Last night I also downloaded a couple of find wifi near here apps, which are quite a bit better than the sports bar apps, but nowhere near as good as my find a campsite app which gives me the 411 on the free walmarts. Anyway, these tools did find me an adequate pancake house where I broke fast with real good wifi and serviceable french toast.
Next stop Brookgreen Gardens, where I spent most of the afternoon. It is quite a place, with at least three distinct personalities. There are the formal gardens, with a lot of odd classical kitschy sculpture, then a sort of history lesson hike through the former slave quarters, then a mini-zoo. A lot of stuff.
The fine-looking southern lady at the Discovery Room gave me the background: It was indeed rice plantations pre-Civil War, but the reason it is here for us citizens now is because after the war, when the plantation owners were completely f—ed, rich Northerners moved in and bought up the old places. In this case, Mr and Mrs Huntington bought four contiguous plantations and made it into one place, to display sculptures by Mrs Huntington and artists she liked. The art is basically neo-classical kitsch (IMO), but it looks great in the very are beautiful gardens.
Pretty fun way to spend an afternoon. But bitterness about the f-ing Civil War is just under the surface and informing everything.
After Brookgreen was Georgetown, SC. I spent an afternoon here last time and remember it as having a lot of history (everyplace has a lot of history around here). I wasn’t feeling it today, I blew my touristing energy for the day back at the Gardens, so I just drove on through.
Somehow I thought I would be driving south through here, but the last two late afternoons I have found myself driving directly into the setting sun. South Carolina slants quite sharply to the southwest, and in the summer the sun sets not due west but in the southwest, so there you have it – full-on sun blindness where I for one did not expect it. Last night I was on a busy Myrtle Beach four-lane that was no picnic, but tonight was even worse because the everyone was pushing 60 mph and I had no idea where my campground was and the glare made it impossible to see any signs until you were basically past them.
I caught a hint of a sign and uey-ed to eventually find the campground, and bad news: it was full on a Friday night, but good news: they allow overflow camping in the overflow parking area. The real campground is very pretty, 14 or so sites right along the river with a boat ramp, and it was full of hard-partying boaters. The overflow lot was around the corner is not so pretty, it is in fact a damp, dark field, but what the heck, it is 100 yards away from a very pretty place, and it is a fine place to sleep, and I got to use the campground shower, so I would be fresh as a daisy for my big day in Charleston tomorrow.
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