Friday 5 July
I made the mistake this morning of thinking because we had passed Savannah and were ahead of schedule, we could add a few extra stops in to our itinerary. Big mistake!
While doing laundry, I always check out the brochures advertising things to do in the area. I found a booklet last night on Beaufort and Port Royal, not far from the KOA and convinced Ross this should be our first stop today. Why? Because some organisation voted Beaufort one of the best 25 small towns in America! It was very pretty, and at Port Royal we stretched our legs and climbed a four storey observation tower which was an interesting detour. We talked there about the fact we have been away for 40 days – it just doesn’t seem that long, and it is hard to believe we will be heading home in a fortnight!
From there we headed to Charleston, and specifically to Boone Hall Plantation which I had read was the inspiration for Twelve Oaks in ‘Gone With The Wind’. We got lost trying to get there, probably lost an hour of the day in the process, and when we finally arrived found it was a $20pp admission fee to even drive on the property, and we did not have the time for the tours it offered. So after all that, we politely declined, did a u-turn and drove on in search of a restaurant for lunch.
We had been travelling up the coast road instead of the main highway so we could take in more sights, but that meant we didn’t come across anything except McDonalds. We kept going until we found a Cracker Barrel restaurant, and sat down to lunch at 3.30pm.
I reviewed our schedule there. My next planned (extra) stop had been Cape Fear in North Carolina, as I had read scenes of ‘Revenge’ were filmed there. But it was too much of a detour to the edge of the coast, and Ross felt our other plan of heading to Charlotte to see the Billy Graham Library was too far inland, so we sadly dropped both plans and hightailed it along the main highway, planning to get closer to Washington DC. Along the way I was ringing KOA campgrounds and we checked out any others we came across, but the KOAs were all full, so we pulled into a motel at about 7pm. We had planned on dinner on the RV, but were still full from our main meal at our late lunch, so fed the kids at Burger King next door while we used their free wifi to plan Washington accommodation and itinerary. While we have given up other stops we wanted to make today, this does mean we will have two full days in Washington DC.
The TV in the motorhome doesn’t work, so the odd stop at a motel sees the kids glued to it. And it seems they manage to find a Star Wars movie on every time! As a result I have not seen any news or caught any episodes of shows I watch at home and was wanting to get ahead on…