No one could be sweeter than my sweetie when I meet her
In the mor..or..orning.
When the morning glories
Twine around the door
Whispering pretty stories
I long to hear once more”
South Carolina
We looked forward to a jaunt out to Hilton Head, South Carolina having heard so much about it over the years. It's a short hop north from Savannah – less than an hour's drive. The traffic though was horrendous...maybe because it was Friday and there was a big golf tournament going on. Sumptuous homes, billionaire style – like the Hamptons in New York or Newport, Rhode Island and tres chic hotels abound and there was golf course after golf course – it made me think of Palm Springs only much more chaotic. There are not that many areas where you can find beach access unless you're checked into one of the hotels or you own a mansion or you belong to one of the golf clubs. In the public beach area a high police presence keeps the rowdies under control. I would say it's a very class concious society on Hilton Head. There was one geocache to be had there......so we grabbed it.
Back on the mainland and just a little north lies the charming little historic town of Beaufort, beautifully situated on the inland waterways. Heritage homes with shady porches and secret gardens, some for sale, made us dream of a laid back lifestyle of iced lemonades, big fans & lazy times reading in the porch swings. Riverside promenades branch out from the park in the centre of town and dozens of wooden bench swings line the walkways.
Families congregated with picnic lunches, cyclers took time out to enjoy the views and young lovers snuggled and swung in perfect harmony and 'old lovers' too.
“Charleston! Charleston!
Made in Carolina.
Some dance, some prance,
I'll say.
There's nothing finer than the
Charleston, Charleston
Lord, how you can shuffle
Ev'ry step you do
Leads to something new
Man, I'm telling you
It's a lapazoo.”
It's so easy to park in the small cities like Charleston and Savannah. We always found metered street parking which would be either 50 cents or a dollar an hour and on Sundays free.
Charleston, known as the 'best-mannered' city in the US and also as 'the holy city' because of the proliferation of churches of different denominations, has a decidedly French style. It all started with a group of forty-five Huguenots who arrived in Charleston in 1687 and built the first French Huguenot church. A church still stands on the site in lower Charleston, the only Huguenot church in the USA. Huguenots are French protestants who followed the teachings of John Calvin and were persecuted in their own country and so dispersed around the world. 
It was a sunny Sunday morning when we visited the city and walked down through the old cobblestoned streets of lower Charleston towards Oyster Point. The church bells were ringing, calling methodists, baptists, presbyterians, catholics, calvinists and anglicans. We watched as one minister welcomed his congregation at the door shaking everyone's hand as they entered.
The typical Charleston heritage home has its own definite style. It's narrower across the front than it is deep, has a flat facade with no porch, the front door opening right onto the street and large covered porches on each level running right down the sides of the house overlooking the gardens. The trees are dense and the foliage full keeping it shady and cool. The scent of the azalea, fuschia, magnolia, honeysuckle & mahonia blossoms permeated the air and the shrubs glowed in deep colours of red, pink, purple, yellow & white.
“Are you professional photographers?” a breathless voice from behind me inquired. I spun around to a large framed woman, with several cameras around her neck, a tripod in one hand and a huge bag in the other. It must have been my snazzy stance as I snapped photos of the minister at the church door or perhaps it was my audacity of standing in the middle of the road with traffic all around me to take pictures. When I told her we were purely snapshotters, she looked crestfallen. “Oh, I saw you with your two cameras and your vests with all those pockets......and I just thought.......”. I asked her if she was professional and she said she was just a 'serious amateur'. She had mistaken my GPS'r for a second camera. But I felt quite swanky after that.....I now perceived myself as looking like a pro.
Charleston is the tea capital of the USA with the only tea plantation in the western hemisphere. I have a penchant for afternoon tea (must be that British background) so we were sure we'd find one in Charleston on a Sunday afternoon.....No! Well then, surely they'd serve teas at the Charleston Tea Plantation, so off we scooted on a lovely drive out to Wadmalaw Island in search of a hot cup of tea with perhaps a little scone with strawberry preserves & some clotted cream....not much to ask. They had guided tours around the plantation, a factory tour, a gift shop and two urns of tea......that's it. Oh well, I'll just pour myself a cup of tea. Yikes! It was cold. I tried the other urn and it was cold too and they weren't even very good. I guess southern Americans just don't drink hot tea. There were dozens of people milling around and you couldn't even buy a cookie. It seems they missed their mark here ...... how hard would it be to have a little tea room serving hot & cold teas with some snacks. They'd make tons of money, I'm sure.
Oh well, the trip wasn't wasted; I got to see what a tea plant looks like – sort of like a small laurel bush - and there was a geocache at the gate.
A futuristic eight lane span over the Cooper River is a cable-stayed bridge connecting downtown Charleston to Mount Pleasant; it's 2 ½ miles long and is breathtakingly beautiful. It took us across to our resting place for the night at the Mount Pleasant Walmart and pleasant it was; the parking lot was cut into small areas separated by treed berms. It was quiet and private and only six miles from the Charleston city center. 
Not far away, the shrimp boats dock at Shem Creek and bars and restaurants line each side of the inlet. We strolled along the creek beside the boats watching the pelicans who were hanging around hoping for some scraps and when we were tired stopped in at Red's saloon for some oysters, shrimp & beer.
We were just getting ready to move from the Mount Pleasant Walmart; I was about to get the car in position to hook it up to the tow bar when I heard a trilling voice call out “Hello Holiday Ramblers”. A garrulous older lady (that means older than me) from one of those extremely fancy Holiday Ramblers was out walking her dog so I stopped to talk. She was a real chatterbox. Within five minutes, I knew she had eight children, had moved from Massachusets to Florida last year, had just bought a new double-wide mobile home to put on their 2 ½ acre lot, had 17 grandchildren and one had just come home from Iraq........phew!
“Are you going to the Holiday Rambler rally in Myrtle Beach?” she inquired hopefully. She's the official photographer for the rally and she went on to tell me about all the fun and games they have over the week. “There's bingos, potlucks, seminars, horseshoes and we're all staying at this lovely RV Resort on the beach – you must come and just see what it's like” she urged. It's funny how people just don't understand that we don't like RV Resorts where they're all cheek by jowl, with no privacy and we really can't stand bingos and potlucks etc unless it's with our family. Anywayz, the campsite charges $40 or so a night and your neighbour is only 8 feet away from you. When you stick your head out the door, you invariably get a “Howdy neighbour”. Give me the anonymity of a Walmart any day.
Myrtle Beach a thirty mile long stretch of Nascar racetracks, waterparks, gargantuan buffets, mini golf, those giant beachwear & surf shops, theaters rivalling Branson, monster hotels, motels, golf courses, fast food galore, the Carolina Opry, a huge Kryptonite theater (whatever that is), the Dixie Stampede, Battleship Carolina. You get the idea, I'm sure. Just when I thought the place absolutely hideous, we came across the older and quieter section still along the beach front, but serene with small, older hotels and condos reminding us somewhat of Miami Beach but less hectic. The beach there was wild and open with raging surf and few people. Now that's an area to enjoy.
Our RV Resort in Myrtle Beach was terrific; we were parked overlooking a lovely lake with a family of ducks that came right to our door looking for handouts. And this was in the ......... where else?......... Walmart. Across the road was a complex of Tanger outlet shops where we browsed and I bought a couple of pair of sandals. Life is good!
North Carolina
Another Walmart with another lake in Morehead City. We could get used to such deluxe sites. There's another strip of touristy beach area along the spit just out of town but we elected to explore the Cateret Peninsula which looks towards Cape Hatteras. It's a sleepy rural area of middle class homes, actually kinda boring. The winds were extremely high making us wonder what it was like on the Cape. Cape Hatteras, known as the "Graveyard of the Atlantic" is the point that protrudes the farthest to the southeast on the Atlantic coast and two major currents collide just off the cape, the south flowing cold Labrador Current and the north flowing warm Gulf Stream, creating turbulance and an expanse of shallow sandbars extending 14 miles offshore. Many ships have ventured too close to the shoals and the turbulent waters and the frequent storms have caused them to be lost.
The Hatteras seashore is a skinny spit of land laying up to 30 miles off the mainland & it's about 70 miles long. On December 17, 1903, the Wright Brothers who hailed from Ohio, after ascertaining there were perfect conditions on the peninsula, made the first power controlled flights at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. I find it mind boggling that it was only a hundred and five years ago – look how we've progressed in such a short time.
The National Parks have a terrific memorial at the site with films, lectures and facsimiles of the historic machine that took flight that winter's day. They recreated the experience so well that we felt that we'd been there to witness it. The Wrights were a matriarchal family and the boys learned at an early age from their mother their mechanical and engineering ability. They never married nor procreated and poor Wilbur died in 1911 from Typhoid Fever at 46 years old. The many Wright descendants have come down from the older brothers. Hmmmmm.......I know a Wright! Could he be related?
View from the top!We carried on down the cape leaving the tacky tourist areas behind, through
undulating dunes where the sand encroached across the road and..........we arrived at Rodanthe! I remembered seeing the preview from last years romantic beach film 'Nights in Rodanthe' with Richard Gere and Diane Lane and wondered if Rodanthe was a real place and if it were, where was it? The first house I saw must have been the one used in the film....it's so unusual and desolate looking. But it's not as remote as they made it look in the film. The towns along the cape are full of these odd-looking parapetted structures and seem to be an area where northerly folks build their summer/winter? homes.
The weather was perfect with just a light ocean breeze not like yesterday when
apparently there was hail and the winds were gale-force. It's a long drive down to the lighthouse at Cape Hatteras and we stopped at The Hot Tuna in Avon for a crab-cake lunch before venturing along. There was a $7 fee for climbing the 200 foot tall lighthouse so we had to forego the pleasure of climbing up the narrow, hot and claustrophobic spiral staircase. 
Instead we hiked the beach and did some geocaching. For miles along the sand, people hd driven in their pickup trucks and settled down for a day of fishing. We stopped to talk to a couple from the north who own one of those vacation homes and stayed for the winter which they said was unprecedentedly horrible. They were angling for toad fish and they showed me one which was still alive. They said it was a 'puffer fish' and I must say I felt quite awful to see that poor little thing puffing. Why would they want to catch such a little thing....it would take ten of them to make a meal.
Our habit is to just have coffee and tea when we get up in the morning and hit the road stopping for breakfast a couple of hours later. North of Morehead City on Highway 17, we found a pleasant little rest area full of glowing red azaleas and shade trees. We opened our door to enjoy the warm air and I proceeded to cut up the fruit for breakfast. A highways truck pulled in directly ahead facing us and out tumbled about ten road workers in their orange and yellow vests.
“Do you see what it says on their vests?” said Fernie so I took a look. 'INMATES' was emblazened across their backs?”
“Is there a guard with a gun?” I asked hopefully as we'd seen many of these work crews along the way cleaning up the roads but always with a couple of guards with rifles.
“Nope” he answered
“Close and lock the door” I demanded but Fernie said we'd be too obvious.
“I don't care – lock the damned door” I envisioned one of those brawny meatheads grabbing me by the throat and holding me hostage. Fernie just laughed but he humoured me by closing the door. I think the only guard was the driver of the truck and he never got out of the vehicle as he let his crew use the restrooms. I'm guessing they weren't mass murderers.
Gone are the mansions and the shacks of the south; North Carolina seems to be more of a middle and working class state. The wide disparity between the rich and poor is not part of the fabric of North Carolina, at least not along the coastal route that we traversed. While probably a pointer to a more equal and fair society, it makes it far more humdrum for us travelling through. That sounds like an awfully self-indulgent remark, doesn't it!
The Great Dismal Swamp! Now isn't that a name that conjures up images of weird & scaly sub-terrestrial life. The highway slices right through the middle of the swamp which is on the north side of Albermarle Sound but no giant slimy green froglike monsters showed themselves on our journey through. Instead they've controlled the waters and it's been cultivated into lush farmland. Elizabeth City and its Walmart sit on the eastern edge. We stayed for two days.
Drivers in the east are so courteous. Is is not at all unusual to have someone yield and wave us into their lane and hardly anyone speeds. Of course as soon as we get back to cities of a certain size, that will be all out the window. However, there is one habit that absolutely drives us mad – they use their horns constantly sometimes just to say hello to each other. The most aggravating is that when the traffic lights change to green, they don't even wait a second before reminding you with a touch of their horn.
Virginia
It suddenly got so darn HOT - 33 degrees (95 F) and it's only April. Just two nights ago, we dug out our fuzzy blankets to put on top of our duvet.
Virginia Beach is an older and more sedate beach resort than Myrtle Beach but still it was hotel after hotel in the midst of it with nary an easy place to park and stroll so we trundled on a bit further to the residential area and enjoyed our last day at the ocean. Norfolk, a naval city is adjacent to VB and we erred in deciding to tour the downtown core and docks late on a Friday afternoon. It was chaos with construction around every corner and the mass exodus of natives leaving for the weekend.
When I was in my thirties (that's not so long ago), I read Chesapeake by James Michener and it left a lasting impression on me so much that I couldn't wait to get to Chesapeake Bay. His description of the immense bay with white sand beaches, salt marshes & birds of many species lured me and it surprisingly lived up to its hype. The 18-mile Chesapeake Bay causeway-artificial island-tunnel-causeway-tunnel-bridge crosses the mouth of the Bay. A miracle of engineering for 1964 when it was built, it still amazes because there was a point somewhere in the middle where I couldn't see land forward or backward. It was the north end that brought back Michener's description so vividly. Hundreds of years after, it still remains natural and pristine. A wildlife refuge has taken over the southern peninsula which is riddled with WWII army bunkers but nature has reclaimed it for itself. We hiked through the trails at the refuge, marvelling at the birdlife, particularly the egrets which swooped and dove for fish. Ancient farms left their remnants – a tiny family cemetery, gnarly fruit trees, wisteria gone wild growing over everything in a purple blaze. Down on the salt marshes, crabs scampered merrily while the egrets watched over them. It's here that I would build my dream home!
Walmart in Chesapeake turned us down (we were incensed) because of “City Ordinance” so we carried on another forty miles through Friday evening rush hour traffic in the extreme heat to the little farming town of Franklin, Virginia. The Walmart parking lot is like the current day village green. We were entertained by the view of small town Virginia life that took place outside our door. A young woman drew up in her rusty staionwagon with her little boy beside her in the passenger seat. He appeared to be about six years old. They sat in there interminably and we wondered what they were waiting for. Several times, the young woman pulled down her visor to look in her mirror, fix her hair & apply lipstick. Finally, a black low-slung, dual exhaust car (what I would call a hot rod) roared and I mean ROARED in beside her. The glamorous young woman driving pulled a clip out of her hair and swung her luscious long tresses in a move that I read as “I'm far better looking than you”. Her passenger, a swarthy, swaggering lout swung himself out of the car where the young mother stood with the little boy. She smoothed down her son's hair and straightened his shirt giving him a quick hug before the Daddy (I guess) shoved him in the backseat of the idling hot rod and the bimbo driver hit the gas and they peeled rubber out of the lot. I felt so sorry for the young mother who'd primped for them and I hoped that she had a hot date after. Pickup trucks started to congregate, including a bunch of those big wheel monstrosities; pickups are the vehicle of choice in agricultural areas...not just for their usefulness but more to fulfil their testosterone filled egos. They ignored the sign above them that clearly stated 'No Loitering' and hung around posturing with each other, taking jabs at another's arm or just swaggering with the gait of a large male gorilla, arms swung wide and low. Muscle shirts were predominant – it was hot but I'm sure they'd have worn them anyway. Then the first girl showd up and it was like watching animals in the wild – attitudes changed, they got louder, shoved each other out of the way and the girl swung her hair in the midst of the brawny brutes enjoying every minute of the attention. As other girls arrived, the mob changed and spread and much hilarity ensued. This went on until about one o'clock in the morning. I wouldn't know because I put my earplugs in but Fernie doesn't want to miss anything.....I think it's his male role of keeping things safe.
“Almost heaven, West Virginia
Blue Ridge Mountains
Shenandoah river;
Life is old there
Older than the trees
Younger than the mountains
Growin like a breeze
Country roads, take me home
To the place I belong
West virginia, mountain momma
Take me home, country roads.”
Taffy Nivert 1970; recorded by John Denver
We were well ready to head away from the seashore and I never thought I'd say I'd had enough of the ocean. But the east coast and its congested traffic made us yearn for peaceful surroundings. Virginia is tobacco country, but they're very low key about advertising it. I couldn't tell if the farmer's crops were tobacco or not as we drove through the prime growing region. The Surgeon General has obviously made a dent in tobacco production because in 1999 $87m was harvested and six years later that was down to $46m.
The heat was getting unbearable and we agreed that it was a good thing that Caesar was no longer with us. He hated the heat; he was a cold weather dog. We pulled in early to Danville, Virginia and found a nice spot at the Walmart, away from the crowds and beside the greenbelt. But we needed to beat the heat so we trundled off to the city park down by the river, put out our lounge chairs and spent the afternoon reading under the trees beside the river. But it was still HOT so why not go to a movie; that's guaranteed to chill you down. Fernie got to choose the film, not that there was much to choose from; he chose State of Play with Russell Crowe and Ben Affleck, a political thriller which was confusing enough to keep me awake and it provided some good entertainment. Half way through, I wished I'd brought a sweater along so when we left the heat outside was welcomed.
Our highway #58 which was flat as a pancake for the first couple of hundred miles suddenly bumped into the Blue Ridge Mountains. The byway known as 'The Crooked Road” was quite a challenge to drive with its ups and downs, its left curves and right, its hairpins and no passing lanes but it was absolutely beautiful. We hadn't seen mountains for quite some time and they were welcomed. The pale spring green mantle of the newly leafed trees were interspersed with white dogwoods and red bud trees.
We found a pullout finally on the edge of a precipitous cliff called 'Lovers' Leap'. There was barely enough room for us but a van veered in right in front of us and out tumbled three tough looking hillbilly guys. They jumped up on the short wall on the edge of a drop of who knows how many hundred feet not afraid of falling over.
I called out cheerily “No woman is worth that.....” and they laughed uproariously.
“No Ma'am! We're not about to jump. We're just looking at this here God's country” and they pointed to the deep valley below and the hazy mountains on the horizon - the Blue Ridge Mountains which reminded me of the eucalyptus forests of the Blue Mountains in New South Wales, Australia.
It's funny how we have preconceived ideas about people by the way they look. You couldn't have met any nicer young men. They told me how they worked in Virginia but were going home to Tennessee.
“We're just good ol' country boys born and raised in Bristol, Tennessee. You're not from 'round here are you Ma'am?”
When I told them I was from Canada, the northwest, they chorused “I'd surely like to visit there sometime – I hear there's mountains there too.”
They piled back into their van waving goodbyes and shot off up the road.
We reached the summit which was only 3,000 feet but it seemed like we climbed forever. It was a scene of storybook farmhouses perched high on emerald hillsides, manicured lawns running down to the road pastures brilliant green and mowed by the cattle contentedly grazing, streams running through the hollows, shaded by trees of various hues and picturesque red barns just waiting for an artist to put it all on canvas. We heard a little toot of a horn and saw the white van pass us with my three hillbilly pals all waving.
After crossing over to Tennessee, we found a former Sam's Club in Kingsport which had moved out. A beautiful tree-shaded lot with nobody around for miles. So we moved right in.
Our Tennessee adventures will have to wait.
