Category Archives: Southern Road Trip 2018

Southern Road Trip 2018

Southern Road Trip: Finale

After Savannah and Macon we headed to Charleston for two nights. I’d rented an AirBNB that was a little camper, located about 15 minutes drive from the downtown Charleston area.

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We had a great two days there. I’m doing highlights now, because it’s been too long to do more, but I want this here for me and perhaps for you!

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Dinner: FIG. Amazing. Highly recommend. I got reservations early for this one.

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Dinner: The Grocery. Also amazing, and not busy enough. This place was really great and needs more buzz—so many people had never even heard of it!

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Brunch: Husk. Loved our brunch—I couldn’t get dinner reservations at Husk in Charleston so I thought brunch might be good instead. It definitely was, though the peach pancake was out of control and I’m so glad we were sharing it rather than one person eating it. SO sweet! The cheese grits were unnecessary but the best cheese grits of my life.

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Brunch: The Early Bird Diner. This was near our AirBNB.

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Drinks: Prohibition. Loved this place—the drinks were good, the ambiance was cool, the bartenders were dressed with suspenders.

Sightseeing: We went to the McLeod Plantation and it was really interesting. I chose that plantation because it told the story of the place from the point of view of the people who worked there: the enslaved peoples, and then later, the formerly enslaved people and the children of those who were enslaved. I feel like this is an area of our country’s history that we often try to pretend didn’t happen, or didn’t matter much, or frankly, doesn’t affect things today, when from the things we learned on the tour, it obviously still does. I didn’t want to just ooh and ah over what rich people got for themselves by owning other people and forcing them to work for nothing. It was a great tour, and I highly recommend.

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Otherwise, for sightseeing we just walked around all over the city. The Battery, College of Charleston, King Street, and all over.

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Camper thoughts: the hosts were wonderful, the bathroom situation wasn’t so great—it was not a regular toilet but something else-a marine toilet? and it worked okay, until an incident the last morning that I’m not going to talk about.

After Charleston, we drove to Edisto Island and Edisto Beach State Park. I’d had fond memories of camping at the beach with my family as a kid, and thought it would be fun. It WAS fun, but it was very hot and our campsite was not at all shady. We did have a tarp that we set up that helped a bit. We were within walking distance of the ocean though, which was very lovely. We spent some time in the water, but ended up getting more red right away than expected and our beach day wasn’t quite as fun as we’d hoped.

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Sightseeing: We went to Botany Bay Plantation. There isn’t much left of the Plantation except a stretch of totally untouched beach. Oh, and this bird that slowly walked in front of us while we were trying to drive.

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Food: We ate at the campsite some, but we had dinners out. We loved Whaley’s Restaurant and shared a fried seafood platter there. We also ate at the SeaCow Eatery for dinner and it was fine.

Then we drove to Clinton, South Carolina to visit my parents. We stayed there for two nights also (everywhere on this trip was two nights.) My mom and dad had some sightseeing planned as well, and we walked around Presbyterian College the first evening, played games, and then spent the next day in Greenville wandering around Furman University, up to Paris Mountain State Park and to downtown. Downtown Greenville has changed so much since I was younger—I never even really went there when I was young because there was no reason to. Now it’s very lovely. We ate lunch at  Tupelo Honey, walked around the Reedy River, and looked at an electric assist bike shop.

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Our final stop on the trip was Atlanta to see my friend April. She didn’t really have enough space for us so I’d found a place within 15 minutes drive of her that was a teepee. Yes, a teepee (through AirBNB). It definitely seemed to have air-conditioning, and access to bathrooms so I though it would be okay. It ended up being amazing!

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There was a huge backyard with two different teepees and a camper—ours was in the corner away from things. The hosts were really nice, and there were animals all around—7 chickens, a dog, a cat, a rabbit, and a fenced in area with goats and ducks! It was such a fun place to stay. I couldn’t recommend it more—we didn’t even take advantage of everything, but if you lived nearby it might be a great staycation as well.

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Brunch: Murphy’s Restaurant. I’d been there before because it’s an excellent brunch place within walking distance of April’s house.

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Museum: Atlanta History Center. We didn’t get to explore the grounds as much as we’d hoped because a huge storm came through! But it was really interesting and definitely worth a visit.

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Anyway! That’s it for the trip! It was a very nice time. I think Louie and I wished we’d been able to do something a bit less hot and more mountain-y but it was great to see family and friends, eat some wonderful meals, and enjoy almost two weeks of vacation.

Southern Road Trip 2018

Southern Road Trip: Two Nights in Savannah

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Part 1 here.

I’d never been to Savannah, even though it’s not terribly far from where I grew up. As a native South Carolinian, I’m going to admit a little secret: we looked down on Georgia. In fact, when I told a friend of mine (who grew up in Charleston) I was going to Savannah, she said, incredulously, WHY?

Well, I’d heard it was pretty cool. Evidently The Book (that’s how they say it in Savannah) helped things a bit too—that’s Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. That book brought tourists in, by the busload. And the city has grown and prospered because of it. Also, Savannah is just plain beautiful, or at least it was in pictures, so I added it to the itinerary.

Everybody online said you have to stay in the historic district of Savannah, and if you do, you can walk everywhere, so I decided to splurge for a hotel there. We got a room for two nights at the 17hundred90 Inn. Supposedly the Inn is haunted, but the haunted room cost a bit extra so I decided to pass.

Anyway, we headed to Savannah from Macon. It naturally took longer than I’d expected (like most of the driving on this trip…I don’t know if it was the truck, or construction, or the heat, but everything took longer.) We got into town and were starving, so we stopped for lunch at the Collins Quarter. It was a perfect lunch.

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We split two dishes, and this is one of them: Smashed Avocado Toast. Yes, we are pretend millennials, ruining the world with our avocado toast.

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After lunch we went to check into the hotel. This was easy enough, but was a little bit of a THING. There was a whole bit with a guy named Grumpy who took us up to the room on the third floor, but wouldn’t let me carry any of the bags, which meant that Louie had to carry more because of it. In any case, we parked the truck behind the hotel and left it there until we departed several days later, which was really nice. The hotel only charged $10 extra for parking, and included free breakfast each morning (though not until 8:30 which meant one day we couldn’t do it.)

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The hotel is full of antiques, and each room is unique. We were in the “annex” which was across the street from the main building. I though the hotel was great and would stay there again. One warning: there isn’t anybody on duty overnight! But we didn’t have any issues, and if you were staying in your own home or an airbnb you wouldn’t expect 24 hour service either.14

After we checked in, we headed out to explore. Savannah is super walkable, and I didn’t realize until we started walking that it was even smaller than I’d realized. You really can just walk about anywhere in 10 minutes, maybe 15. (In the Historic District, that is.)

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Savannah is laid out on a grid with this little “squares” every few blocks. Each square is really just a little park, and it means there is tons of shade and green space. It’s very cute!

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Like any good old city, there are cemeteries. Savannah is really known for Bonaventure Cemetery, but we didn’t make it there—it’s outside of the historic district and we didn’t make it out of the area.

We walked along the River next, which is a bit more “trash touristy” if you know what I mean. We popped into a place Louie remembered going before and getting a bucket of cheap oysters, and decided to repeat his memory.

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Like most memories, it wasn’t quite as good as he remembered, but we had fun trying to shuck the oysters and eating them!

We had dinner reservations at a restaurant called Husk, so at point we headed there. It was amazing! I loved the vibe, and the food was just delicious. It was southern food, but with a focus on fresh, local ingredients (not just deep fried and covered in gravy).

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My shrimp and grits.21

Louie’s fish dish. I forgot what it was, but he complimented the server on the cocoa krispies.

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For dessert we split a frozen grasshopper. Yummy!

The next day we did a bunch of stuff (you read this blog for the quality, Edward Abbey-like writing, correct?) We started with a bike tour with Savannah Bike Tours. It ended up being a private tour with just Louie and I and the guide, a wonderful guy named Dee. He took us all over the historic district and gave us all kinds of great information.

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It will not surprise you that I picked the purple bike.

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28Above: the actual house from Midnight (I think I’m right on this!).

Then we got an ice cream snack at Leopold’s and then went to visit the Owens-Thomas House, which Dee said was his favorite house tour. The ticket for the House also normally included two more museums, the Telfair Academy and the Jepson Center, but the Telfair Academy was closed for the week while we were there, so we got a slight discount. We took a guided tour (I believe that’s the only way to see the house) and learned about the people who lived in the house and the enslaved people who worked for those people.

I will just say: a lot of our trip involved learning about enslaved people, but more as a side note the important, historical rich white people. Well, they got rich because THEY OWNED OTHER PEOPLE AND THOUGHT THAT THIS WAS OKAY. In Charleston, we went to a former plantation tour which skimmed over the rich white people and really talked about the enslaved people (and yes, that’s the word you use today) and their descendants, and it felt so much better, like we weren’t pretending anymore. I am ashamed of the history of my country, and I think we need to really consider how to reconcile our history of using unpaid enslaved people as labor and then to never make that right, with our current issues with poverty and race relations. It’s a huge mess, and seeing these fancy beautiful houses is fun, but it just feels like a façade, covering up a very ugly history.

That being said (said poorly, but said), the house was pretty neat. It had some unique architectural features, such as a bridge on the second floor connecting two parts of the floor. My picture of that didn’t turn out well so I can’t share, but you can just go visit.

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We went for lunch after that, to Soho South Café. I had a fried green tomato sandwich!

We visited the Jepson Center after that, and looked at art in an air-conditioned building for awhile.

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We had dinner reservations at the Grey, but we ended up eating elsewhere. I got angry…I had a little bit of breakdown involving the fact that too many of their vegetable dishes had meat in them. I know it’s the south, but something about it just set me off. I think it was because they divided their menu into four categories, one of which was dirt, which supposedly meant veggies, but then 3 of the 5 had meat in them, and the other two were both rice based dishes, and I just couldn’t. It kind of ruined our evening, but that’s how things go sometime. We ate dinner at Garibaldi’s instead, which felt like eating on the Hill, and I think they had chicken broth in their mussels (which was super weird, frankly, and unnecessary) and the whole thing feels a little funny to write about.

We also stopped at a few random coffee shops: we had a mediocre breakfast at Blends Coffee, but fantastic cappucino and coffee. We had fine coffee at Savannah Coffee Roasters, though a bit acidic for me. And we had a lovely breakfast at our hotel the second morning, with coffee, juice, fruit, yogurt, and these fun egg things which I would love to have on hand for a daily breakfast.

And that’s Savannah! It was a great little city to visit, with marvelous architecture, squares, and good food. 

Southern Road Trip 2018, Travel

Southern Road Trip: Macon “We have mounds too”

This year Louie and I decided to do a road trip around Georgia and South Carolina. Our main reason was to give him the opportunity to get rid of a sailboat he’d had sitting around for various personal reasons. Then I thought, well, we can visit my parents, and I thought Charleston would be fun, then added Savannah, and then the beach, and visiting my friend April in Atlanta, and there you have it: another great road trip! This one was hot and buggy and had a lot of great food, compared to our typical summer trips, but it was nice. (Next year we want to go west, and preferably north.)

So the first step was towing the boat to Macon, Georgia. As always, we work too much, and were too busy leading up to the trip. The day before we were to leave, Louie realized that the tires on the boat trailer just weren’t going to cut it, so instead of setting off first thing in the morning to Macon, he had to go to Wentzville to get new boat trailer tires first! Not a great start (oh, and did I mention it was pouring rain), but necessary.

But we did finally get on the road, around 10 am, I believe. It was still raining, but I’ll tell you, it’s easier to load up a truck for a road trip than a Corolla. It’s harder to drive, and I’m not ashamed to admit I didn’t drive…I probably should have driven the truck after we dumped the trailer, but I was afraid of wrecking it, and I really didn’t want to drive it with the towing. Louie did a fantastic job driving the whole way, and I just sat there looking pretty.

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Louie, inspecting the boat after a few hours of driving. Various parts kept flapping around.

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So we ended up having a very long day—google told us it was 9 hours to Macon, but it took 12 plus a few stops, and we lost an hour, so we didn’t get in until after midnight. I will say I did a lovely job packing avocado egg salad sandwiches for us to eat, so we were able to eat good food along the way without having to stop at McDonald’s or Taco Bell.

The next day we did some sightseeing around Macon with Louie’s relatives (basically). We went to the Ocmulgee National Monument, which is Macon’s version of the Cahokia Mounds. (Side note: everybody we met in Georgia and parts of South Carolina,  after visiting Macon, seemed to have spent some portion of their lives living in Macon…the Macon folks are proud of their hometown! It was a nice place, and probably better to live in than visit, I suppose, though evidently they no longer have a symphony orchestra so that’s less interesting to me Winking smile).

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It was a VERY hot day, which set the tone for the trip. The South in August…I wouldn’t have expected anything different.  Anyway, that’s the visitor’s center which has a very informative museum.

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I have naturally already forgotten it all. This is Louie posing in front of a hut of sorts. I presume this was a reconstruction.

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Unlike Cahokia, at Ocmulgee you get to go inside a mound. This one even had air conditioning! This was behind glass—a recent development, I was told.

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That’s the outside of the mound you can go in! Who would believe there is a whole room under there? Also much cooler and out of the sun (even before the Native Americans put air conditioning in).

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We found this lawn mower really interesting—it’s like a roomba but for lawn mowers. Much safer than going up steep hills on a riding mower, I guess!

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You can see downtown Macon from the top of another mound, the Great Temple Mound. You can also see the Visitor’s Center from there. (One of my favorite things to do at the Cahokia Mounds is to loudly exclaim that the reason the mounds were built was to see the Arch. I actually did this once and people looked at me with horror, and it was a proud moment.)

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This is Louie, out standing in a field. It’s a field on top of a large mound though, so that’s even more impressive.

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Okay, sorry, enough not funny jokes!

After the mounds we had a unofficial driving tour of downtown Macon and then went back to the house to clean up before dinner. We had dinner at a restaurant called Brasserie Circa, which was very tasty—the bread especially was good. During dinner there was a HUGE storm that came through, and there were lots of tree branches down in the neighborhood. The next morning Louie had some paperwork to deal with with the boat and trailer, but after that, we were on our way, heading to Savannah next…and that’s a blog post for another day.

So that was Macon! Short but sweet. It was nice to see Louie’s people there, to see the town, and to drop off the boat. It is hard to transition into vacation mode for us but Macon was a good start.