Knock, Knock!
We had been to Charleston with the kids years ago and we had stayed at the James Island County Park Campground. We remembered that we had stayed only a couple of nights and wished we had been able to stay longer so we wanted to go back to take full advantage of this great campground and park. What we didn’t remember was how low the trees are that create a canopy over one of the very narrow roads leading to the park. Our antennas brushed them as we made our way out to the campground but luckily received no damage to the coach. If you head that way you might want to avoid Central Park Road!
This county park is within a 15 minute drive of downtown Charleston, 20 minutes from Folly Beach and has miles of trails within the park itself. There is so much to do, it was hard to pick what we wanted to do first. We walked and biked the trails through the marshlands that surround the park, we walked on Folly Beach, we did a self guided walking tour around historic Charleston, we took a boat ghost tour of the Charleston harbor, and we kayaked in the lake in the park.
All the while we were keeping a watchful eye on Hurricane Florence. As the storm wobbled toward the coast we decide to hedge our bets and booked a campground 130 miles inland in Statesboro, GA. We had been schedule to go to Savannah for a week and we kept the reservation for several days until it looked like the storm was going to affect that area as well. We finally had to make our best guess and canceled the Savannah reservation and moved up our date of departure from Charleston. We had already gotten everything set up when we got a knock, knock on the door of the coach telling us we would have to evacuate the park the next day by noon. As we had already started closing up and putting everything away we were ready to bug out first thing the next morning.
In an effort to avoid all of the traffic which was going to be caused by the millions of people ordered to leave the Carolina coast we were up at 4:00 am and on the road by 5:30. As it turned out, our route out of Charleston was on less traveled roads, and we only had a 2 1/2 hour drive to Statesboro, so we took our time, even stopping at a rest area for a bit. We called ahead to the Parkwood RV Park to be sure we could get an early check in and arrived around 10 am.
Then we had a couple of days of waiting and watching to see if we would have to move again. While we waited we took the time to investigate our safe harbor. Statesboro is a quaint southern town with lots of great restaurants. We took a walk around town, wandered their history museum, and had lunch at a local brewery. We saw they had a community theater production of the Addams Family Musical and got tickets. The show was definitely small town community theater but we give them great kiddos for trying!
As we watched Florence move on shore and head north Joanna took three days and did a massive, in-depth cleaning of the coach from stem to stern, inside and out! If you gotta be evacuated, you might as well make the best of it!
Florence is now battering the northeast and we feel fortunate that we were able to pick up our jacks and move our home out of the storm’s fury. We are praying for all of those affected by this horrific hurricane and hope the waters recede soon.
Next up Jacksonville and St. Augustine!
Till then,