Sonya's Blog - Day 174 - Traveling to Charleston, SC

Sonya’s Blog - Day 174 - December 13th - Traveling to Charleston, SC

Today we move to Charleston, SC. The day started out with a bit of a laugh. For the first time ever, Kizmet slept on Isaac’s bed all night. She usually doesn’t last all night in his room, she likes to sleep in our room. Kizmet has a special way of waking you up, she gets right in your face and sniffs ever so gently. Well she did this to Isaac and when he woke up he just about screamed because he didn’t know what it was. It took him awhile to wake up fully and realize it was Kizmet. He was so happy, he actually got out of bed and tried to take her for her morning walk without waking us. We heard him and her, of course, the trailer isn’t that large. It was about 7 AM, so Blake told him he could catch the sunrise, so he grabbed his phone and ran down to the beach (it’s only a 30 second walk to the beach, so not much of a run). Blake joined him a few minutes later so he could get some pictures of Isaac on the beach with the sunrise.

When they got back, they had big plans for a pancake breakfast. They got to work. They all love pancakes, me not so much. Ah well, I don’t need to eat them. I got up and started packing up our room for moving today. I have to secure stuff and put stuff away, as it will not survive the journey in tact if we leave it where it is. We have forgotten to do some securing during some of our moves and it doesn’t work out well. For example, on our last move the kids forgot to put their soap dispenser in the sink. It bounced off the counter and then when we opened the one slide it got crushed in between the slide and the wall. Had to buy a new soap dispenser.

We had breakfast and packed everything up and I also did a bit of a cleaning up job on the RV because we didn’t need to leave until 11. We got on the road at 2 minutes to 11, pretty good. The drive was pretty straight forward, although we did have to go through the town of Charleston in order to get to our campground. The highway went straight through town, so we thought it would be okay. Our RV map showed us that it was a fine route to tow on.

Not much happened on the drive, we just drove. It was a little stressful after we got into Charleston, there were a lot of tree overhangs that looked pretty low. Our RV didn’t hit any of them, so I guess they are higher than they look. We found James Island County Park and then we found the campground, which is just one area of the larger park. It is all set up for their Festival of the Lights, which runs from 5 till 11 each night. When I was checking in the lady told me that we wouldn’t want to be back to our campground any later than 4:30 each day, because it gets really lined up and is very busy for the festival. We are allowed to drive around and “join in the fun” if we want to.

We got all set up and then Blake decided he wanted to go our for BBQ since we are in the South and they are famous for their BBQ. Blake chose the Swig and Swine because Natasha liked the name. We parked beside the huge smoker and then went and got a table. It was a basic pub style restaurant. We ordered the Family Platter, because it had a sample of everything and boy was it a lot of food. We all ate a lot, but we still had food to pack up at the end of the meal. Blake and the kids decided to get desserts and those were huge too. I had a taste of each one, but they were very sugary and too sweet for me. I am pretty sweet already, so you know, don’t need a ton of sugar in my desserts. It’s how I roll. They couldn’t finish their desserts either, so we had to pack those up as well.

We got back to the campground at 4:45 and there was already a long line-up of people waiting to be admitted to the park for the Festival of Lights. We got to bypass the line-up because we had a campground parking pass, we are special that way. They already had all the lights on, but it was still quite light out. They look pretty good, it will be good to see them at night. We are going to try and see them tomorrow night for my birthday, plus we think it won’t be as busy on a Monday night.

When Blake took Kizmet for her late night walk, he went over to check out the festival. You cannot walk around the driving part, but they have an area near the campground that is for walking around and roasting marshmallows and such. Kizmet was a big hit over there and the festival is far larger than we originally thought.

While he was walking Kizmet, I was reading about Christmas traditions around the Globe. There are some pretty crazy things. In the Phillipines, Christmas is a months long celebration and they go all out. In one part of Cuba they have neighbourhood competitions and each neighbourhood makes a float. You should see the spectacle that they end up making. In New Orleans they light massive bonfires on the levee. There were a few others, but I forget them now. Imbedded in the article was this house that has a cool lights display to the tune of Star Wars. You should check it out on youtube, just google Star Wars Christmas lights. I am going to try and imbed it here to see if it works:

When Blake got back, he called his sister to wish her a Happy Birthday. We all send out Happy Birthday wishes to Val.

Tomorrow is my 45th Birthday, Isaac told me he has big plans!

Sonya