{"id":2893,"date":"2017-10-06T13:01:46","date_gmt":"2017-10-06T20:01:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cowlesmountain.com\/Travels\/?p=2893"},"modified":"2017-10-06T13:01:46","modified_gmt":"2017-10-06T20:01:46","slug":"charleston","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cowlesmountain.com\/Travels\/2017\/10\/06\/charleston\/","title":{"rendered":"Charleston"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>We drove down from D.C over a couple of days stopping in Roanoke Rapids, North Carolina, for an overnight in a pull-thru.\u00a0\u00a0 It was a pretty uneventful couple of days till after we drove thru Charleston and onto James Island where we were staying.\u00a0\u00a0 It got real interesting real fast as we made our way on the smaller roads toward the campground.\u00a0\u00a0 Lots of very low hanging branches and the trees themselves were leaning into the roadway.\u00a0\u00a0 I had to drive on both sides of the road in an attempt to miss the thick branches I could see with gouges on them from prior vehicle traffic.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The rooftop antennas were doing their Boing Boing Boings as we made our way the last mile or so to the campground entrance.\u00a0\u00a0 And the Spanish moss hanging on those tree branches\u00a0 gave the drive an eerie overtone while experiencing the sounds coming from the antennas.<\/p>\n

Thankfully once on the campground roadway the branches were all cut back \"\"<\/a>to a decent height.\u00a0\u00a0 This campground was a very large county park with all sorts of areas to do things.\u00a0\u00a0 There appeared to be a water park, an outdoor adventure area including a rock climbing wall, lots of fishing spots.\u00a0 There were even crews installing Christmas lights on specially built structures all along the roadway for their Holiday Festival of the Lights, which looked more impressive and much larger than our Del Mar one. \u00a0 They have two fenced dog parks with beaches and a lake for them to frolic in.\u00a0\u00a0 Kathy wasn’t about to let our pups in the water as the sign at the gate to the dog parks said alligators may live in this area.\u00a0\u00a0 Not sure why so many dogs were playing in the water if there might be alligators just under the surface ready for lunch.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>We arrived on Saturday afternoon, and on Sunday morning we drove over to the visitor center in town to get a map, then we headed out to procure a parking spot, which we found on the very south end of the city along the water in front of the White Point Garden.\u00a0\u00a0 It was from there we started our trek into the historic district.<\/p>\n

First we strolled up Meeting Street.\u00a0 The houses were incredible.\u00a0 Each one was a little nicer than the last one.\u00a0\u00a0 All the balconies with \"\"<\/a>their signature ceiling fans were fabulous.\u00a0 Some of them seem to have painted their balcony ceiling a very light seafoam green, which was strikingly pretty.\u00a0\u00a0 We made our way north to Market Street where we made a right to peruse the market buildings with all their shops in the middle of the north and south Market streets.\u00a0\u00a0 \"\"<\/a>We were going to go down Church Street but decided to walk over to the water near the wharfs and another large park I saw on the map.\u00a0 (Charleston is on a peninsula,\u00a0 water on three sides.) \u00a0 When we got there, it was like a gale was blowing off the water (almost blew the pups off their feet!).\u00a0\u00a0 Just a hundred yards up Market and there was no wind.\u00a0 Not sure why that was.\u00a0 \u00a0I remember NYC on a windy day, the streets were like wind tunnels.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>We walked along the waters edge to the end of that park and cut back inland toward Church Street to head south to the car.\u00a0\u00a0 Church Street had a lot of folks walking down the middle of the brick paved street and bicycles all around.\u00a0 There was lots of great architecture to gawk at, but the atmosphere was so different than just a block away on Meeting Street which had more cars and people plying it.<\/p>\n

In a little while we were back in the park diagonally across from where we parked the car.\u00a0 We drove back to the island for a late lunch at a Mexican place that said they allowed pets on the patio.\u00a0\u00a0 Surprisingly it was really good Mexican food,\u00a0 it did strike me as odd that on the front door in large letters it said “No pets”.\u00a0\u00a0 I went inside and asked.\u00a0 \u00a0They said, “Bring them in,” and he went out to the patio to put a couple of menus on a table for us.\u00a0\u00a0 After we were seated he brought out a pie tin of ice water for the pups.<\/p>\n

Once satiated we headed out toward Folly Beach on the ocean side of the Island we were camping on.\u00a0\u00a0 James Island is large and it took a while to get there.\u00a0\u00a0 But once there, we drove up and down the street closest to the ocean and checked out all the beautiful beach front homes.\u00a0\u00a0 Almost every one of them was raised up about 15 feet from the ground.\u00a0\u00a0 Must be fun to haul all the groceries up those steps!\u00a0 \u00a0We drove down as far south as the road could take us.\u00a0 There was another state park.\u00a0 \u00a0We headed in.\u00a0 The gale was still blowing and there were some pretty large waves coming in.\u00a0 The water was a muddy brown.\u00a0 Had never seen that in the ocean before.<\/p>\n

Something I found out when we were at the campsite earlier that morning walking the pups, I was holding my phone and using my elevation app to determine how low this place actually was.\u00a0 It said we were 6 feet above sea level.\u00a0\u00a0 I was holding the phone about 5 feet off the ground.\u00a0\u00a0 This island is about a foot above sea level.\u00a0\u00a0 No wonder\u00a0 lots of the homes even away from the beach were raised up a fair amount.\u00a0\u00a0 Not long afterward I heard the radio advertisements from many different companies refer to the area as the “low country.”\u00a0 They got that right.\u00a0 \u00a0Made me think of the Netherlands but without the dikes.<\/p>\n

When we got back to the coach, Kathy asked how far we had walked.\u00a0 It hadn’t seemed like we went very far, but I had almost 12,000 steps.\u00a0\u00a0 No wonder my knee was letting me know it was there!!<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Day two we decided to do a driving tour thru more of the historic district.\u00a0 What a cool city.\u00a0 I could live here, although I had not experienced any humidity, which would probably make me rethink that if we came back in the summer.\u00a0\u00a0 After we drove around for a couple of hours, we made it back to the park\/garden at the south end of the city to get the pups out and for us to stretch \"\"<\/a>out our legs too.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 We looked at all the statues from this \"\"<\/a>first city of the secession.\u00a0 There were a lot to George Washington, but the most interesting was the one to all the brave confederate soldiers.\u00a0 It was placed in the most prominent spot in white garden park.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>After we got back into the car, I started searching for a place to eat that would let us bring in the pooches.\u00a0\u00a0 To my surprise I found an ad for a website called www.bringfido.com\u00a0 and it listed lots of dog friendly restaurants all over the US.\u00a0\u00a0 There were many in Charleston, so we picked one and headed that direction.\u00a0\u00a0 It had 5 bones (rating) and almost that high a rating for the Caribbean food.\u00a0\u00a0 I really wanted the jerked chicken!<\/p>\n

We got there – it was called Fuel – and it was an old gas station that had been slightly modified to make it a happening place.\u00a0\u00a0 The patio out back was the nicest \"\"<\/a>patio I have ever been to.\u00a0\u00a0 A couple different levels,\u00a0 a high roof above for shade.\u00a0 A perfect place for us and the pups.\u00a0\u00a0 There weren’t many folks there as it was pretty late for lunch on a Monday afternoon, but the food was amazing.\u00a0 I had a cup of sweet corn bisque and a jerked chicken sandwich.\u00a0 The corn bisque was the best soup I have ever had, hands down.\u00a0 The jerked chicken was pretty good, but not to the scale of the soup.\u00a0 Kathy had the sauteed shrimp salad.\u00a0\u00a0 She said it was outstanding.\u00a0\u00a0 And this, from a dog friendly restaurant app.\u00a0\u00a0 Hard to believe our luck. \u00a0 If only we had found that app 4 months ago. \u00a0 Geez!<\/p>\n

Heading to Savannah tomorrow morning.<\/p>\n

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We drove down from D.C over a couple of days stopping in Roanoke Rapids, North Carolina, for an overnight in a pull-thru.\u00a0\u00a0 It was a pretty uneventful couple of days till after we drove thru Charleston and onto James Island where we were staying.\u00a0\u00a0 It got real interesting real fast as we made our way … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Charleston”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2893","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-traveling-the-hiways-and-byways","category-venturing-out-and-about"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cowlesmountain.com\/Travels\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2893","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cowlesmountain.com\/Travels\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cowlesmountain.com\/Travels\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cowlesmountain.com\/Travels\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cowlesmountain.com\/Travels\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2893"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cowlesmountain.com\/Travels\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2893\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cowlesmountain.com\/Travels\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2893"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cowlesmountain.com\/Travels\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2893"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cowlesmountain.com\/Travels\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2893"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}