We are on the road again! Staying in South Carolina, we traveled south for our shortest drive yet, 2 hours. We pulled into the campground and it was muddy, wet, and full of potholes. This campground got hit hard with all the rain and the effects were still seen. Luckily, it will be sunny and warm this week so the campground will have a chance to dry up. One thing is for sure though, our truck totally needs a good wash!
The campground has a river walk and we tried walking it a couple times as we were told that there are alligators there. We didn’t get far because of the mud and bugs. The only thing we saw was lots of mosquitoes and we both have the bites to prove it! We took it easy the first few days and Brad decided mid-week to go golfing to keep up with his goal of golfing once a month. It was a beautiful, sunny day and when he called me afterwards, he told me he saw two alligators! The first one he saw after he passed it on the other side of the pond. The groundskeeper told him that is the small female that lives there, only four feet in length! Ha-ha . . . doesn’t sound small to me! The next one he saw was a baby and it sounded like it was more afraid of him than the other way around.
The next day was Thanksgiving and we spent the day in Charleston. We are lucky to have friends and family that live throughout the US as we were able to see one of my friends and Brad’s parents. The first stop that day was the Patriots Point Naval and Maritime Museum. The museum is located on the Cooper River on the Charleston Harbor. There were three museum ships for us to visit—the USS Yorktown aircraft carrier, a destroyer ship named USS Laffey, and the USS Clamagore, a submarine.
The Yorktown is a retired Navy ship with a long history of not only being in World War ll but being a recovery ship for Apollo 8 and the star of multiple movies. The museum has several self-guided tours for visitors to see the entire ship from the engine room to the deck. Walking around the ship the smell of gasoline and oil still hung in the air. I had two favorite parts of the tour. The first was the kitchen. It served over 4,000 people 4 meals a day. And they did that every day! That is a lot of cooking and baking, I couldn’t image making all that food every day. My other favorite was going to the top deck.
We all know that Navy planes take off and land from an aircraft carrier but to stand on the deck, you really see what a difficult and dangerous job the pilots and air traffic controllers have. The flight deck is short, narrow, surrounded by water and the tail hook is not very large. The pilot has to snag the tail hook on one of four steel wires to order to stop.
We next checked out the submarine. It was a much quicker self-guided tour as we could only go one way and the submarine is much smaller than the aircraft carrier. The space inside is so narrow and claustrophobic. I couldn’t image being in such a small, confined space under water, but I’m grateful that there are people who are okay with that. My friend’s boyfriend is in fact in training. A huge thank you for all who have served or are working on serving!
Before heading out for Thanksgiving dinner, we went to Isle of Palms (IOP), a beach town next to Charleston. The tide was low and the waves were crashing into shore making it a beautiful afternoon to walk on the beach.
Saturday we woke up planning on going to Hilton Head but decided to stay closer to home. We found Lake Warren State Park about thirty minutes from the campground. The park has multiple walking trails and even had a fitness trail with multiple workout stations along the way (push-up bar, balance beam, etc.). The lake was high due to all the rain and one part of the boardwalk was underwater (that seems to be happening a lot with us!).
We didn’t see any alligators but saw multiple little lizards. A bonus was seeing woodpeckers and a white squirrel, which neither of us had ever seen before.
We are staying one more week here and then will head down to Georgia. More beaches and plantations are in our future!
Till then!
Roaming Free In An RV 