South Carolina: The Rest of It

Wednesday, April 27 – Friday, April 29, 2022

I have to give a nod to Pip, our Wednesday night Warm Showers host. One of the positive things about staying with Warm Showers folks is learning what they love about living in a part of the country where I may be riding and thinking, why would anyone want to live here? It’s happened before. In this case, I’m thinkiing that it’s already hot and humid in April, there are no mountains, and rumble strips everywhere destroy he cycling experience. But Pip certainly set me straight. She and her husband came to Charleston ten years ago for a work opportunity. They were only supposed to stay for three years but loved it so much that they decided to stay. What they love about their lives in South Carolina is the water with all its boating opportunities.

We hadn’t ridden far out of Mt. Pleasant on Wednesday morning when we came to Isle of Palms and an inviting beach. It wasn’t so very hot that I felt the call to go in the water; I just enjoyed sitting on the beach. Rob couldn’t resist though. He must have swum with a bunch of jellyfish, as he found enormous ones sitting on the beach.

All too often we stumble upon towns or restaurants or parks where we might be tempted to stop and linger for a while. But the timing is off. We have too many miles to cover, or we’re not hungry, or the place is closed for the day, or not open yet. In this case, when I noticed Coconut Joe’s right next to the boardwalk that took us to the beach, we’d just enjoyed our seaside linger and were ready to get back on our bikes. But it sure looked like it would have been a fun place to hang out with a beer for an hour or so.

Coconut Joe’s had a deck overlooking the beach and a patio out back that caught my eye as we were leaving.

It’s hard to see in the photo but next to the hammocks; the sign says “Coconut Joe’s. Beach Vibes Only.”E

Early in the day we met up with Cindy, a solo cyclist and retired large animal veterinarian from Massachusetts working her way north from the Florida Keys. She joined us for the day of riding and camping that night.

The day’s riding was good with no treacherous roads. Even the short bits we had on U.S. 17 weren’t bad, with a wide smooth shoulder. But mostly it was on quiet country roads for a total of 55 miles.

We had no other choice but to camp at a primitive NFS campground – Honey Hill Campground – with the only amenities being picnic tables and vault toilets. No water. But a couple other campers helped us out with that and the mosquitoes weren’t bad, so we had a pleasant evening, even though a hot shower would have been nice.

Thursday was my birthday, number 66, which means in a few months I will reach my full social security age. Yippee!

And what better way to spend my birthday than to go for a bike ride and out to dinner? We rode 51 miles, mostly on quiet back roads, and spent the night at a Best Western in Pawley’s Island. (We weren’t actually on the island, just in the town.)

Friday was the most fun of the three days. We visited Brookgreen Gardens in the morning then played a round of mini-golf. We both got a hole-in-one and I beat Rob by two strokes. Now Rob is eager for a rematch even though he beat me when we played in Fernandina Beach. (He can’t stand losing at mini-golf.) Then we camped south of Myrtle Beach right on the ocean.

Brookgreen Gardens caught my interest because of its outdoor sculpture garden. But it is also has an exhibit of lowcountry history and a zoo with rehabilitated animals from the lowcountry. It opened in 1931 on land that had once been four plantations.

Many of the sculptures were classical figuritive, of the gods and that sort, not really interesting to me. But I did find some I especially liked..

This garden was built over a two-year period to exhibit the sculpture by Carl Milles (1875-1955) depicting the Greek myth of the fountain sacred to the Muses.

The four mail figures respresent branches of the fine arts – the poet, the architect, the musician, and the painter.

I found myself drawn especially to the work of Richard McDermott Miller (1922-2004).

After touring the sculpture garden, we visited the lowcountry history exhibit.

The historical exhibit included representations of the slave owner, the overseer, and male and female enslaved persons.

During the Depression the WPA interviewed former slaves, creating historical archives that were not previously available because so many of the formerly enslaved were illiterate.

This log is from a Bald Cypress tree cut from the swamplands in the 18th or 19th century during the creation of rice fields along the Waccamaw River. It was cut by enslaved Africans using hand axes. The log measures 10 feet in diameter and was likely 500 years old when cut. I wonder what that old-growth forest looked like.

Our riding that afternoon took us through beach neighborhoods.

We passed many large colorful houses. We speculated on how many units were in each one, figuring at least two.

Streets like this were fairly typical of our riding through oceanside communities of South Carolina.

41 miles of cycling for the day took us to the Apache Family Campground in Atlantic Beach. We enjoyed a casual dinner of blackened shrimp, fries, and cole slaw outside (although it was a little cold) at the campground restaurant. Our campsite was next to the beach and a very long pier where people pay $2 for the privilege of fishing or just walking on it.