South Carolina, AKA, Vacationland (07-08-18)

There is no research we need to do in South Carolina at the moment, so we are “on vacation”. It’s the week before July 4th  and we have no reservations made.  It’s getting close enough that it was stressing me out, not having a “spot”, so we sat down with the calendar, and a map. 

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We had decided that we’d love to go to the beach for a few days, and figured that Myrtle Beach would be fun,  but what are the odds we’d find a spot?  Armed with a list of Campgrounds, we call the first one, the one that looked the best, and were shocked to hear that they did indeed have an opening (helps to be in a truck camper!).

With that reservation taken care of, we started looking for places to stop along the way.

Facebook makes it somewhat easier to connect with people, and my cousin, who I haven’t spent time with in about 40 years, saw where we were headed, and reached out. We had a great dinner with her and her husband Jimmy at their home in South Carolina.

  

It isn’t often that we get a chance to visit a National Park that we’ve never been to before but Congaree National Park is in South Carolina.

Congaree is an old growth floodplain forest, one of the few left in this country.  As you would think, when it rains, this area, which is bordered by bluffs on both sides, fills with water.

The trees that grow here are capable of surviving in standing water. The Bald Cypress trees surround themselves with a root system called knees.  No one is really sure what their purpose is but perhaps they work as a snorkel.

There is one other creature that flourishes in the floodplain forest:

July 2 we arrived at Myrtle Beach. We’ve been here before but we have never stayed here. Our campground has just about everything you could want, and we made good use of it all over the July 4th holiday.

Their pool even boasts a Lazy River.  We didn’t spend much time in the pool, but we did check out the Lazy River during the “adults only” hour.





The ocean is what I was excited about- the weather was gorgeous and the water temperature was in the 80s! We could walk to it from our site- priceless!

I spent a lot of time in the water, and it was so warm that even Paul came in pretty often…

We realized the first day that we were ill equipped for a stay at the beach, so we hit up the stores and now own two beach 

chairs and an umbrella.

With numerous pool parties, dances and assorted contests, there was plenty to do over the holiday. There was even a parade, right outside our door.

We knew we were in the right spot when people started pulling their chairs up all along our street.

Once the parades, barbequing and dancing was done, we took our chairs and walked to the beach where we could watch all the fireworks that were being set off by the hotels along the waterfront.

We are really spoiled as far as fireworks go, so we just enjoyed the fact that we were watching from a beach, didn’t have to drive, and were wearing shorts and a t-shirts.

We came, we saw, we left.

Ok, we haven't really left yet, but we are leaving South Carolina in the morning, still houseless, but not homeless.  After spending a whirlwind few days checking out houses, we did see one that we like, but after decompressing for a day or so and thinking about it, we don't really like it enough to buy it. What we figured out is that neither of us is really in a rush to find a place to settle down, and buying a house felt like it would put pressure on us to stop traveling.  Plus, without checking out other areas of the country, we aren't positive that this is where we want to be.

Osprey

     Once the decision was made, we spent  a couple of days just dinghying around the lake and hanging out.  There are quite a few Osprey in this area and the last two days they have been sitting in the trees above us, hunting for fish.  They dive down into the lake to grab the fish, which was pretty startling the first time it happened about 20 feet from where we were sitting. After the first time, I tried very hard to get a picture of an Osprey diving, but none of them dove where I had my camera aimed! It was really fun to watch them though.  Tonight we went out to dinner to a restaurant on the lake, and watched the sunset as we ate dinner.

So, tomorrow we leave for Muncie to see our daughter Jessica for the next few days. It will take us two days to get there.

house shopping galore

The last few days have been spent looking at houses and doing research about this area, comparing it to other areas of the country that we might be interested in.  Some of our house hunting has been done with a realtor but some of it has been by boat.  We've been tooling around the lake in the inflatable checking out coves and some houses that have For Sale signs on the dock- kind of mixing business with pleasure, stopping at some islands for a quick swim, etc.
   There hasn't (yet) been a house that leaps out at us as perfect, but we are going to look at quite a few more in the next couple of days.  We're really just trying to get an idea of what's available and what the going rate is-I'm not feeling any urgent desire to buy anything and settle.
     Last night we went into Irmo to have dinner with some friends who are in the area for a doctor's appointment.  Paul and I went on a cruise a couple of years ago with the Burns's and their daughter Christina, who is our daughters best friend. The girls had their own cabin on the ship and had a blast, as most teenagers would! We haven't seen them in a year so it was a great dinner- we closed up the restaurant, and then stood outside talking more! 
The weather here has been hot- record heat in some cases.  Yesterday and today there were some really nasty storms in the area, but so far they have all bypassed the lake, so we can hear the thunder but we don't get the wind and rain.

Turtles, butterflies and fish

That just about sums up the past few days.  We have spent lazy afternoons on floats on the lake, watching the turtles pop their heads up for a minute or so at a time.  Its too hot to do any hiking, in fact its too hot to do much of anything.  We did spend a day with a realtor in Gainesville, GA checking out some houses on the lake.  We drove through a few towns to see what they were like.  I definately like the lake, but a lot of the houses on the lake were built a long time ago and are actually just cottages- really old and small cottages. We may come back here some other time and spend a longer time checking out the area.  Unfortunately, we were so lazy, and the weather was so lousy (windy with potential thunderstorms every day) that we did not put the dinghy in the water to check it out.  We really should have.
   We left Georgia yesterday, and are now in a campground on Lake Murray, near Columbia, SC.  This lake has much easier access, and the water is about 15 feet from our door, with a sandy/rocky bottom. Yesterday we once again floated around, staying cool.  The high yesterday was 102, and the low temperature last night was 80°.  This morning we made sure to get the dinghy in the water before it got too hot to move.  We took it around for a while this afternoon, getting an idea of how the lake is laid out, and then drove around Chapin, the nearest town to us.
Not very adventurous stuff, and the next couple of weeks will be spent checking out the area more.  There is a rodeo coming into town on Saturday, so I hope we remember to go see it!

Smoky Mountains to Anderson SC

This National Park has a scenic drive, as most of them do.  We try to drive these roads since they usually have a lot of  "bang for your buck".  The average person spends 4 hours when they visit a national park, and the scenic drives are designed so that visitors can see lots of interesting things in a short time.  Here, we passed by trailheads for several interesting hikes.  We hiked 5 miles (R/T) to Abrams Falls. Had we brought swim suits we could have gone swimming once we got there, but I didn't even poke my foot in the water.  The humidity is so high, I was afraid my feet wouldn't dry enough to go back into my boots. Once we were back in the truck, we continued on the drive.  There are many old buildings that were preserved and we stopped to look at some of them.  The Oliver family lived on this land for over 100 years before the land was taken to make the park.  Many of the original buildings are still here, although some of them have been moved.  One farmhouse has a "stranger room"- a room attached to the main house but with no access to the interior of the main house. They used it when someone passing through the area needed a place to sleep.

     Once we had seen enough, we veered off and went exploring down a narrow gravel road.  Halfway to the end, a bear crossed the street right behind our truck.  We watched him disappear into the thicket.  I did get a picture but not a great one.   Further down the road we were surprised to see a Mama bear and her cub cross the street.   We realized that if we turned left onto the next road, we'd see them again, so we did that and watched them approach.  Once they went off through the woods again, we moved to the next road and waited for them.  This time I got out of the truck and onto the toolbox in the back, so I could get a better picture. This was a main road, so when the bears did show up, a lot of cars stopped to watch them, but we had prime seats!
     The weather once again ruined our plans for the afternoon.  We were hoping to go tubing down the nearby river, but the heavens opened and the rumble of thunder could be heard, so we gave it up and went home to eat dinner.  The humidity is pretty uncomfortable and we were both looking forward to getting to a campground with electricity.
Yesterday we drove from the Smokies to Anderson, SC.  Anderson is near two large lakes -Hartwell and Keowee. We are checking the area to see if its "retirement worthy" for when we decide to stop traveling. The lakes are great but the towns don't seem to be what we are looking for.  Our original intent for this week was to spend it in Lexington, SC, near Lake Murray, but we decided that since we'll be there for 2 weeks, we can afford to take this week to look at other lakes.

     We took off this morning and headed to Stumphouse Tunnel.  This tunnel was supposed to connect Charleston SC with the midwest, and was started just before the civil war.  Unfortunately, the mountain is solid granite and of course there were no power tools to use.  They averaged clearing about 200 ft of tunnel per month and after excavating 4300 ft  of the 5800 ft needed, they gave up.  Its been abandoned since then but the first 800 ft is open to the public.  There's also a very pretty waterfall nearby- we just viewed it from the platform and didn't hike down to it.