Southeast Tour

GREAT TOUR OF THE U.S. SOUTHEAST

I had a list. A very long list. A list of random places throughout the Southeast. A list that included places I hadn't been like Savannah and St. Augustine. A June 2021 wedding in Raleigh seemed like the perfect excuse to knock out the items on this list.

The trip started with breakfast in York, a town forty-five minutes southwest of Lancaster. Due to Lancaster being my family’s “motherland” and the additional forty-five minute drive, I have spent relatively zero time in York. Which is a shame because the town has been going through a bit of a revival in the past few years and is home to several interesting industries: a Harley Davidson plant, York Barbell (which is also home to the USA Weightlifting Hall of Fame), and several snack food purveyors (Hanover’s, Turkey Hill) are in the surrounding area. I could be wrong in this assessment, but York’s recent revival seems to have resulted in more restaurants per capita than Lancaster and I find myself trying to plan more trips out this way. ROOST Uncommon Kitchen’s Roost Special may have been the best breakfast I had on the trip – each component of the “scratch biscuit with apricot butter, crispy hashbrowns, crispy fried chicken, sausage gravy, and queso, topped with a fried egg” meal was individually good and complimented one another. ROOST was also centrally located and while waited for the meal to come out I walked around the city center. The city center has some heft to it – evidence of glory days that are since long gone. Another pleasant visit to York, not yet convinced I’d spend a night.

From York it was almost a two hour drive winding through local roads to Antietam (I passed Gettysburg as that was included on a separate, recent visit). Antietam holds the distinction of being the bloodiest day in American history. A combined 22,717 soldiers died, wounded, or went missing during the battle which resulted in a strategic victory for the Union – Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation five days later. I grant the Union and Confederate generals this: the engage in battle across some truly beautiful and solemn landscapes. Antietam’s rolling hills (which Lee used to mask that he was severely outnumbered) are reminiscent of Gettysburg’s landscape – beautiful places where it’s hard to imagine so many lives were lost. Although similar landscapes, Antietam lacks Gettysburg’s signature topography (the Devil’s Den, Big and Little Round Top, Seminary Ridge) and while Antietam passes monuments on a self-guided drive through the battlefield, those monuments do not compare in quantity or quality to Gettysburg’s, except for the Irish Brigade Monument, a large stone tower.

Winchester, Virginia is an hour north on I-81 from Harrisonburg, Virginia, where an Aunt and Uncle live. I’ve been to Harrisonburg numerous times without a stop in Winchester, which turned out to be a pretty cool stop. I can only imagine my family hasn’t made a stop here in the past because, hey we were an hour away so let’s keep driving, but I liked the pedestrian walking street that was lined with restaurants, bars, and shops – there’s not enough of these old town walking streets in America. The Shenandoah Valley Civil War Museum is in the center of this Old Winchester strip.

I stopped at a Target where about half the shoppers were wearing masks.

Luray, Virginia, which I have visited before (to see caverns), is located in the western foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. I targeted a microbrewery but the town was a little underwhelming so I moved on to Elkton, Virginia, a similar town thirty minutes south. Elkton was similarly underwhelming BUT there was Elkton Brewing – you drop a good brewery in a town, that has a nice setting, that serves good food…and it turns underwhelming into awesome. I loved Elkton. I could have sat on the front patio of Elkton Brewing all night.

A theme of this trip is to visit the places that are slightly out of the way, places I’ve wanted to check out, primarily out of curiosity rather than a specific site, but due to time constraints, etc. I continued past to my primary destination. Enter Roanoke. I’ve driven past the I-581 exit for Roanoke numerous times and finally decided to stop for breakfast on this trip. Scrambled was located in the town’s City Market section and a quick walk around this area before the restaurant officially opened was all it took to like Roanoke. Roanoke’s population grew post WWII but unlike other cities along the Blue Ridges the population has held steady around 100,000 for the past seventy years. Roanoke has some substance, some business still operating in the city center.

As for attractions? I settled for a drive up to the Mill Mountain Star which had a lookout of the city below.

If you drive US 220 through Virginia you are going to see some Trump signs and then you find the motherload of Trump signs. I almost, almost bought a squeeze stress ball of Trump’s head but it had a weird gooey feel. There were some other great propaganda pieces in here like Trump riding on a motorcycle and address a bunch of reporters dressed as clowns.

It took until I was forty years old to finally live in a location longer than I had lived in Winston-Salem, so my college town has always been a hometown for me. If I’m passing by in the general vicinity I like making a stop to see how the school and city have changed. Each year Wake Forest University seems to have a new building. The campus wowed me on my first visit and twenty plus years later I still contend it’s the most beautiful campus in America. The changes this time involved the removal of these dank, dark common areas that served as entrance ways to the four dorm rooms off the school’s primary quad area. Seeing the residence hall courtyards now open, I’m wondering why it took so long for the buildings’ removal. A few shots of Wait Chapel and Reynolda Hall and back on the road. Winston-Salem has not changed too much. There’s a coffee shop in a former gas station on Polo Road which was a nice addition. Mountain Fried’s still amazing. Aside from a few mega car wash complexes, US 52 / University Parkway heading north looks as drab as ever.

North Carolina is a pork barbeque state with an East / West divide. Eastern barbeque is whole hog with a basic vinegar sauce. Western warbeque uses pork shoulder and a vinegar sauce that’s kicked up a notch with ketchup, spices, and pepper. You can’t go wrong with either one. Lexington, North Carolina is the epicenter of Western North Carolina Barbeque. I made a stop for lunch here. North Carolina barbeque includes a side of slaw, that I believe must be an acquired taste, because when I first starting eating Carolina barbeque twenty years ago, I barely picked at the slaw – now I think it’s the perfect compliment and great at sanitizing the palette between bites.

Columbia, South Carolina is a textbook southern city. It has a few things going for it – it’s a state capital, it’s home to the University of South Carolina, and it houses Fort Jackson (Andrew not Stonewall). The city has all the cool things that go with these features: good dining, good drinking, good recreational options. And…it has the weird, hands off, the government shouldn’t be involved zoning which creates the occasional odd empty lots dotting the city’s landscape.

The capital is a decent place to walk around. There’s a green area. Your dog can poop next to where the Confederate Flag used to fly.

The surprise here was how nice the University of South Carolina campus was. I won’t delve into my preconceived notions of South Carolina here, but even with high expectations USC would have exceeded them. The Horseshoe is the school’s center – it’s a brick lined walkway, with large, leafy trees, around which educational and administrative buildings are located. At the far end is a visitor center. It’s still not Wake Forest but I thought it was nicer than say the University of North Carolina, Columbia’s no Chapel Hill but as far as college campus’s go, I’d easily give the edge to USC. A six-pack from River Rat Brewing, a hamburger meal from Rush’s, and it was time to watch Phil Mickelson win the PGA Championship.

South Carolina feels deserted. I get that college wasn’t in session at USC. But Columbia and the rest of the inland state felt like people weren’t around. I eschewed I-26 and I-95 to Hilton Head, opting instead for US Routes and local roads. First stop Allendale which was featured in Paul Theroux’s Deep South.

From here it was two Forest Gump stops and a church ruins site. The film Forest Gump was filmed primarily in South Carolina. Greenbow, Alabama? That’s actually Varnville, South Carolina – although being completely honest and I don’t mean this as a dig there’s no way anyone, even Tom Hanks, would be able to tell Varnville was Greenbow – the film crew did some serious dressing up to give Varnville a little more small town “pop” than what it actually has. Having driven few of these small towns by now, there’s a few others that better check the small town box than Varnville.

Twenty minutes down the road is McPhersonville Church. Even if you didn’t know this was the church where Forest Gump sang gospel with the Black choir hoping for shrimp, you’d still think this is a picturesque setting and that some film must have been shot here at some point. A small white church surrounding by trees? It’s perfect.

Another fifteen minutes down the road is another church – no white chapel just a series of brick columns. It’s the Old Sheldon Church Ruins. It feels a bit eerie pulling into the parking lot across the street but I met another traveler walking their dog here and that put everything at ease. Another interesting site.

When researching this trip I became infatuated with the Beaufort and St. Helena Island area. The other areas I visited, I knew I had wanted to visit them for a while but Beaufort and St. Helena crept up as I began exploring what to see while driving between cities. I’m not sure either lived up to the hype I created in my head – I was contemplating spending a night in the area but was glad I simply woke up very, very early and spent two hours driving around the area. Beaufort’s a nice place. There’s a national military cemetery on the north end of town (Parris Island is twenty minutes away). There’s a quaint, albeit updated, old town shopping street. On the back side of the stores on this street is a waterfront promenade. The homes between the cemetery and the shopping promenade were a bit worn down but the town was still nice.

Post Civil War, freed South Carolina slaves established themselves on the state’s barrier islands. Everything was cool up until the 1970s when wealthy vacationers realized how awesome the beach life was. Developers began buying out what were called Heir’s Properties – basically landed was deeded to a families great, great grandparents, never quite passed down, and after a few generations that family has one hundred plus members; well you can’t divide the land so you sell the land. Along came Hilton Head. St. Helena represents what Hilton Head was fifty years ago, a quiet island with many locals living like they did for decades. I thought I’d catch a glimpse of this lifestyle simply driving around the island, the way you can catch a glimpse of the Amish driving around Lancaster. No such luck. I did a big loop. I didn’t see much. Onward to Hilton Head.

I did not like Hilton Head. That’s not to say Hilton Head isn’t great. That’s to say Hilton Head is sooo great that there’s waaaaay too many people on Hilton Head – bumper to bumper traffic around the island. We saw two accidents. Better to spend your entire time on a golf course or eating/drinking at a place like Fishcamp on Broad Creek – which is what I would do if I ever return.

Hilton Head is home to the venerable Sea Pines Resort. By resort I mean small town as this resort is on a scale like no other resort I’m aware of – it’s 7.8 square miles. By comparison Warrington Township is 13.8 square miles. It’s larger than my Manayunk/Roxborough home neighborhood which is around 5.8 square miles, which is a large neighborhood in Philadelphia. So it’s huge. You need to pay a $10 entrance fee to access the resort. It’s then a long and slow drive to the resort’s attractions. That drive passes amazing home after amazing home – homes that cost $5-$10 million.

On the far south side of Sea Pines is the world famous Salty Dog Café. I’ve seen hundreds of Salty Dog Café t-shirts in my life, I never knew it was a Sea Pines Resort restaurant. I would have fought the tourist urge and had a meal here…but…ironically enough, even though the Salty Dog has outdoor seating…they do not allow dogs. So, I settled for an ice cream cone.

Sea Pines’s / Hilton Head’s most famous golf course is Harbour Town. Sea Pines even built a Harbour Town, which felt a bit touristy, but man they did a really good job at building this otherwise fake town.

We drove through Bluffton on the way out of Hilton Head. I was expecting Bluffton to be similar to Beaufort but the main land development off Hilton Head as started to take over the town. There’s nothing but big box stores and outlets in/out of Hilton Head and that development has started to envelope Bluffton. We passed on stopping at a microbrewery.

Tybee Island is an every man’s island. If places like Hilton Head cater to the wealthy, then Tybee Island is catering to everyone. Because of this I didn’t like Tybee Island at first. I thought maybe we should have lived it up a little and spent a night on Hilton Head. But Tybee Island grew on me. There’s a pier with a huge, covered space and a few vendors inside that serve beer. There’s people throwing a football from the beach up to the pier and back down. There’s people having a good time everywhere. Hilton Head? You couldn’t even find the beach. Tybee Island has a small shopping area off the pier with all the beach basics anyone would need.

The island lacks high end dining but makes up for that with fun dining experiences. The Crab Shack is a must dining experience while on the island – all you need to order is a fish boiling but the experience is awesome – loud, boisterous, lots going on, even an alligator pen out front. Judging by the fact that no one was wearing masks and that these are all self-accountable, personally responsible, rule of law following individuals, I must say that Brian Kemp did a great job getting everyone in Georgia vaccinated. That said, I got my Pfizer and I was ready to roll. This was the first meal that felt back to normal.

We delayed a jet ski excursion until late in the day but getting Annie her first ride was worth it. I was able to get a few video shots driving through the no wake zone but once we were on the open water it was one hand on Annie, one hand on the jet ski, holding on for dear life as Joyce sped around the bay. When Annie wasn’t getting wet, she was fine, but when she was getting sprayed, no fun.

Tybee Island has another shopping district on the north side of town with a pizza place called Huc-A-Poo’s, another popular place to eat. Pizza in the South? In a resort town? Surprisingly good. As for attractions, there’s a lighthouse and not much else, but you are here to enjoy the beach. The water was very, very warm and calm.

I loved Savannah. I did a deep dive analysis comparing Savannah to nearby Charleston and I came out enjoying Savannah more – from a tourist perspective. Savannah’s squares are the city’s defining feature and its such a unique feature compared to other US cities. It’s not necessarily the wonder of any individual square, although Forsyth Park is spectacular, but the aggregate of all the squares and how they fit together are the city’s signature piece. It’s a great city to walk through, although with the humidity, it can be tough to be outside during the middle of the day.

We started the Savannah experience from the South heading North. This was a nice way to ease into the city from the non-touristy area, which is in the North. We saw beautiful home after beautiful home and immediately wanted to move to the city, although after checking prices, there’s no Southern discount. We drove around and kept stopping to take more photos of Savannah.

Forsyth Park is a glorious hub of urban activity. There’s a cool café. There’s benches to sit and people watch. There’s tennis courts and sports fields. And there’s a fountain worthy of tens of photos in the center. Although there is a Confederate War Monument…because we are in the South.

One morning I walked along Savannah’s waterfront – River Street was an historical shipping hub but it’s given way to a tourist hub now. We skipped dining down here. I say down here because even though this district is in the “uptown” section of Savannah, it is a steep walk down to the river level. At the far eastern end of River Street is The Waving Girl statue that commemorates Florence Martus who greeted ships as the came up the Savannah River.

Back up above the river on the western side of River Street is the City Market area, which again is a very, very touristy section of the city.

The nice part about Savannah was that the tourist areas seemed to be clustered at and near the river. The farther south you walked, the less touristy the neighborhoods. Start heading south on Bull Street below Forsyth Park and you will see all sorts of local activity. We ate dinner one night at Starland Yard, which features a rotating selection of food trucks – the place was rocking.

Beyond the squares, River Street, and City Market, Savannah has a buildings that are worth checking out – you just need to decide which buildings to tour. There’s the Mercer William’s House, made famous as the scene of the crime in Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, there’s the Owens-Thomas House, which I toured, and is affiliated with the Telfair Academy and thus paid entrance here gets you access to the other Telfair sites, there’s the Cathedral Basilica of St. John the Baptist (Savannah founder James Ogelthorpe banned Catholicism because Georgia was created as a buffer state against Catholic Spanish expansion from Florida…so much for that), and there’s Flannery O’Connor’s childhood home, among many, many other homes that are available to the public to be toured.

Mercer William's House

Flannery O'Connor Childhood Home

Owens-Thomas House

St. John the Baptist

Those awesome homes don’t include the other awesome homes that aren’t available to the public like the Gingerbread House or this mansion off Forsyth Park that belongs to a local hotelier.

Broughton Street is the main shopping thoroughfare with all the major chains a few boutiques. Leopold’s is the local ice cream institution but with a line half way down the block (and that was with no social distancing) this was unfortunately a skipped item on our itinerary.

We had the best meal of our trip as takeout from The Olde Pink House. The best thing we ate all trip was an appetizer called “Southern Sushi” which was smoked shrimp & grits rolled in coconut crusted nori. Our entries were the pork tenderloin and scored flounder. It’s also worth grabbing a meal at the other end of the spectrum, something quick from Parker’s, the local convenience store which has an “upscale” store on Drayton Street that’s open 24 hours.

Between all this I walked, and walked, and walked, through square, after square, after square. I need to fly back to Savannah in the fall so that there could be more café hopping and more beer hopping incorporated into these walks. As it was I only managed to grab a drink at The Original Pinkie Masters, a bar frequented by Jimmy Carter, which shows a completely different side to the button-upped and demurred Carter, and The Pirate’s House, one of Savannah’s oldest bars but doesn’t retain much, if any, of that antiquity.

As for the squares? I took so many photos of the squares that I built an entire page dedicated to touring the squares. A few highlights:

Bonaventure Cemetery is one of Savannah’s top attractions. We drove through the cemetery on the way from Tybee Island and I’m glad we took this approach rather than taking a guided tour through the cemetery. The cemetery is beautiful but it is a cemetery. Fifteen minutes and you’ve seen it all. The cemetery’s signature feature are it’s live oak trees with Spanish Moss draping from its branches – it’s both beautiful and creepy. The grave site that everyone is hunting for belongs to Little Gracie Watson which has a statue of the daughter of a hotel owner who died at the age of six. I thought there’d be more background to the story, like she haunted a hotel or something but that was it. She was a nice girl who greeted hotel guests and unfortunately died at a very young age. To find the grave site just type “Little Gracie Watson” into Google maps.

So, what’s not in Bonaventure Cemetery? That would be the famous Bird Girl Statue on the cover of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. It’s been relocated from the cemetery to the Telfair Academy.

The Wormsloe Historic site has an $18 entrance fee, which is required to be paid before taking a photo of the tree lined street, we balked at the $18 entrance fee. I got a similar photo at Boone Plantation later in the trip.

We had our best dining experience at The Wyld, a dock-side dining experience off Country Club Creek. Cool spot. We drove but the entire time I was imagining how cool it would be to pull up to the restaurant in a boat as a few others did. Simple menu, with interesting, fresh appetizers and taco type entrees, nothing above $20 – we ordered as much as we could and it was all good. We could have spent all day here but Savannah was calling.

I’m not sure who St. Simon is but he’s got a great island name after him that’s a good stopping point between Savannah and points farther south. It was difficult to tell whether the island has a beach and a place to get in the water but the waterfront park where we walked around was enough to convince this was a nice spot catering to a higher end clientele.

There’s several places claiming to be the origin of Brunswick Stew but this traveler is going with Brunswick, Georgia a small town an hour south of Savannah. The Marshside Grill is a waterfront restaurant and as good a place as any to order a bowl of Brunswick Stew. I can officially say that you haven’t lived until you’ve had Brunswick Stew in Brunswick. The finely shredded ingredients (vs. dropping in chunks of meat and potatoes) is definitely the way to go. Brunswick is a cool little town worthy of a stop in its own right but the humidity limited our visit to a few cell phone photos. Silver Bluff brewing was also closed but I drank a few of their beers on Jekyll Island.

We fell immediately in love with Jekyll Island. It helped that we were staying at a recently constructed Westin resort-style hotel but the palm trees didn’t hurt either. The vibe and scenery felt like we had been transported to a Caribbean Island even though we were less than two hours south of Savannah. Everything felt new…because it was new. I was wondering why we hadn’t stopped here on previous family vacations and it’s because Jekyll Island didn’t really exist as a full scale tourist destination until major development began around ten years ago. Now there’s a convention center, several hotels, and a commercial village on the ocean side of the island.

The Jekyll Island Resort is the historical resort on the island. I thought we were staying at the best resort on the island until we entered this resort in search of dinner one night. And wow what a place. I kicked the tires on staying here but they didn’t allow dogs in the main hotel area and I don’t know for sure but I think I’d leave Annie behind if we ever made a return trip to Jekyll Island. The restaurant building hasn’t quite kept up with the hotel building and thus we had to pivot where we ate that night to Zachary’s Riverhouse which turned out to be a great move as this place had a wonderful local vibe.

We had planned to wake up early the next morning and drive to St. Augustine then back up to Jacksonville but we enjoyed Jekyll Island so much that we decided to sleep in and have a lazy Saturday morning. When we left the island, there was a 2-3 mile backup at the Jekyll Island toll station of cars waiting to pay the toll to enter the island – that would not be fun.

What is Jacksonville? Is it a city? Some large land mass that consolidates a bunch of neighborhoods? It’s a tough place to figure out. It was tough to plan for. Tough to figure out where to eat – and there’s no signature must have dish. Tough to figure out what to see. From the architecture the city looks like it went through a bit of a post WWII boom then people realized, “you know we could live at the beach and still commute to work in Jacksonville”, and so that’s what they did. There’s some recent development along the waterfront, some new skyscrapers, but otherwise the city center feels incomplete.

So what do you do? You head out to Ponte Vedra. You head out to Neptune Beach. Atlantic Beach. Jacksonville Beach. These places didn’t have the ritzy vibe like the Southern California Beach Towns but they still had the all-year-round local vibe and being a great place to live with a bit of a Sea Isle, let’s go straight from the beach to the bar, No Shower Happy Hour, vibe. Great place to not only bunker down during COVID but also live no matter what’s going on in the world. On a Memorial Day weekend these towns were packed so I ate dinner at Beach Road Fish House and Chicken Dinners. And holy cow was their pick three meat for $24 meal the value meal of the trip. No skimping on portions here.

Amelia Island / Fernandina Beach had a similar family feel to Ocean City, New Jersey. It felt like the sort of place you’d own a summer home and spend the summer than a place you’d rent for a week. Lots of great local restaurants and shops on the western side of island in the Ferdanina Beach section centered around Centre Street and 3rd Street. We drove over the Atlantic Side and Seaside Park and oddly, this was one of those times where I think I’d rather live on the bay than the ocean.

St. Augustine has long been on my checklist of places to visit. It’s tough to consider yourself a history buff and not make a trip to America’s oldest city at some point in your life. That said, I was glad I visited early on a Sunday morning, even if the museums were closed (although I had a dog with me and wouldn’t have been able to go inside), because I had free roam of the old town area and knocked out everything I wanted to see in less than two hours. I parked catty-corner to Flagler College then did a blitz through their courtyard (amazing), over to the plaza in front of the Lightner Musuem (amazing), zig and zagged over to Aviles Street, the oldest street in America, back tracked up to the Plaza de la Constitucion, the Governor’s House, and Cathedral Basillica St. Augustine, then walked up George Street and back down Spanish Street.

From there I drove over to Castillo de San Marcos and again snagged a parking spot right out front. Walked around the exterior with Annie. Snapped a few photos. And boom that’s how you crush St. Augustine in less than two hours.

I have mixed thoughts on Charleston. I think you need to visit the city during the week. And I think you need to take a deeper dive outside the historical area. It’s not to say that spending a weekend eating and drinking in Charleston’s historical area wouldn’t be a great weekend…because it would be…but it’s to say that if that’s all you did it’d be difficult to get a vibe for what Charleston is really like.

Case in point. The first meal I ate in Charleston was a Gullah rice dish from My Three Sons. Gullah is a Charleston region specific cuisine with roots tracing back to Eastern Africa. Gullah rice had a jambalaya-esq taste but this was all rice, no liquid, and huge chunks of sausage, shrimp, and scallops mixed in. The meal costs $6.99. For dinner that night I ordered blue crab rice from a very good restaurant. Blue crab rice is another low country signature Charleston dish. The meal costs $27.00. I’d take the Gullah rice every meal and that’s before factoring in the price difference. So you need to dine outside the historical center.

Then there’s towns like Mt. Pleasant and Sullivan’s Island to the north of Charleston. Great places. Taking Coleman Boulevard / 703 out to these neighborhoods I passed no less than ten restaurants that were rocking and had me regretting eating dinner earlier in the night in Charleston’s historical center. I had a meal at FIG – great meal although nowhere near the levels as Philadelphia’s James Beard restaurants and it had a very quiet atmosphere – and another meal at Hall’s Chophouse – phenomenal steak, phenomenal atmosphere, loved everything about the experience – but you can get these meals in most cities. It felt like you were dining with tourists. Sullivan’s Island has a light house, amazing beach front homes, and a duney beach area. I’d move here instantly.

To the south is Folly Beach…which is ok…it’s no Sullivan’s Island though.

So what to do in Charleston. Walk. Walk. Walk. And then drive to a few of the sites early in the morning. I was here for a few days, and working for a few of those days, so I had a nice pattern where I’d walk to some parts of the city, drive to other parts, and for several of the sites I visited twice to see how things looked in the early morning relative to later afternoon/early evening – I’ll say this, the Battery and Rainbow row are awesome anytime of day but in the morning? They are at their best.

You walk down King Street the main shopping street (although not many restaurants).

You walk around the College of Charleston Campus.

You walk over to Colonial Lake Park - grab a coffee at Second Street Coffee on the way.

You walk around the Joe Riley Waterfront Park.

You walk down Broad Street - you drink a beer at Blind Tiger.

You walk your dog through Marion Square and over to Wragg Mall.

Sure there’s restaurants but mostly you just walk. And that’s all you need to do to enjoy Charleston.

(Due to the dog, no revisit to Fort Sumter on this trip.)

Charleston also has a Top 50 global microbrewery, Westbrook Brewing, but I’ve long questioned those rankings and stops at Palmetto Brewing and Revelry Brewing (both with higher Google rankings that I agree with) did nothing to change my mind that for the most part a beer is a beer.

Charleston has several plantations in the surrounding area, most along the Ashley River, and I selected Boone Hall, primarily for it’s oak lined avenue leading the main house. I don’t know who Boone was. I didn’t read much before, there, or after. But it was a fun visit. Fun walking around the site. Interesting to see a wedding set up in the front yard. I imagined the wedding coordinator saying after the service “Now if you walk past the slave quarters and make a right, you’ll see the reception area.”

There’s a nice garden in front to the plantation hall. There’s a horse pen – Annie was much more interested in horses in pens than those pulling carriages. And there’s the canopy of oak trees which never got old.

Rodney Scott’s BBQ supposedly has the best whole hog barbeque in Charleston. Rodney’s parents introduced him to barbecue cooking when he was 11. The parent’s place still operates in Hemingway, South Carolina. You know me…I got to go with the original…so I drove to Hemingway…had a great barbecue dish with its own spices…before leaving South Carolina.

I’ve passed South of the Border numerous times. Waaaay to many times to not stop. Is it kitschy? Of course. Is it worth a ten minute stop to survey the area and take a few photos? Double of course. If not for the pouring rain (and the fact I still had work to do that afternoon) I would have grabbed a meal, perused the gift shops…which I think means I need to stop here again the next time I drive I cross the NC/SC border on I-95.

Wake Forest University has a quirky history - the school was originally founded in Wake Forest, North Carolina, hence the university's name. In 1956, the Reynold's family, of the R.J. Reynolds cigarette fame, gave the university a ton of money to relocate and re-establish the unversity in Winston-Salem. I've always been curious how the town of Wake Forest and the original university looked, so managed to squeeze in a stop on this whirldwind tour. Wake Forest the town is nice - it's quaint with just enough going on and an historical vibe. The original university was nice as well, a little small, but it was nice and I could tell that the new university tried to keep some of the aesthetics of the original university. Although it's also evident that the Wake Forest University of today would have outgrown Wake Forest.

Circa 2017/2018 Lonely Planet wrote a blurb about Scott’s Addition being this hip, cool neighborhood in Richmond. The seed was planted. I made it here in 2021 and I understand Lonely Planet’s glowing review. Maybe I should have gone on a microbrewery hop tour the night I arrived. I didn’t. I’m not feeling too regretful about that. Scott's Addition seemed just ok.

I do regret not seeing Richmond earlier. I’ve driven past the city waaaaay to many times to not stop. And what an easy stop it is. You either eat breakfast (The Dairy Bar Diner) or lunch or dinner (Supper) in the Scott’s Addition neighborhood. Then zig, zap, loop around this neighborhood to the Arthur Ashe monument. Then drive down the rest of Monument Avenue to see what remains of the Stonewall Jackson, Jefferson Davis (which contains the following: “Exponent of Constitutional Principles” and “Defender of the Rights of States” not “White Supremacist and Traitor to the United States” because we as a country embrace Lost Cause narratives and can’t teach the actual facts of our country’s racist past…I digress), Robert E. Lee (which was still up as of June 2021), and J.E.B. Stuart monuments (which are all in a really nice part of town who’s residents should have taken these monuments down waaaay before protestors got to them). Then down Broad Sheet then a left on 11th Street to try and find the White House of the Confederacy which is now surrounded by the VCU Medical Center.

It was 11 am and the humidity was brutal. There was no shade. It was a very, very quick visit to the Duke of Gloucester Street and Colonial Williamsburg but a mental note was made that whenever we do visit Williamsburg with kids it will be during the Spring or Fall.

It was 12 pm and the humidity was brutal. There was no shade. It was a very, very quick visit to Yorktown. There’re some fortifications. There’s a Victory Column. There’s an historical Yorktown town area which seems to be a quasi-beach side resort as the people we saw were carrying inner tubes and walking to a beach front area on the York River. I was expecting there to be just a little more here. It is a large, park like setting and that had me thinking there’d be more to drive around and see, similar to Valley Forge. But other than the fortifications, victory column, and two museums, there’s not much to the actual battlefield.