The Carolinas

We left Roanoke, Virginia and drove directly to Charlotte, North Carolina where we spent four nights in a hotel as Doug had a few days of work to do and needed internet to do so. Timing worked well for the weather as it rained most of Sunday but cleared on Monday and reached 75F/23C; was quite comfy! While Doug worked Fran took Tigger in for some servicing and got a few issues we’ve been having taken care of.

We left Charlotte Wednesday morning and drove into South Carolina a spent the afternoon hiking in Congaree National Park; one of the oldest deciduous floodplain forests in the country. It was quite a pleasant afternoon and we almost had the park to ourselves. The park contains switch cane bushes and loblolly pine trees.

We spent the night in Columbia and Thanksgiving Day, Doug walked a marathon while Fran took it easy, did some walking and tidying up, a bit of shopping for stocking stuffers and we spent that night in the Lowes parking lot as we discovered they have free wifi there.

Friday we headed northeast and saw three “quirky” sites in South Carolina: (1) the Button King’s Museum; (2) where the atom bomb was accidently dropped in 1958; and (3) South of the Border – a kind of tacky amusement park/shopping freeway stop. All were interesting and kinda fun.

We went to the movies in North Myrtle Beach and spent the night in the parking lot there at the mall. We saw Interstellar and both enjoyed it. Saturday we did a Costco run and some grocery shopping before checking into a resort just south of Myrtle Beach, at Surfside Beach. We walked to the beach, which is quite nice and enjoyed a hot tub after dinner. Ahead we have a relaxing week, catching up on RV work, laundry, getting hair cuts and the like.

During the week, we walked to and on the beach most days, ran errands, wrote Christmas cards/letters, shipped gifts back to Canada and enjoyed the space of a 1200 sq foot three bedroom condo for $134 for the week!  We took our bikes into Myrtle Beach proper on the last full day there; it was overcast and a storm appeared to be brewing so we were glad to be leaving the next day.

We left MB on Friday to spread out our 450 mile drive to Daytona Beach over two days. We got to Charleston, SC around mid-day and parked downtown so we could go for a walk along the waterfront and see “Rainbow Row” the oldest set of Georgian town homes in the US. They are well maintained and very colourful. The streets here are cobblestone and there is a quite a bit of history.

Georgia

On only stop in this state was Savannah. We’ve been to both Atlanta and Augusta before. We loved Savannah; the history, the people, the cool shops, the squares and the riverfront. We tried to get into the Old Pink House for dinner but they were all booked up so we enjoyed a pleasant meal on the Riverfront at Spanky’s Bar which had a good value happy hour. We parked on a residential street a little off the main drags and spent the night in Tigger undisturbed.