostel, we were optomistic that this meant that it was of a better calibre than the usual youth hostel offering. We were left with a day to kill in camp and whilst floating around in the pool we met one our fellow campers, Erica. A Washington state native, Erica has been on the road full-time for four years, living in modest sized trailer that she towed behind an aging Toyota truck. She had spent the past month here and had decided to buy herself a brand new truck which she had just collected that day. Exciting times! When she found out that we were going to get an Uber to the city the next day she very kindly offered to give us a lift, a gesture mostly rooted in her spontaneous generosity of spirit, but I think also a little bit motivated by wanting to share the joy of her new purchase. I can totally understand that and I’m glad that we could be there to help.
In the morning our shiny Toyota Tundra Taxi scooped us up and wafted us into the city. It was a very impressive toy and made Big Dave look quite shabby and outdated. (Shhhh, he didn’t hear that.). She dropped us at the Not So Hostel and headed off to the indoor market. The hostel was a detatched, weatherboard-clad town house and definitely had a ‘student digs’ flavour. We had the electronic door code to get into the communal area, which was a small lounge/kitchen, and we let ourselves in to leave our overnight bag here for the day. The place was deserted save for a robo-mop diligently cleaning the floor. Our room had an external entrance for which the door code wouldn’t work until check in at 2pm, but there was an internal door that opened onto the communal area and it was wide open. It looked more than satisfactory for the sub-$100 price tag, even having its own small kitchenette area. The only slightly worrying feature – packets of free ear plugs on the bedside tables. Never a good sign! Bag abandoned in our wardrobe we headed off towards the centre of the city. Like Savannah, Charleston has a free shuttle bus system that offers transport around several different loops of the historic distric. The hostel was on one of these routes but we set off on foot for our first explore.
The focus of today’s tourist activities was going to start with a nautical theme. Across the river lies the USS Yorktown, a decommissioned aircraft carrier that is now a museum. The 873 ft CV-10 carrier was commisissioned in 1943 and it was named in honour of its namesake Yorktown CV-5 that was sunk at the battle of Midway in 1942. She saw significant action in the Pacific during WW2 and in the Vietnam war and in 1968 was the retrieval ship for the Apollo 8 Capsule and astronauts. Decommissioned in 1970 she was sited here in 1975 and now you can go aboard and explore lots of her nooks and crannies in self guided tours. There was a watertaxi service to get across the river to the Yorktown site and after a quick lunch (because who can do history on an empty stomach?) we went aboard. It was very impressive.
There were several plane and helicopter exhibits up on the flight deck and it wasn’t hard to imagine the carrier in full working mode with jets screaming off along the deck and hurling themselves off into the air. The hanger deck below was also enormous. It too contained many aircraft exhibits, a movie theatre and the obligatory snack bar and there was still tons of empty space. We took a less travelled self-tour to accomodation, galley and medical areas and although there were plenty of other people around on the ship, it was deserted. We even found the rabbit warren self-tour of the engine room, containing 4 steam turbines. We had it to ourselves which was odd and it felt like we were somewhere we shouldn’t be.
Once we were saturated with nautical history we took the watertaxi back across the river to the downtown area and started a slow stroll back up towards our hostel. Charleston seemed to have a lot of positive attributes as a city. It is small enough to be accessible but large enough to have an energy, amenities and inward investment. It felt like a youthful city and as the local university, the College of Charleston, has a 1:2 ratio of men to women, it had quite a feminine vibe. Although it lacked the massive quantity of mature trees groaning under the weight of tons of Spanish Moss of Savannah it had endless examples of well preserved and restored historic homes, sympathetically designed modern buildings, well maintained waterfront parks and many lovely nearby beaches. The people really do have a Southern charm and are friendly, welcoming and polite and no-one seems to be in any great rush to be anywhere else. There were many independant shops and businesses, a liberal dusting of designer stores, horse drawn carriage tours, and, the main reason that this has become a tourist favourite, lots and lots and lots of good places to eat and drink really well.
Despite the plethora of quality drinking establishments I am slightly embarrassed to admit, however, that our first alcoholic drink in this town was a ‘Booze Pop’, partaken at a bus stop. In our defence it was roasting hot, we were very thirsty and there was nothing else immediately available. We decided that we had walked enough and stopped at one of the bus stops to get the free shuttle the last mile ‘home’. There was a van parked nearby that looked like it would sell us a can of cold coke or similar. Nick was dispatched to procure said refreshing fluids and returned with the very adult version of ice pops. 200mls of 7% ABV, they were a frozen party in a tube. Just what our mildly dehydrated and overheated bodies needed at 4 0’clock in the afternoon! They disappeared fast and happily the bus arrived soon after to whisk us uptown, now reasonably merry.
At the hostel it was still deserted. If anyone else was here, they were hiding quietly in their room not hanging out noisily in the common area. We were hoping it was going to stay that way, and to be fair, it did. It felt like a private house just for us. We rested, rehydrated, washed, changed and headed out again. The free bus took us back downtown and we headed to a rooftop bar that we had identified earlier in the day. This had amazing 360 º views of the city under jaunty red canopies and umbrellas and we installed ourselves at the bar. The temperature had cooled slightly to that wonderful sweet spot where you are neither too warm or too cool and there was a soft warm breeze. Perfect! So why do they have to spoil perfection by serving good quality, healthily priced drinks in fricking plastic cups??????????????? Insanity. (I promise I will not hurl my empties over the parapet into the streets below…) Unfortunately any drinking venue that is deemed to be ‘outside’ is cursed with the same restrictions. It is a shame.
We had made a dinner reservation at a fancy restaurant but decided to cancel this to offset the increased expense of the night’s accomodation. Our plan was to have a more mid-range meal somewhere more relaxed. Now those of you who know my husband well will know that he has a man-crush on the late, great chef/travel journalist/tortured soul Anthony Bourdain. We have spent countless hours watching his various food travel shows, and following in his footsteps, visiting places he has eaten along the way has been one of the ways that we direct our own travelling. So a stroll to the nearby restaurant called Husk was in order. Tony had been there.
We knew that we couldn’t get into the main dining room but we also knew it had a bar next door where you could eat too. We secured a valuable spot at the bar and had a most excellent (but definitely NOT mid-range) meal and evening of drinking. Totally worth it. We wearily embarked on our walk back to the hostel (as the free buses had long since stopped for the evening) when halfway home we happened across a rank of waiting bicycle rickshaws. It was too tempting and a very personable business studies student called Jessica pedalled us home, chatting the whole way. With tip the 10 minute ride cost us more than half of what an Uber back to the RV park would have. You can see that our money saving ideas work in theory, but we are having trouble actioning them!
The earplugs, we discovered, were not for the noise of the people in the hostel, nor for the noise of the traffic outside the hostel. (Neither made a peep.) They were to muffle the din of the massive air conditioning unit that supplied the whole building which was situated on the veranda right outside our room. They mostly worked.
Day two of the Charleston adventure started with breakfast in a diner which did a good job of making us feel human again. Eggs and coffee (even the decaf kind) are like medicine. Then we walked around some more, looking at old buildings, streets, parks, tourist information signs.
We sat on benches and looked at views, soaking up the city and its waterfront from various vantage points. Time was filled, rather than killed, before our day’s only planned engagement: a boat trip out to Fort Sumpter. This is a fort on a small island out in the mouth of Charleston harbour. It holds the infamous honour of being the site where the first shot was fired in the Civil War. The fort, built by the government to protect the Union from foreign attack was mainly fortified on the seaward side and much weaker on the side facing the shore. The Union troops were occupying the fort as tensions were rising and they were trying to stop the Confederate forces using Charleston port to stock and supply their army, and shipping out commodities like cotton to pay for it. In April 1861 there was a standoff, push came to shove, a barrage of cannon shots were fired by the Confederates from the land at the fort’s vunerable rear flank and after 34 hours it was defeated. The Union troops surrendered, packed up their flag and were evacuated. Only five Union troops had been injured. No-one had died. If only the rest of the war could have been settled with so little bloodshed. It was to be four years later before the Union flag was hoisted back above the fort.
There was a 30 minute boat trip over to the island and its fort, which nowadays looks very different to its original design. We shared our tour with a school group of about sixty 10-11 year olds. There is a noise level associated with this number of humans of that age all together in the same place whilst hopped up on their post prandial sugar rush. Luckily the captain of the boat made them very aware how he felt about their din and made an announcement to this effect doing a much better job of shutting them up than the teachers did. Aye, Aye Cap’n!
We had about an hour on the island and there was an informative ranger talk on the fort’s history and more specifically, the flag. The boat ride home was a bit longer, taking in a loop of the harbour and giving us more facts and figures on the sights. A very pleasant way to spend the afternoon. Back on dry land we called an Uber, called in at the hostel to pick up our bag and headed home. By now we were both exhausted and Nick was coming down with a cold. I nipped round to Erica’s trailer to say thank you again and we said our goodbyes. We were all heading off in the morning but her day was going to start much earlier than ours. Our slow boat sails late.
We loved Charleston and wouldn’t hesitate to return if the opportunity arose. I think it would also be a great place to live for ten months of the year. Spring was a lovely time to be here but I can imagine it is a bit sweaty in summer.