Charleston, SC

I'm not sure where to even begin! I had to take notes again today so that I wouldn't forget anything. Keep reading on because the best parts will definitely be saved for last!

This morning we started out with breakfast at Clary's Cafe. It's the cafe mentioned in Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. It was pretty entertaining listening to the men sitting at the table behind us discuss the book versus the movie. After that we toured Juliette Gordon Low's house, "The Birth Place of Girl Scouts." It was pretty excited to tour the house in person after hearing about it for so many years in Girl Scouts. The tour guide spent a lot of time talking about the furniture, but it was still interesting to look around the old Victorian house. There was one family on the tour and all four members were a few crayons short of a full box. I kept exchanging glances with another man on the tour and smirking; we were both thinking the same thing about these people. I love sharing moments with strangers.

After the tour we parted ways with Savannah and headed to Charleston, SC. On the highway we saw our first sign for South of The Border, telling us that it was 185 miles away. We'll be stopping tomorrow. It's another one of those places you just have to stop at while on a road trip, kind of like Wall Drug in South Dakota. I also feel like it's important because so many of my family members have stopped there before me while traveling the east coast.

Here's something that I think is funny, a chain of gas stations in the south are apparently called El Cheapo's. How could you not find that entertaining? I also noticed a guy riding a motorcycle who, between his face and stature, oddly resembled one of the monkeys from The Three Wise Monkeys (you know, Hear no evil, etc). I was pretty amused by that as well.

I would like to take this opportunity to say that I've learned a VERY important lesson in the past week: camping in the south eastern United States in July is never a good idea! That being said, we arrived at the campground in Charleston and discovered that when they said primitive camp site, they weren't kidding around. Everything was primitive except for the out-house that was air conditioned. I was joking about bringing my sleeping bag in there because the humidity was going to make for a third night of uncomfortable sleeping. Setting the tent up was a race against nature. Right before we began the process, we started to hear thunder rumbling in the distance. Luckily we finished putting the rain flap on before it started raining and got all of our sleeping stuff set up inside.

Being in South Carolina and all, we thought it would be fun to visit a plantation. We headed over to Mount Pleasant to visit the Boone Plantation. Movies such as North and South, Queen, and The Notebook have been filmed there. We made it at the end of the day and caught the last tours. I really enjoyed the tour guide, she was really funny and made a lot of jokes. My favorite joke was in reference to not being affiliated with Boones Farm Wine and not causing bad memories. I swear it was was a better joke in person when she told it. Anyway, not only did we get to learn a little bit of history about slavery and the plantation, but we also learned a little bit of history about Charleston. On a side note, I found it a little ironic that as we pulled up the driveway to the plantation there were Mexicans doing the yard work.

The end of the tour was about the time when our luck with Mother Nature ran out (she's been pretty nice to us for the most part). The sky had opened up and Mother Nature was giving Charelston all she had, it just poured cats and dogs! Being in the low country we were both very concerned about our belongings back in the tent, and decided our next destination was back to the campground to check on them. When we arrived we discovered a tent surrounded by water. Just to get to the tent we had to walk through ankle deep water. Not only was the tent surrounded by water, the rain flap was blown by the wind and it had been raining in our tent for god knows how long. We grabbed our stuff and decided to abandon camping to find a hotel, leaving the tent until the morning. We found a Holiday Inn and checked into a room, only to arrive at the room door and discover the key didn't work. The maintenance man came and let us in and went to get our keys recoded for us. After we unpacked all the wet stuff and set it out to dry, he returned and informed us that we were being moved to another room so that he could fix the door. Oy vey! At this point I was just laughing so hard because it was the comedy of errors. Finally, we settled into the new room and ate an over priced so-so dinner in the hotel restaurant. The nice part was that it is on the top floor and over looked the harbor.

To be perfectly honest, I'm pretty happy about not spending another night sleeping without air conditioning in the south east. Maybe I'll actually get a good night sleep tonight!

By the way, I've somehow picked up a southern accent when I say the word, "you." It's very catchy and it just started coming out of my mouth. Let me tell you, it caught me off guard the first time it happened! I don't really expect it to last long after returning to "The North."