Route 17!

After an amazing week at The Marriott Monarch Resort in Hilton Head, we continue to track up US Highway 17, also known as The Coastal Highway. Highway 17 runs pretty  much parallel with  I95 from Florida to Virginia. In some areas it runs closer to the Atlantic though, and that's why we're on it. Destination now: Charleston, South Carolina, for a revisit. The first time there, as was true for Savannah, we just touched on the area. This time we intend to dig in. Our specific landing spot, from info we gathered last time, is James Island, an area about 10 minutes Southwest of downtown. The James Island County Park http://www.ccprc.com/index.aspx?NID=1434 has a full service rv park and is a regional destination for all things outdoors for the area. There are festivals of every imaginable variety going on just about every week there. During our visit, a Cajun Festival and The East Coast Paddle Sports and Outdoor Festival happened. There are venues for cycling, boating, running, camping, swimming, just about anything you could do outside, including just sitting among the beautiful trees and foliage and watching shrimp boats in the rivers, gliding along, sometimes magically appearing like they're skimming on top of the saw grass fields.

James Island County Park near Charleston

This time we stayed long enough to get a real feel for the area. We walked almost every street downtown, looked at the amazing homes (many dating back to the 1700's), visited other neighborhoods nearby, like Johns Island, Kiawa, and Mount Pleasant. All of those places have their own special vibe and charm. In fact, Johns Island is home to one of our favorite eating places...anywhere in this entire country (at least the small part of it we've seen so far). We went to The Fat Hen www.thefathen.com a few years ago, on our first visit, and were impressed with it right away. Low Country French is how they describe themselves, but I had one of the most stellar burgers there...and the fries! Oh my! I'm sure the other choices are incredible, but I just can't get past that hamburger. In fact, I had it twice. I even asked the chef to whip up some of the tomato jam (instead of good old Heinz, which does a disservice to this burger!) they serve with the fried green tomatoes that M A ordered, and that totally threw it over the top of the left field wall! Mary Ann is a bit more adventurous and also tried a chicken dish and some veggies and grits and the report was also many starred. It's a good drive from the downtown tourist area, but well worth the time to get there, and a beautiful one too.

Walking along the waterfront in Charleston

 Aside from about a hundred long and short drives in to downtown, we explored other areas too. West Ashley, a gentrified neighborhood just west of downtown, full of bars and cool eateries, is close to where we were stationed in James Island. It's just a bridge or two away! We drove over to Sea Island and Kiawa, a newer posh development with an already very famous golf course. In fact, it's soo posh, the new Marriott Courtyard Hotel doesn't even have any visible signage, only "Boutique Hotel" can be seen from the outside. Mount Pleasant is east of downtown, over the Ravenel Bridge. It's home to lots of local seafood places, marinas, and most of the really important shopping for the Charleston area (like Trader Joe's and Whole Foods for us). After a couple of weeks in the area, and the revisit to Savannah, we think we might even qualify for the test to be local tour guides! Well, ya never know!!

Ravenel Bridge connecting Charleston & Mt. Pleasant

 As a side note, while in Charleston, Smarty decided to have a heart attack! His fuel pump (get it?) went out and that lead to another failure with his complicated and computerized innards. The crankshaft sensor also failed. So Mary Ann picked me up in the Best Buy parking lot with H2 , where I was stuck. Who ever knew we'd be using our roving house as a tow truck one day! We hooked up Smart, moved to a Walmart lot for the night, and early the next morning reported in at Baker Motors, the Charleston Mercedes/Smart Dealer. They gave us a Mercedes SUV to drive while Smart was being operated on (4 days!), and even let us stay the first night in H2 in their back lot before relocating back to James Island, while we waited for the news of Smart's condition. By the end of the week, he was returned...ALIVE! After almost 58,000 flawless miles, we figured that we were due for some maintenance issues. Hopefully, after this repair and a thorough 60,000 mile preventive maintenance check up, maybe we'll get some more good service from the little guy...so far, so good! One thing we've learned, full time rv'ing for almost four years, is that stuff can and will happen and break while we're on the road. Our philosophy is to try and keep it as simple if possible, and having the Smart as a tow car does just that. It has proven to be safe, reliable transportation, backed by the nationwide Mercedes Benz network. Is it the cheapest way to go? No, but it is a practical way for us.
 After a day or two checking to make sure Smarty's repairs had taken, we left Charleston behind and headed up US 17 for the next stop on our route to The Outer Banks, one of the most famous tourist towns on the East Coast, Myrtle Beach, and the beautiful and historic city of Wilmington, North Carolina.