Days 20-27: Florida East Coast and Charleston

This is going to be a bit of a long, chronological post.   

After Disney we were ready for some R&R, so on Friday we headed to the East Coast of Florida where the Kennedy Space center is and stayed near Coco Beach on Patrick Air Force base.  At one point we had planned to do the Everglades, but decided we didn’t want to do the drive down there, and deal with the bugs we had heard were really bad.  We found a lovely site right on the Banana River.  Look at this place!  It was so peaceful.  I’m telling you though, it tried to eat us alive.  Not long after arriving the storm hit.  WOW!  The rain wind and lightening put all the other storms on our trip so far to shame.   There are small weeping holes or vents at the bottom of windows in most RV’s and trailers.  The wind was blowing so hard it was blowing the rain into these small windows fast enough to start to soak the inside of our trailer.  We used every towel we had over the next hour.  

The next day, Saturday, we went up to the Kennedy Space center.  What a difference in efficiency and communication compared to Disney.  We enjoyed our time, but it really made us appreciate how good Disney is at moving people around and communicating what there is to do and where things are.   Seeing the rockets, and the space shuttle in real life was pretty amazing.   

Sunday was a bit of a down day.  I went and played golf (terribly) on the Air Force Base course, while Annie and Claire relaxed.  We then went down to Coco Beach, spent some time in the ocean, and checked out the Ron Jon flagship store.  News flash! It’s just a big store.   Since we skipped the Everglades we had to make a decision about where to go next.  We chose Charleston, SC.  But before leaving Florida the next day we managed to squeeze in a fan boat tour, where we saw some alligators, learned some cool stuff about the swamps, and then happily said sayonara to Florida with its unending rain and oppressive humidity.  Someone should have told us that Charleston was going to be even hotter!  

We loved Charleston even though it was a moist baking oven of a place.   The KOA campground we stayed at was very nice and and Claire made some great friends.   I was a bit under the weather the first day so it was a day at the camp on day one.  Then we visited the USS Yorktown CV-10 aircraft carrier and  museum before a boat trip to Fort Sumter.  What a cool place!  We learned about life on the ship, and then about the battle that started the civil war. 

Charleston day 3 involved a morning romp to Magnolia Plantation.   It was a beautiful place where we learned a little bit about life on the plantation and the lives of slaves.  The history seemed a little white washed which I guess you would expect from a privately owned family farm with a strong slave owning history.  We retreated to the camper for a few hours to cool off before going into Charleston.  We were supposed to do a horse drawn carriage ride tour of town, but the heat index was still well over 100 degrees at 6PM and they cancelled it for the horses sake.  So we did a GPS guided walking tour on our phone that was surprisingly good.  We took an early dinner to let the temp drop down a few degrees about a quarter of the way through.  It was our best meal so far on this trip. Fried green tomatoes and award winning shrimp and grits.  Claire’s mac and cheese was, well,  mac and cheese.   But she was happy.  Charleston is a beautiful, historic city.  It’s charm is undeniable, and we kind of wished we had planned another day here as there was still a lot to see (and more food to eat), but alas it was time to move on to Asheville, NC and some cooler weather.  

We drove the 4 hours to Asheville, though it took 5.5 hours – our first real run in with traffic on our entire trip.  I just posted yesterday about how good we were doing in that regard.  Oh well.  I jinxed us. The weather here is pleasant, and for the first time on the trip we were able to turn off the A/C at night!