Road Trip-- Day 2

Day 2
We had breakfast at the Holiday Inn at Surfside Beach, which used to be a small community just south of Myrtle Beach, but clearly, now some developers have discovered it as well. Ed wanted to go there for breakfast because he spoke at a conference for small chemical industry people last year and it was held at this Holiday Inn.

It was a brisk and sunny morning, kicking up some foam on the beach!

Again, for me, there's nothing quite so wonderful as the feeling of sand under my feet!

After breakfast we drove down the road to see if we could find our old spring break place "Uncle Max's cabin" (because it really did belong to our kids' "Uncle Max"-- it was a rustic place but we enjoyed it immensely at the time. The area had really been renewed and in the place of the all rustic summer beach cottages were now these beautiful 3-story beach homes available for rental. I rather missed the rustic beach cottages-- guess I'm attracted to rustic!

We drove on to Charleston, which is about 2.5 hours from MB, and stopped at Boone Plantation.  

  This is a worthwhile visit because it's one of the few plantations where the slave cabins are still intact. A historic interpreter, and descendant of the Gullah people, gave a presentation/ lecture on the gullah culture.

It would be nice to gain more indepth knowledge about Gullah. I can defiitely see a weekend marathon of watching the mini-series North South on the horizon since it was filmed on Boone Plantation along with Alex Haley's Queen.

By the time we left Boone Plantation it was time to get down near Charleston and find our lodgings on Patriot's Point. Because Mapquest didn't provide the final directions for how to get there-- something I didn't discover until we were well on the road!), we went straight to the Charleston Visitor's Center to pick up a map and information.

After that we found Patriot's Point and checked in to the Charleston Harbor Resort and Marina.  

The room wasn't ready (which seems to be the norm for this place judging by the line at the desk). However, it is situated so very nicely on the Charleston Harbor with a great view!

The resort provides a free shuttle service to downtown Charleston, so we took advantage of that to explore a bit of downtown and have dinner.

Ed was in the mood for barbeque, so we found Nick's Barbeque place on King Street.

It's a cute little place for "casual" dining. I had the pulled pork sandwich and Ed had the ribs with sweet potato souffle and green fried tomatoes.

We then walked down King Street and stopped for a coffee at this cute little coffee shop...

And when I saw this...

...I finally understood why Phillip kept bringing home those coffee grounds for the composting pile.

After dinner and coffee, we enjoyed some city life by walking back to the Rainbow Market area to catch our shuttle going back to the hotel.

Well before 8 AM we jockeyed for a position on the 8 o'clock shuttle back to the hotel and were exhausted. I think we both fell asleep by 9!