Travels with Snowbirds, May 5 to 12, 2013, Lake Aire RV Park, Hollywood, SC.

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Hi. Its me. I am on the road again.

I belong to this nationwide RVing club, Loners on Wheels. It’s exactly what it is called. - Single People who camp. There are numerous chapters all over the country. While in NJ I belonged to the PenNJs. While in FL this year I joined the MidLows. (Joining National is $55/year – seems expensive to me for what I get out of National, but it I what it is. Chapters annual dues range from $5 to $10 – cheap). The Chapter I should belong to in SC is SELows. They encompass NC, SC, GA, and TN. They hold week long campouts every month during the warmer months, and travel together as a club to many of the regional rallies. Most of their event s are very far away from me, requiring a 2 day travel trip and lots of gas, so I haven’t joined up with them until now. May’s campout was scheduled for Hollywood, SC, 15 miles from downtown Charleston and 5 hours from my home in Wilmington, NC. I was getting antsy, time to get back on the road, so I seized this opportunity to visit a place I wanted to see again, and bee with a bunch of single oldsters.

For almost the entire week before I left Wilmington it rained. Sometimes it poured, sometimes it drizzled, sometimes it was just cloudy, but generally it rained for a week. This did not leave me warm and fuzzy about the condition of the ground in a campground 5 hours away, but what the heck. I packed up on Saturday, in the rain, and Winston and I hit the road on Sunday, in the rain. I travelled my old friend US 17 South pretty much the entire way. I feel like I know her very well, and now I live half a mile from her. Funny.

I needed propane. I should have had the RV dealer fill it up when I had some work done earlier in the week (vent covers) but totally forgot about it. I decided to go a little out of my way to hit the Camping World in Myrtle Beach, as I knew it would be cheap there. I was there at 9:20 am. Closed. And, they didn’t have a propane tank. I was pissed at myself. Back on the rainy road, thru the Francis Marion/Swamp Fox National Forrest (35 miles of pretty straight road thru a pine forest), past the empty (due to rain) Sweetgrass Basket Makers shacks (remember, it was raining) and opted to take the LONG way around Charleston on I526 rather than US 17 thru downtown. It was a pleasant ride, actually. Moya tracks true on the road in the rain, the windshield wipers are awesome. I am listening to “The MockingJay,” the third and final book of the Hunger Games series, and I had a good time!! I needed a few food supplies so I hit the Wal-Mart in Mt. Pleasant and arrived at Lake Aire RV Park in Hollywood around 1:00, signed in and got propane!!! OMG was this campground muddy. The owners have done a real good job of spreading bluestone gravel in the really bad spots, but this unduly long rain spell made mud like I have not ever seen anywhere. As I drove to my site I saw ponds underneath the rigs that were already here. But, pleasant surprise, when I got to my site it was a little higher than those around me, and no real mud puddles. I pulled in, plugged in, threw down my rug so I could have an unmuddy spot or two to step in, and took Winston for a walk. It seemed to me that most everybody was already here, but hunkered in due to the rain. I was told happy hour would be at 4 if weather allowed, and it was!!! Bobbi, the chapter president, had collected lots of brochures; she arrived a few days early. We made a list of what we wanted to do, and chose to go to the Visitor Center the next morning, check it out, and perhaps take a tour.

I slept like a rock Sunday night, and was up bright and chipper and hopefully a nice sunny Monday. NOT. While it didn’t rain, it was overcast and sprinkled every now and then. There are 11 of us here, 7 ladies, 4 men, with lots of cars!! We piled into 3 cars and headed downtown to the visitors center, got more brochures, and got on the free CARTA shuttle bus. We got off at City Market, which is kind of like a cross between New Orleans French Market and Boston’s Faneuil Hall. Vendors included Sweetgrass Basket Makers, canned good, jewelry, linens, cook books, paintings, etc. I bought a slide for my silver necklace, a piece of abalone shaped like a sandal set in silver. Really cool, $15, I thought a bargain. Lunch at TBonz, a local burger joint, and back to the RV, and Winston was very happily asleep in his crate.

Tuesday I woke up to, surprise, surprise, cloudy skies. We decided to take a “Doin The Charleston” 1.5 hour tour bus around town. Back to the visitor center, onto our bus, and were greeted by crabby Marvin. I am not going to go into the details of his red necked bigotry and numerous other types of inappropriate remarks. The sights were great; I must have done something like this before, as it all seemed familiar, maybe I did during my last visit on a long ago Snowbird trip. The battery has beautiful multi million dollar homes on the harbor, just breathtaking. We couldn’t get out and walk on the sea wall, it was raining. If you ever visit Charleston, please remember that name, “Doin The Charleston” tour, and don’t do it. Some opted for eating lunch out after the tour; I hitched a ride with someone coming back to the campground, and it seemed the sun might be coming out, maybe. Winston was fine in his crate. Yippie!

Up early Wednesday to SUN!!!! and the promise of temperatures near 80!. 9 of us left early to take a boat ride to Fort Sumter. This was one of the few remaining open boxes on my bucket list. I was stoked! I grabbed a seat in the stern in the sun and took some great pictures of Charleston harbor and the USS Yorktown. Charleston is a busy port, so we passed several large full container ships – they are massive! A Carnival Cruise ship was berthed there as well. I think I took some really great shots of seagulls along the way. (I have a new bird watching app for my iPhone/ipad, and have the ability to add my own pictures.

We had an interesting talk by a ranger intern refreshing us all on the history of Fort Sumter and the Civil War. Firing that shot that started the war that killed about 620,000, about 5% of the US population. If you figured out that percentage on the current US population, it is equal to 7 million. That’s unreal, isn’t it? More people were killed in the Civil War than all other wars the US has been involved in combined. Amazing.

I found these interesting facts about the Civil War: Approximately 625,000 men died in the Civil War, more Americans than in World War I, World War II, the Korean War and the Vietnam War combined. If the names of the Civil War dead were arranged like the names on the Vietnam Memorial, it would stretch over 10 times the wall’s length. Two percent of the population died, the equivalent of 6 million men today. Rifles were by far the war’s deadliest weapons, but deadlier still was disease. In 1861, as armies massed, men once protected from contagion by isolation marched shoulder to shoulder and slept side by side in unventilated tents. Camps became breeding grounds for childhood diseases such as mumps, chicken pox and measles. One million Union soldiers contracted malaria, and epidemics were common.

My father, dear Tom, had a passion for studying the Civil War. He had many books, read most of them, lots of maps and memorabilia, and when he and my step mom traveled, they always had to visit some battleground or museum. I never understood this. Not his study of the Civil War, the passion for the quest of knowledge. Now that I am OLD(er) I see this in a lot of seniors. Me, it might be bird watching..........laugh. I wish I had paid more attention to the Civil War stuff my dad spouted, I do feel inadequate here amongst all this history. Pay attention to this my kids......I wonder if this passion will happen to you as well when you reach 60. Remember me saying this if you do.

I have added a few items to that aforementioned bucket list. Inside the Fort Museum was a map of coastal fortifications. I realized I have been to many of them, but there are a lot I haven’t. Check out this list, and you will recognize some of the names from previous writings.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_coastal_fortifications_of_the_United_States

So, I will print out this list and put it on Moya’s bulletin board and check them off as I do them. Fun!

After the boat ride back to Patriot Point, the majority of the group wanted to tour the USS Yorktown, Aircraft carrier extraordinaire, served in WWII, Korea, VietNam, being retrofitted many times to fit the new technology. I was going to wait for them on the dock as I knew how much climbing it would involve, but I went for it, and wasn’t disappointed with the climbing!!! I lost my breath a couple of times, but I did it! We had lunch in the crew mess!! Several went on the bomber flight simulator (I don’t like those pitching boxes, I watched) and I read a lot of signs and took a lot of pictures. The hanger decks are so big!!! Not so wide, but long!! Also berthed there are a Destroyer, which is TINY compared to the Yorktown, and a submarine. There are several on land sections as well, I would have liked to see the VietNam helicopters. I was exhausted at the end of the day. Back at the campground we disappeared into our rigs to prepare for pot luck Wednesday. What an amazing spread put on by our 11!!! One of the guys crockpotted pork chops and sauerkraut all day and it was yummy. Avocado and Tomato salad, sweet potato casserole with an amazing crunch pecan topping, key lime pie, cheesy potatoes, mac and cheese, key lime pie, and another amazing desert of crumbled cake held together by whipped cream with cut up peaches. Burp. Open the pants buckle. We have enough left overs to do it all over again Thursday night.

Thursday morning Winston woke me up very early. That’s probably because he wouldn’t wake up to go outside Wednesday night. GROWL. But, the sun was out and it was a lovely morning for a walk. The group split up into two groups, those that wanted to visit Charlestowne Village (restored old buildings) and walk on Folly Beach, and those that wanted to visit all the local thrift shops. I opted for thrift shopping, but when I arrived, there wasn’t room in the car for me. Yes; exactly. Uh huh. I opted for a morning of crocheting and working on trip pictures. There were other people who did not go on either event, and we decided to go out to BBQ lunch at a place I saw up the road a piece, Bessingers. One of our campers, a very southern Republican, told me to check out the patriarch of the Bessingers, and I sure did. Taken from an article written in 2005 for DemocraticUnderground.com. Uh huh. I am unable to find out who is/was #1.

100 People Who Are REALLY Screwing Up America -- #2 Maurice Bessinger

In the 1950s and '60s, Maurice Bessinger was the head honcho of the National Association for the Preservation of White People. He was a strong and vocal opponent of desegregation, spoke out loudly against racial mixing, and refused to let blacks into the main dining room of his restaurant. He complains today that people have been treating him unfairly for his racist views. "What the blacks didn't realize," he said in an interview, "was that they got the best food, because their dining room was in the kitchen."

How have the years treated Bessinger? Has he changed his ways since the bad old days? The answer is, not really. He's a bit older, a bit more religious, quite a bit more wealthy. He owns a chain of restaurants, Maurice's Piggy Park, that has come to define barbeque in South Carolina -- and outside his restaurants you will invariably find the Confederate flag, proudly waving in the wind.

If you aren't already repulsed enough to turn back and find an Arby's, and actually set foot inside the restaurant, you will find a variety of religious tracts for sale. One of them, entitled "Biblical View of Slavery," argues that slavery is not evil because it is permitted in the Bible. The tract states, in part, "Don't let anyone try to load you with guilt and say you need to make reparations for what your forefathers did. No! What our forefathers did was not evil in and of itself." It also argues that African slaves actually felt happy and blessed to be slaves, and they were sad when slavery was abolished, because they were happy to be beaten and spat upon and removed from their families, etc.

According to Bessinger, Abe Lincoln was an evil man who issued "illegal" executive orders.

Nevertheless, his barbeque continues to sell very well indeed -- and with every purchase of a bottle of his mustard-based sauce, Bessinger peddles his racist, neo-con wares. The scope of his audience would make many media moguls blush, andthe message is straight out of the Dark Ages.

If you want to hear Bessinger's side of the story, incidentally, stop into his restaurant, or go to his website and click on "Truth Store" to buy a copy of his book, "Defending My Heritage." Just don't read it while eating his world-famous BBQ, unless you have an incredibly strong stomach



We arrive at the restaurant, me knowing all this, but my 2 ladies lunch companions did not. It was a little confusing, and I asked a man in line how this place worked. He asked me what part of NJ I was from. Then told me I was allowed as long as I didn’t vote for Obama. Uh huh. One of the other ladies, who lives in Germany, jumped right in and asked him what was good, and he said he’s probably eaten 300 hamburgers there over the years, so that’s what she ordered. He ordered us a basket of onion rings, and paid for them with his order. Was that his way of apologizing for the insult? The other two of us ordered Jumbo sized pulled pork BBQ sandwich basket. $8.75. Drink, $2.50. The basket came with a side of nicely cooked steak fries, and one of these world famous onion rings. The order of onion rings contained 4 onion rings. A large single ring of onion was thickly coated with a dough tasting somewhere between hush puppy and donut and crisply fried. They were awesome, but the dough was thick and sweet, making it different than anything any of us had previously tasted. We could not finish all the onion rings, as each of us had one on our order, and the basket with four….Yes, four onion rings, and we couldn’t finish them!! The ordered hamburger was a double patty event, about 6 inches high, lettuce, tomato, special sauce. It had to be compacted to fit into mouth. The Pork BBQ in mustard based sauce was, well, different. Even though it didn’t taste much like mustard, because it was mustard colored you expected it to. It really tasted like BBQ sauce. The JUMBO sandwich was anything but, not compared to that burger, but it was satisfying. The sweet mustard sauce kind of grew on you. Interesting to note, the 3 of us thought that our onion ring purchasing knight, dressed in blue oxford cloth buttondown shirt, was probably a local (sleezy) politician. I read them the above article once we got back to the car and we all had a good laugh.

Next stop, the local “Save the Pets” Thrift Shop. No purchases, but a lot of poking and prodding. Thrift shop operators everywhere are the same. Put all those items highly prized by dealers into showcases or locked, and priced so high they haven’t got a chance of selling them. A beautiful Bakelite bar tool set, nice condition, in box, $100. Not on your life. A 6 panel interior door with original hardware, painted at least 12 times, $45. Not on your life.

I have learned a new saying, frequently used by ‘genteel’ southern women. “Bless Your Heart”. One of the camping ladies told us she most frequently hears is used when seeing an ugly baby. Give it a chuck under the chin and say, “Bless Your Heart,” is another way of saying, “Oh you poor thing.” We have corrupted that into a genteel way of saying “FU”. It is very effective here in our group. We have had a lot of laughs about the proper and improper use of “Bless Your Heart,” and now say it to a thoughtless driver, “Bless His Heart.” You should try it.

Thursday’s Pot Luck Part II got cancelled. All had eaten such a big and late lunch, we cancelled reheating leftovers in favor of eating ice cream which someone had in their freezers from a previous campout. Vanilla, chocolate, strawberry and all the toppings. Yum. Then a gray cat showed up, and started rubbing his head on all legs. Naturally, he got to lick all the bowls. He hopped up next to me, and with my love of cats I chased him away, but not before I watched a flea jump off him to my arm. That finished the poor thing from being friendly with anyone. Scars all over, and someone thought he had been declawed. Poor thing. Bless His Heart.

Friday was Greek Festival Day. The group I wanted to go with went for lunch. We toured the vendors and beautiful church, and ate our way thru gyros, moussaka, baklava, greek wine or beer, and it was yummy. Some of the group went later and then went on to a street fair with dancing. I enjoyed the down time, and got to sit in the sun for a while. Winston has been very very good!!! When I am visiting friends, I have left him in the RV with the screen door open and he hasn’t even barked!!! I leave him in the crate when I go out with his kong and some cookies and he doesn’t bark. Is this my dog????

I did a dumb thing that is going to cost me money. It got very windy about 4. I closed my awning. I didn’t realize that the door wasn’t secured, and it got caught in the awning mechanism and bent both the door frame and the awning strut. Now the awning doesn’t lie flat on the side of the RV. I called my handy local RV shop and asked if I could bring it there and leave it until they could look at it. They agreed, and when I get home on Sunday I will leave it there and hope for the best/cheapest outcome. I do have extended warranty insurance; I hope it might cover some of the expense. GROWL.

Saturday most of the group wanted to go see the Confederate sub, Henley, and then another street fair, and I wanted to sit in the sun, crochet, and clean the inside of Moya. 2 other girls stayed behind as well, and we decided to hit Bessinger’s for lunch again. Today it was a pork BBQ Tray – unsauced shredded pork, my choice of 1 side, mac and cheese, and choice of roll or corn bread and a drink, $7.77. I added a reddish brown sauce, a more traditional BBQ sauce. It really was yummy. I missed the onion ring, though. I spent the afternoon crocheting in the sun and wiping down every surface inside Moya. The club president had money left over from our campout fees, so she bought very good pizza for dinner from a local joint. One of the ladies made cream puffs for desert and they were awesome. Filled with creamy stuff and peaches.

Time to go home. I will get up Sunday morning and head north. I will not drive my favorite US 17 again, it is just too long and too many traffic lights in the Myrtle Beach area, so I will take a parallel road a little further west.

It’s been fun catching up with all y’all. I miss writing. It’s as calming for me as crocheting is. But, it’s time to get home and stay home for a while, and get ready for my trip to UT. July 1 is ETD.

Kat Out

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Photos

Turtles Sunning on the Lake
This is the view from my campsite

Visit to Fort Sumter
Another check mark on my bucket list

I love old historic flags.
This one was the Federal Flag that flew over Fort Sumter when it was first attacked.

Map showing all the 'coastal fortifications'
I still need to see some, and note there are 2 in NC!!!

Note Red Tape on SC Flagpole
That red line marks the height of the original Fort. During the numerous bombardment to gain control, it was pounded down to the level you see now and never rebuilt.

USS Yorktown
one of my favorite pictures