Quackers and crackers

Monday, January 14, 2013

St. Augustine, FL – Tonight we are camping at another KOA campground (the acronym stands for Kampgrounds of America, where everything that ordinarily would start with a “c” starts with a “k” instead – kabins, kampers, etc.), this one on Anastasia Island near the historic town of St. Augustine. The tourist material says this is the oldest city in America, and Ponce de Leon reportedly landed here in 1513 and discovered the Fountain of Youth! We will certainly be checking that out during our stay.

Fine weather and warm temperatures continued to bless us as we departed from Charleston on US highway 17, headed south toward the Interstate 95. One of the things we became quite used to seeing along Highway 17, especially in Mount Pleasant near our campground, was the series of small wooden roadside huts where artisans sell sweetgrass baskets. The descendants of African slaves continue to weave beautiful baskets and trays in a wide variety of designs. We watched one basket weaver at the tourist information center demonstrating her art. Long strands of dried grass are woven into ropes, held around by strips of palm branches and coiled into the various shapes. The result is very beautiful, but also expensive; a dinner-plate sized tray cost $80.

The terrain along the highway south of Charleston today included many stands of tall pine trees, as well as a lot of wetlands, either in a woodsy setting, or in large expanses of grassy bogs. We spotted a few egrets, with their spindly legs, long beaks and curved white necks, wading in the water. The alligators continued to evade us, but I’m sure they were out there. The thermometer hit a high of 30.5 degrees Celsius just after we crossed into Florida! Incredible!

We stopped at the Florida welcome center, just inside the state border, to pick up some literature and maps for the various destinations we’ll be visiting in the coming weeks. One of the nice things they do at this center is offer free cups of Florida orange juice or grapefruit juice to visitors – delicious and refreshing!

We went over to the desk to ask some questions about Walt Disney World, where we’ve never been before, since it is such a huge complex with so many things to see and do. As I chatted with the lady at the desk, Val looked to his right and discovered he was standing next to Marilyn, our friend from Ottawa, who lives just a few blocks from our home! It was a lovely surprise for both of us, and we chatted for a few minutes, promising to connect again when we got settled in the Tampa area, where we are both headed.

As we settled in to our campsite at the KOA later in the afternoon, a clutch of noisy ducks boldly waddled over to greet us from the small pond next to our site. They were not the least bit shy, and quacked appreciatively when Val offered them some cracker crumbs. I have a feeling they will be back again tomorrow.

Of medals and mariners

Sunday, January 13, 2013

Charleston, SC – On our last day at this spot, we had to decide what, of the many choices available, to explore that would also allow us time to do a few mundane things before hitting the road again. Our choice was to see the military museum on board the aircraft carrier USS Yorktown, permanently moored in Mount Pleasant, across the harbour from the city of Charleston.

Since our KOA is also in Mount Pleasant, it was only a short hop to Patriots Point, where the massive carrier is flanked by a destroyer and a submarine, all accessible through one ticket purchase. Being early January, we had few other visitors to encumber our explorations, so we roamed freely through the bowels of the carrier, viewing the cramped bunks where seamen slept, checking out the mess (where a chocolate chip cookie recipe was posted that called for 500 eggs and 12 pounds of chocolate chips!), and peering into the dentist’s offices, engine rooms and machine shops.

We also visited the Medal of Honor Museum on the hangar deck of the carrier, where bios and pictures of war heroes recounted tales of valor dating back to the Civil War to the Second World War, Vietnam and beyond. One 12-year-old drummer boy received the honor from President Lincoln when he alone held on to his assigned instrument while others, including much older soldiers, abandoned their arms and fled, unequipped, from danger.

If we felt like a stomach-churning experience, we could have paid to ride in the gyrating flight simulator that was set up on the hangar deck, but we decided to skip it! Instead, Val climbed up the stairs and settled into the pilot’s seat of a TF-9 Cougar fighter jet and let his imagination take flight.

Above board, we strolled the massive flight deck, where more than half a dozen fighter planes of various types and vintages were on display, and observed the busy port across the harbour where, at the time of our visit, a huge container ship was being led in by a pilot boat, and many pleasure boats were cruising around in the pleasant weather.

There were lots of steep, narrow staircases on the aircraft carrier that we climbed up and down, and we walked the full length of the huge decks more than 800 feet long, so when we left it we were content to have only brief looks at the destroyer, USS Laffey and submarine, the USS Clamagore also on display. The sub was in very poor shape, with rust and crumbling holes at water level, but the destroyer had been recently refurbished and looked quite spiffy.

On the way back to the campground, we found a place that sold pay-as-you-go cell phones, so we now have a means of communication with the outside world! We got the laundry all up to date as well. Tomorrow we hit the road again, continuing our journey southward.

The fort and the plantation

Saturday, January 12, 2013

Charleston, SC – We’re digesting a delicious supper of local seafood that we enjoyed at the SeeWee Restaurant down the way from our campground. I had “she-crab soup” to start with plus grilled flounder, fried okra, fried green tomatoes and red rice. Val went for crab cakes and grilled shrimp, and we ate in a refurbished general store complete with creaky wooden floors and shelves still lined with canned goods from the olden days.

It’s been a full day, starting with a boat trip into the Charleston harbour to see Fort Sumter, where the first shots were fired that started the Civil War in 1861. The formidable structure that existed at that time had walls that rose 50 feet from the water, but now they are one-third that height. The fort was built in a pentagonal shape on a sand bar in the harbour, with rocks and bricks shipped in from the north. Massive cannons are still in place, pointing outward to sea through openings in the fortress walls. The museum displays explained the evolution of cannons and cannon balls from smooth tubes and round balls to striated tubes and ammunition shaped more like bullets which could travel more than three miles before landing.

I was glad of my jacket as we sailed to and from the fort, but the day was beautiful and sunny. It was great to see the skyline of Charleston from the water, with its many tall church steeples, and to glimpse dolphins out on the water again today.
We grabbed a quick sandwich when we got back to shore, and headed northeast of the town to Drayton Hall, the oldest unrestored plantation house in America in “near-original condition”. The driveway in reminded me of the opening scenes of Gone with the Wind, with huge live oaks arching over the road and framing the large brick mansion in the distance.

Betsy, one of the Drayton Hall guides, gave us a glimpse into the lives of the enslaved people who were kidnaped from Africa, stowed in fetid holds of ships that took weeks to reach Charleston, held in “pest houses” outside the town under quarantine (if they survived the crossing) until healthy enough to be auctioned off to plantation owners, where they would spend the rest of their short lives labouring in rice fields, processing indigo, making bricks or performing other tasks.

The Drayton family built the plantation house in about 1738, setting out three floors with drawing rooms, a library, a ballroom and bedrooms upstairs, paneled in wood and decorated with ornate plaster ceilings in the front rooms and a gracious staircase with mahogany banisters just inside the front door. It took some imagining to visualize the mansion in its heyday, because the rooms were all vacant and the paint on the wooden walls was worn thin. Our guide encouraged visitors to become friends of Drayton Hall with an annual membership fee that would help the plantation’s curators maintain the site.

On the way out, near the gates, we stopped so I could visit one of the oldest documented African-American cemeteries still in use, with a wrought iron archway that reads “Let ‘Em Rest”, a title suggested by the descendent of one of the Drayton Hall slaves, who worked there as a gatekeeper.

A resilient and gracious city

Friday, January 11, 2013

Charleston, SC – After arriving here yesterday through rush hour traffic and on busy streets with industrial and commercial establishments everywhere, we got a different look at Charleston today. The visitor center was our first destination, where we purchased tickets for a three-part tour that included the historic city, one of the restored mansions, and Fort Sumpter. We completed the first two parts this afternoon.

Only one other couple boarded the tour bus with us, so it was almost a private tour. Glen, our driver and guide, told us that he rarely makes use of the air conditioning this early in the year, but he ran it for us today. He says it’s usually a good 20 degrees cooler in January!

It was lovely to see the many gracious homes, cobbled streets and carefully-tended gardens in the historic part of town. Charleston is on a peninsula shaped like a tear drop, with the oldest part at the bottom facing the Atlantic Ocean. Its history dates back to the 1600s, and follows a series of devastations and recoveries over the centuries that included an economic disaster following the Civil War, an earthquake that flattened most of the city, several massive fires and, more recently, Hurricane Hugo in 1989 that destroyed the home of our guide.

We learned that enormous wealth had come to original residents through trade in rice, indigo and cotton. They spent their money on huge mansions with verandahs on several floors to catch the breezes (which they refer to here as “piazzas”), decorated inside with elaborate plaster moldings around the high ceilings, paneled doors, grand spiral staircases and glittering chandeliers.

Despite subsequent downturns in the economy of the region, the city soldiered on and prospered. Burned, flooded or flattened homes were rebuilt and restored. One historic mansion we toured today had barely missed being torn down to make a parking lot, and had housed a gas station on its front lawn for a time, as well as sheltering low-income families in its spacious rooms (a family with eight children lived in the ballroom at one point!) before a wealthy resident of the city paid the back taxes on the property so it could be reclaimed and returned to its original beauty.

On another street that had become quite seedy, a designer bought one home and fixed it up, painting the exterior a trendy pink. Over the years, more residents followed suit, choosing other bright colours for their homes on a stretch that is now a tourist magnet known as Rainbow Row.

The city’s maritime history is a whole other chapter which we only glimpsed today. We stood on the Battery, a sea wall that faced the barrier islands and, beyond them, the ocean, and were surprised by a dolphin that surfaced several times in the water just off the shore. Glen said he’d arranged it just for us. Charleston has the USS Yorktown aircraft carrier that was used to recover a number of space capsules when they splashed down from outer space, and is now a permanent museum. There is also an authentic paddle-wheel steamboat that visitors can ride on. There’s more to see than we’ll ever cover in our short visit! Guess we’ll have to come back.

Biscuits and black-eyed peas

Thursday, January 10, 2013

Charleston, SC – Tonight we are in our own little home on wheels at a KOA campground 10 miles east of the city of Charleston. Mother Nature has provided us with a free carwash for the little Honda and the motorhome, which needed it after all the salt and slush they accumulated over the first days of our travels. The rain started to spatter the windshield gently as we approached the city, and held off while we got settled at our site. Then, once we were comfortably set up and enjoying our supper, it completed the wash job.

Our route took us southwest from Rocky Mount along Interstate 95 until we got into South Carolina, and then we switched to the I-26 in a southeasterly direction to get to Charleston, which is situated on the coast of the Atlantic Ocean. We had pleasant weather, just slightly overcast, and our eyes widened with each mile as the temperature rose higher and higher, peaking at 26.5C at around three in the afternoon!

One of the things we wanted to do was stop at a Camping World to pick up some gear for the RV. These large stores are devoted to the RVer’s every need, and we found one just off the highway near Fayetteville, so it didn’t involve a great detour. Marlon, our sales rep, gathered all our stuff and helped us hump it to the RV. Then he pointed us in the direction of a local restaurant with good southern cooking, called Fred Chason’s Grandsons, “Carolina’s Famous Buffet”.

We could tell it was a popular spot by all the cars parked out front. The low, sprawling building housed booths and long tables inside, with a buffet section just beyond the eating area. Large stainless steel containers stood on steam tables in several rows, laden with pulled pork, mounds of mashed potatoes, sausages, lima beans, black-eyed peas, macaroni and cheese, green bean casserole, mountains of hot biscuits, grits, greens and food items I’d never seen or heard of before, plus a salad bar on the side and another counter covered with great slabs of layer cake, puddings, pecan pie and other tempting confections for dessert! Eager hands ladled out hearty servings of all the above as appreciative patrons made the rounds and then sat at the long tables to enjoy their meals. We did not leave hungry, but I did manage to resist the pecan pie, leaving me with a great sense of virtue and accomplishment!

Not long after we crossed into South Carolina, we caught our first glimpses of Spanish moss hanging languidly from some tree branches, and, in the swampy underbrush on either side of the highway, there were small palmetto palms scattered about. I kept looking for alligators in the murky waters, but they were well hidden, as were the Burmese pythons that also inhabit these parts.

Our entrance into the Charleston area coincided with rush hour plus the first spatterings of rain. We saw lots of industrial areas, shipyards with cranes and oil storage tanks and plenty of cars and trucks. Not much of an introduction to the city’s fabled southern charm and beauty, but we plan to stay here for a few days, so we’ll be exploring all of that very soon.

Old cotton fields

Wednesday, January 9, 2013

Rocky Mount, SC – No more jackets, scarves and gloves! When we reached our destination today here in South Carolina, the temperature read 22 degrees Celsius! And, as predicted yesterday, I managed to spot a shrub covered with blossoms as we drove into town. Of course, it is still technically winter around here too, and the majority of deciduous trees are bare, standing on ground well littered with dead brown leaves, but we saw some smaller trees in green leaf along the side of the highway.

The white fluffy stuff we saw on the shoulders of the highway in the final few miles of our journey today was not snow, but shreds of cotton from the cotton fields we passed, now that we’re approaching the true south. More indicators have been the pleasant “honey” that sales staff use when addressing me as I pay for our fuel. It’s quite lovely. Plus the grits and biscuits that were part of our breakfast fare at the hotel this morning.

We have been continuing southward, but took an eastern turn as well today, departing from Interstate 81 as we left Winchester and heading along State Highway 17 and Interstate 95 and 64. This allowed us to skirt the Washington, DC area and pass through some lovely farm regions where cattle were grazing on rolling hills. We passed old stone homes with plantation names, and the properties were delineated by long stretches of low walls, made from field stones that slaves must have stacked in place many long years ago.

Not being on an interstate for much of the day meant we saw fewer tractor trailers, which made the driving a bit easier. There were some, but the highway wasn’t nearly as congested with them as yesterday. Our choice of routes also meant we missed the steepest sections of the Appalachians, which can be treacherous sometimes if the weather turns bad. We had none of that today – just light clouds most of the time and that steadily climbing temperature.

The town of Rocky Mount, population around 60,000, was established in 1867 and owes its origins to a cotton mill, the tobacco trade and the railway. It’s also the birthplace of one-time boxing great Sugar Ray Leonard. When you’re just passing through, however, you don’t get to see a lot of the nicer parts, such as parks or historic town centres, so I can’t tell you a whole lot more. But I’ve included a photo of one part of the town that was taken by one of its citizens, to give you an idea.

Mini avalanche!

Tuesday, January 8, 2013

Winchester, VA – We have crossed four states today – New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland and West Virginia – and we’re now in a fifth. The last two were just small wedges of state, but it brought the total to five nevertheless. The foothills of the Appalachian Mountains came into evidence as we continued southward, lending us vistas of rolling hills with small towns nestled in their folds.

The weather was very kind to us again today. On the forecast in the hotel breakfast room this morning, we heard of rising temperatures across this part of the country, and the risk of avalanches which that presented in some areas. My concern was for the thick pad of snow on top of the RV, and what would happen if that were to come loose as we traveled along.

I kept looking up at the skylight above our heads, which was totally encased in snow when we left Ottawa and all day yesterday. This morning, after an hour or so on the road, I could see a couple of patches of blue sky through the white, and water droplets against the glass as the warmer temperatures went to work.

The outside temperature recorded on the dashboard of the RV started at about minus three degrees Celsius, and quietly rose mile after mile. The thick blanket of snow in the underbrush on either side of the Interstate began to thin out, and tufts of grass started showing through in larger and larger patches. We actually saw some plants in the bush with green leaves!

We stopped for lunch at a Pilot truck stop just off the highway, hoping to fuel up at the same time. After skirting huge tractor trailers as we approached the diesel pumps, we discovered they were not designed for a pipsqueak RV like ours with a mere 25-gallon capacity. So we decided to skip the fueling up and just park and eat. We found a spot that faced into the sun, and left the RV like a midget among giants while we went inside.

Back out on the road, we pulled into another filling station across the road to try our luck at their pumps. This time we succeeded. To get onto the ramp for the southbound side of the interstate, we had to do a bit of a U-turn, and as we did so there was a loud whooshing sound as a big load of snow flew off the roof of the RV and splattered on the ground, as well as on our windshield in front of us! Good thing we were off to the side where we could stop and clear away the avalanche in safety! I was so relieved to have that taken care of at last! There was only a small lump at the very back left when we got onto the highway again, and by the time we made our next stop it had completely disappeared.

The mercury got as high as 12 degrees by the end of the day. With any luck, we won’t have to contend with the white stuff again for a long time. The landmark we’ll be looking for now will be the first flowers in bloom! Won’t be long now!