Best Laid Plans...

Best laid plans… change. And today was no exception. We could not fit FROG easily into the parking lot at Edisto UMC so we regrettably had to call Pastor Scott and let him know we would be heading north to Charleston for our next home site.  Not far north.  The West Ashley (Charleston suburb) Walmart was only about 40 miles away.

And what a Walmart. What an Ashley. The area landscaping and topography reminded us of Cary, North Carolina, where Tim & Crystal Snyder, our nephews family, live. Lush shrubs and trees and deep set lawns mask all commercial and residential construction from the street. 

And we had more grass and trees at our coach than ever before at a Walmart.  Therefore also QUIET…except for the occasional TRAIN nearby.  Mona says I choose home sites based on their close proximity to tracks.  But I actually love to be on the water.

Thought of you, Larry.  Not the books.
The Shriners!

As soon as TOAD was unhitched we were off to the Omar Shrine Auditorium across the Ashley and Cooper Rivers in Mount Pleasant.  The All-Charleston Area library book sale, remember? Yes, we added a bag of new books to the on-board library.  As fast as we read them and give them to passing libraries to sell we find new books we MUST read. And often a DVD or two to watch.

Coming out of the Omar we discovered we were parked within a mile each way of two of the most interesting urban tidal parks on the east coast. Mount Pleasant Pier Park lies directly under the Arthur Ravenal Jr. Bridge near Patriot’s Point.  Called one of the most beautiful bridges in the world when built its simple and striking lines add magnificent dimension to the well 

                                      kept fishing and walking pier beneath.

       

                          

  

Comfortable solid wood benches and swings line the decking and you can watch porpoise play, container ships arrive and depart and crabbers and fisher persons bringing in all sorts of delectable fare.

I met Josie and friend catching crabs for tonight’s dinner and they had just enough by the time I saw them almost lose the last one over the side.  But into the bucket he went, and soon to the pot.

With a couple of hours to Sunset we drove the 3 miles to Shem Creek Boardwalk Park, on the way east to Sullivan’s Island and toward Fort Moultrie.  Shem Creek has been a location for Euro-American ship and boat building and fishing for over 300 years, and for a couple of thousand before that for prehistoric Indians.

The Yamasee and Catawba were the primary nations here when Europeans arrived to ‘civilize’ them. Neither tribe remains in even one persons memory today.  The last Catawba were bought out and assimilated before the French and Indian Wars and the last Yamasee, so we understand, were driven into the swamps by raiding parties and murdered to the last woman and child.

But such awful history is not on the mind of the average Shem Creek tourist these days. The restaurants today get all the press and the Mount Pleasant Seafood Shop earns top billing for fresh catch. But get their before closing because we discovered they close ON TIME.

The shrimp fleet out of Shem Creek may be smaller than in years past but its definitely bringing in the daily haul to local shrimperies.  We are told the local market uses all they can catch.  That means no South Carolina shrimp make it out of the state.  Maybe, but a lot of tourists and snowbirds remove them from local restaurants!

The boardwalk is a journey through history, commerce, and nature.

But it is also a walk toward the Cooper River and Charleston Harbor. And in this quiet harbor of today are the reminders of Civil War just 150 years ago.  Forts Sumter and Castle Pinckney lie just off the outlet of Shem Creek, guarded today by park rangers and pelicans instead of Union or Confederate gun crews. And while most of the batteries dug out of sand are now washed away there are still some of the ‘Ring of Fire’ works existing about the harbor that General Pierre Gustave Toussaint Beauregard  promised to reduce Fort Sumter with.

 

But the Civil War is not remembered lightly in this crossroads of shipping where the war began on April 15, 1861 with the first Rebel shell fired into Fort Sumter.  Many in the south call the Civil War the ‘War of Northern Aggression’.  And if they are feeling more kindly toward their northern tourists they simply say it was the ‘War Between the States’, as recorded on this relatively new veterans memorial at the Mount Pleasant Pier Park.

You are rarely far from the ‘War of the Rebellion’, as some Yankees still call it, south of the Mason Dixon line, and never so close as when you are walking these old streets and docks along the Charleston, SC waterways.

-Ken