Charleston, Savannah, & St. Augustine

By Tuesday morning we had spent three days driving through the Appalachian mountains, and, was time for a change. We left Asheville, North Carolina after breakfast at our hotel, jumped on the Interstate, and headed for Charleston, South Carolina under clear skies. 

We got to our hotel, the Starlight Motor Inn, by 1:30, and they let us in early. The Starlight has been thoughtfully renovated, trying to bring back the era of classic motor lodges. In the lobby, for instance, the reading material on the coffee table was old Life and Look magazines from the 1950s and 1960s.

The exterior looks like a mid-century motor lodge, but the interiors have been nicely brought up to date; especially the bathrooms. 

Even with the updating, though, the owners put some effort into the decorating, trying to keep an early 1960s feel. Our room had a poster for a Sean Connery James Bond film on the wall, and the refrigerator looked like a late 1950s refugee. It was all very cute and comfortable. (It was kind of in a sketchy area of town, though.)

Once we got unpacked and settled in our room, Kathy and I set out to explore the historic old-town. We parked at the downtown city parking garage, and caught one of the three, free, downtown shuttle busses that make a loop through the old town. Here’s a picture of the famous pineapple fountain in the Joe Riley Waterfront Park. 

At the waterfront we walked to the end of the pier where we could see Fort Sumpter (where the Civil War started) in the middle of the harbor, and the USS Yorktown aircraft carrier on the other side.

By 2:30 PM we were really hungry. We fired up Google Maps and found The Griffon, a 4.7 rated pub, almost right on the harbor.

The food was good and inexpensive (a surprise, given its location). Kathy had a salad and I had fish and chips. I don’t know if you can see it, but every surface of the room was covered with signed one dollar bills, including the ceiling. I’d never seen this before, but apparently it’s quite common.

After lunch, we walked around the French Quarter in the historic district. Here is a picture of the US Customs House. 

We spent an hour walking through the Charleston City Market, where Kathy found some perfume that she had been looking for. I pondered replacing my 30-year-old straw hat, but the ones offered cost north of $200. I’ll wait until we get to south Florida.

We finished our sightseeing after 5:00 PM, picked up the free shuttle back to our car, and were back at our hotel by 6:00 PM. 

Wednesday in Savannah

The Starlight Motor Inn didn’t offer breakfast, so we got an early start on our drive to Savannah, Georgia, skipping the freeways and sticking to the local roads. Just after dawn, the marshes and inlets of South Carolina were breathtakingly beautiful. This is the prettiest picture I could find, and the actual scenery was better.

At around 9:00 AM we reached Beaufort, South Carolina, which is about halfway between Charleston and Savannah. We hadn’t yet eaten breakfast, so we used Google, which directed us to Blackstone’s Cafe.

The food was good. I had an omelet and Kathy had a breakfast scramble. Afterwards, we walked down to the water before heading out again for Savannah.

Because it was only around 11:00 AM, we couldn’t go to our hotel yet. So, we decided to take a Hop-On Hop-Off bus tour. I bought the tickets the night before, so all we had to do was hop on. Here’s the map with all of the different stops. 

The first four or five stops were great. We had seats in the very front of the trolley. Then, at one stop, we had to change trolleys and we got seats in the back, where I wouldn’t fit with my long legs. Fortunately, after two more stops, a whole load of people got off, and we were able to move back to the front.

As enticing as hop-on, hop-off sounds, after one 90-minute trip around the city, neither of us was anxious to hop on again. The trolley was open to the air, and, it was really hot and humid, and, much of the time we found ourselves in sunlight. Instead, we decided to go check into our hotel (which was south of downtown). 

As we started driving out of the city, though, I got an urge to walk through Forsyth Park, one last time. We found a free place to park on the street, and we walked down Whitaker Street to look at the house where I lived for almost all of 1971. At that time, this house was a Christian Commune that was part of the Shiloh Youth Revival Centers, which came out of Calvary Chapel Costa Mesa.

The house has been very nicely restored. When we (about 20 of us) lived there it was pretty run down. Three houses away, a block of these old houses has been knocked down, and they are digging a foundation for some type of civic building. So, it was nice to see that this one survived.

Before we left, we walked around Forsyth Park. You may have seen the park in different movies, from Burt Reynolds’ chase scene in The Longest Yard, to Tom Hanks in Forrest Gump. We had to get a picture in front of the famous fountain.

And, Kathy wanted to get a picture with the iconic Spanish moss that decorates the oak trees in the park. On the trolley tour they warned us not to try and take some home because of the insects that live inside it.

After the park we drove to our hotel, which was located right next to Hunter Army Airfield at the south end of town. After checking in, our first task was to get some dinner, since we hadn’t eaten since our breakfast in Beaufort. We went to Outback Steak House, and I ate way too much. When we got back to the hotel, I fell into a food coma.

Thursday in St. Augustine

On Thursday morning, we both woke early, and got to breakfast just as they started serving at 6:00 AM. We were on the road by 7:00 AM with Google Maps set to “Avoid Highways”. It is really relaxing driving on the smaller two-lane roads, seeing a slice of rural America.

On Highway 17, we passed a Piggly Wiggly grocery store, but it was closed. That’s on my bucket list to visit one, but apparently the company is not doing that great. A little further down the road, in Townsend, Georgia, we found “The Smallest Church in America”, Christ’s Chapel.

It was built in 1949 by Mrs. Agnes Hopper, and deeded it to Jesus Christ. Inside it is very cute. I don’t know who maintains it now. According to Google, there is no official “smallest church”.

Just before we left Georgia and crossed into Florida, we had one more iconic experience. We visited our first Buc-ees, the Texas-sized and Texas-founded travel center. Since we aren’t going to Texas, I didn’t know if we’d run across one. On further research, I found that they are now in 10 different states. Inside, the size is simply overwhelming. We bought some snacks, got back in our car, and headed to Florida.

Kathy’s cousin, Linda Sundberg, and her daughter Connie, live in Jacksonville, Florida, so we stopped there to have lunch at “Grumpy’s”, a local breakfast and lunch chain.

After lunch, we continued on to St. Augustine. Our hotel, the Budget Inn, was across the Bridge of Lions, on Anastasia Island. Like the Starlight Motor Inn, the Budget Inn harks back to the motels of the 50s and 60s, and is, perhaps, a little more authentic. We both liked it.

After checking in, we decided to walk around the old town. We parked in the city parking lot, which was $5.00 after 5:00 PM, instead of $20.00 during the day. The famous fort was closed, but we could see it from outside, and take a picture.

We had a tourist map, so we walked up and down the old city streets, admiring the buildings. The sun was down, but it was still very hot and muggy. On the river front there was an air-conditioned pastry shop serving gelato (for $7 a scoop). We would have paid twice that just for the air-conditioning. Afterwards, Kathy had a short conversation with the statue of Frederick Douglass.

We got to bed a little late. Tomorrow we’re heading inland to Ocala, Florida.

Some Scenic Drives

We left Winchester, Virginia after breakfast on Saturday, headed for Shenandoah National Park and the scenic Skyline Drive. Finding it turned out to be a little difficult. The AI “Ask Maps” function seemed to work just fine; it provided a detailed itinerary. However, as soon as we turned on the automatic navigation, the map reverted to sending us down the freeway. Finally, we reverted to the pre-AI behavior and just asked it for the entrance to the park, instead of the entire itinerary. That worked to get us started.

As we drove through the town of Front Royal we saw banners advertising the “Festival of the Leaves”, taking place on the second Saturday of October. Since this was only the first Saturday, the leaves were not yet in all of their glory. However, the leaves had started to turn, and the scenery was still beautiful. Skyline Drive is 105 miles long. It starts in the town of Front Royal and goes south to Pigeon Gap, and the town of Waynesboro, where we planned to spend the night. The speed limit is 35 mph, and so, with stops to enjoy the scenery, the drive took us a little more than five hours.

I mentioned earlier the problems we had with Google Maps. Every time we asked it to take us down Skyline Drive, it routed us to a different highway, eventually getting us on the right road half-way through the park. Apparently that happens to a lot of people. At about the half-way point on our drive, we came to the Thornton Gap entrance station and the park was suddenly filled with cars, clogging all of the pullouts, and parking for some distance on the narrow shoulder. Ten miles further on, we found ourselves mostly alone again. 

We took quite a few pictures with our phones, but none of them really did the scenery justice.

Kathy really liked the trees that turned red, while I liked the yellow ones better. Even though the fall colors hadn’t fully arrived, the changed leaves seemed almost fluorescent. If the sun had been out, they would have been even more spectacular.

At the Neighbor Mountain trailhead, we parked our car and walked a little ways into the woods, hiking a short way up the Appalachian Trail. In 2022, when we took our Northeast road trip, we hiked a couple of miles on the trail in Connecticut. This time we were satisfied with a couple hundred yards. 

Inside the forest, the trees seemed even brighter. Here is a picture of the canopy from the section of the trail that we walked.

As we got near the end of the drive, there were more open overlooks like this. They were really impressive, but I wish it had been clearer.

We got to Waynesboro at 2:30 PM, checked into our hotel, and went looking for dinner which we found at the Fishin’ Pig. Kathy had pulled pork, and I had a shrimp po’boy. We were really hungry, and the food was very good. 

As I mentioned in another blog post, I originally planned for two sights or activities each day. My plan for Saturday was to drive through Shenandoah National Park, and then visit Jefferson’s Monticello and take a tour. Since we didn’t finish lunch until almost 4:00 PM, this turned out to be just too ambitious, so we decided to skip the Monticello tour, and turn in early.

Sunday on the Blue Ridge Parkway

Sunday morning dawned rainy and windy, the remanent of the post tropical cyclone Isaias. Back home, in Southern California, they were getting rain and flooding on the Balboa Peninsula, courtesy of Hurricane Rachel. Today’s plan was to pick up where we left off yesterday, and to drive the first 200 miles of the Blue Ridge Parkway.

We drove on the freeway to the point where Skyline Drive ends, and picked up the Blue Ridge Parkway at Rockfish Gap, a few miles from Waynesboro. Even with the rain, the scenery was still striking. After driving about 40 minutes, we came to a tree that had fallen across the road. I got out to see if I could move it, and I couldn’t.

Just as we were turning around to go back, up drove a ranger in a small pickup. In the front seat he had an electric chainsaw. In ten minutes he had one lane cleared, and we were on our way again.

Well, for the next fifteen minutes or so, until we came to the next fallen tree. This one was smaller, and I thought that I could move it myself. I threw some branches over the edge, and tried to shift the main trunk. I couldn’t move it at all. Its root-ball was tightly stuck in the mud.

As we sat in the car, trying to decide what to do, a group of four motorcyclists (two couples) arrived and tried to move it together. They couldn’t move it either. However, there was enough room for them to get by on their bikes, so they took off down the road.

While we were turning our car around, another (larger) pickup truck appeared driven by a middle-aged fellow with his son. He assured us that it would be no trouble to move the tree with a strap connected to his trailer hitch. He drove his truck over the tree, hooked up the strap, and moved the tree.

However, just as he was finishing up, the motorcycle group returned, and told us that the road got progressively worse. We all turned around, went back to Rockfish Gap, and caught the freeway down to Hillsville, Virginia. Weren’t we surprised when we found the four motorcyclists staying at our hotel.

Monday on the Blue Ridge Parkway

Monday morning was cloudy but windy, with the sun shining through. If all went well, today we’d tackle the second half of the Blue Ridge Parkway, from Hillsville, Virginia to Asheville, North Carolina. At breakfast, we talked to the cyclists, who were also heading down to Asheville. They said that the road was clear, and showed us how to check for road closures on the National Park Service web site. I checked and everything looked OK. Kathy and I drove the few miles to Fancy Gap, Virginia, headed south.

Of course, after 20 minutes of driving, what should we find? An even bigger tree fallen across the road, of course. And, of course, I couldn’t move it.

Fortunately we had a couple of bars on our phones and were able to use Google Maps to navigate to the next access point, further south: Cumberland Knob. This meant that we missed the Appalachian Music Center, though. We talked to a ranger and he told us that the road was open to the south.

The Blue Ridge Parkway meanders along the top of the Blue Ridge Mountains, with expansive vistas on both sides. Unlike Skyline Drive, the speed is 45 mph, although I usually drove much slower. This is the view towards Mount Airy granite quarry, the largest in the United States.

Looking on the other side of the ridge, to the west, you could see small farms and forests.

One of our stops was the Brinegar Cabin, built in 1886 by Martin and Caroline Brinegar. The 125-acre farm contained livestock, gardens, and an apple orchard. For extra income, Martin made and repaired shoes and Caroline wove and created clothing items. Although now owned by the National Park Service, the Brinegar children visit every year.

While the Brinegars were exemplars of the middle class Appalachian life, a few miles to the south, the Moses H. Cone Estate showed how the other half (of one percent) lived. Cone was a wealthy textile magnate during the same time that Martin and Caroline were working their farm. The 23-room Flat Top Manor was the centerpiece of his 3,500-acre estate overlooking Bass Lake. As far as Carolina estates go, Flat Top was second only to the Biltmore’s. 

We watched a couple of short movies about the Cones and Flat Top Manor, but didn’t wait around for a ranger-led house tour. It was already around 2:00 PM, and we were both pretty hungry. Yesterday, we’d planned for this by getting a Subway sandwich, only to be driven from the mountain by the forces of nature. Today, all we had was some string cheese, diet cola, and Sun Chips. 

Soon after, we went through one of the tunnels, and immediately found the road closed, still being repaired from damage caused by Hurricane Helene, two years ago in 2024. Driving down the mountain on a road twistier than the Blue Ridge Parkway, we were stopped several times for crews repairing mudslides and landslides. 

We finally made it to Asheville, North Carolina at 4:00 PM. The downtown traffic was pretty terrible. We checked into our hotel, got some pizza, and turned in. Tomorrow (Tuesday) we’ll leave the scenic mountains and head for the coast at Charleston, South Carolina.

Ohio, Maryland & Virginia

On Tuesday morning we left our hotel in Marietta, Ohio, and headed for Tom and Beth Gross’ house in Catonsville, Maryland. Tom is Kathy’s youngest and only surviving brother. Instead of taking the scenic, two-lane routes, at almost eight hours, we took the freeways, and got there in five. As usual, our first stop was Trader Joe’s, where Kathy was thrilled to find not only the Maryland bag, but bags for Virginia and Delaware as well. That just saved us a Trader Joe’s stop in Virginia.

Beth had dinner for us, spaghetti with chicken and home-made pesto. Tom and Beth’s daughter, Zoe, and her partner Dylan came over, and we visited with them until Tom came home after 7:00 PM. Tom had spent the afternoon showing his old boat to a buyer who flew in from Florida. He was pretty happy, since it looks like he made the sale. 

On Wednesday morning, after breakfast, we went to work with Tom. He and Beth own Fireside Stone and Patio in Ellicott City, right on historic Fredrick Road. As Tom drove us to the shop, he stopped every few minutes to show us another historic marker. This one, almost directly across the street from their house, commemorates the Catonsville Nine, a group of Catholic antiwar activists who burned draft files to protest the Vietnam War in 1968.

A few miles down the road, we visited Tom and Beth’s shop and met their employees. Their shop sells all kinds of fireplaces and wood stoves, which they install. They also do various kinds of stone work. In addition to the retail shop on Frederick Road, they rent a large warehouse to store their inventory. 

A few blocks down the street is the Baltimore and Ohio Ellicott City Station Museum, a free museum which celebrates the first train station in the United States. Here’s Kathy in the reconstructed women’s waiting room. (Men and women had separate waiting rooms. They don’t explain why.)

Although steam-powered locomotives had been successfully deployed in England, none had yet been used in the United States. The original Baltimore & Ohio line used horses to pull the carriages. The owners of the B&O line felt that because of the tight curves on this particular route, the heavier English locomotives would not work. So, Peter Cooper, in 1829, built an upright steam engine specifically for the Baltimore to Ellicott City route, which was eventually named “Tom Thumb”.  

At lunch, Beth met us at the Georgia Grace Cafe, a Greek restaurant where Kathy had spanakopita and a Greek salad, while I had the beef souvlaki, which was great. In the evening, our other niece, Adde, came over to the house. It was great to see her.

On Friday, Tom arranged for an all-day boat ride to the Eastern Shore of the Chesapeake, with our nephew Daniel Jue, his wife Wendy, and their children Jonathan, Christopher, and Mia. Tom has a great, 28-foot cruiser, with two giant Yamaha outboards. 

We left from Sandy Point State Park. The weather was beautiful, and we all had a great ride, especially little Mia.

Our destination was the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum in St. Michaels, Maryland. On the way over, we took the scenic route through the Kent Narrows, which took about two hours. On the way back, we took the main channel, and it took about an hour and a half.  It’s a little faster to go by car, but what’s the fun in that.

Kathy and I got a picture in front of the old light house.

We all spent a couple hours looking at the museum exhibits, and Kathy decided to climb the narrow steps to the top of the lighthouse.

Once she did it, everyone else wanted to see the view. Here is Daniel and Mia with the fresnel lens at the very top.

And here is Kathy and Beth looking out over the bay. Tom had a yearly pass, and so we all got in for free.

After touring the museum, we walked into town for lunch. The town is filled with original houses from 17th and 18th centuries. This is the Snuggery, the first house built in St. Michaels, in 1665, when it was just a two-room log cabin. Today, it is a B&B. 

We got back to Catonsville after 8:00 PM. It was a rewarding, but tiring day. On Friday morning, we took leave of Beth and Tom around 10:00 AM, setting out for Harpers Ferry, and then Winchester, Virginia, using scenic, two-lane roads. Both of us agree that it was a terrific, uncrowded, drive.  One of the stranger things we saw on the drive was the Civil War Correspondents’ Memorial Arch, which was kind of in the middle of nowhere. 

We finally made it to Harpers Ferry National Historic Monument, which is at the intersection of West Virginia, Virginia, and Maryland. We thought that we would eat in the historic old town, but parking was impossible. Since both of us had visited the park before, we decided to push on to Winchester, and have lunch there. After our late lunch we were able to check into our hotel, and lounged around the rest of the day. Tomorrow, Saturday, we are heading south to Waynesboro, VA traveling down Skyline Drive, which runs 105 miles through Shenandoah National Park.