Greg & Camille Go Bike

We awoke just before dawn and were greeted by below 40 degrees temperatures. We popped out of the tent to enjoy a bit of the sunrise and then hid in the tent until the sun had restored some warmth and sanity to the world.

By 8:30 am, we were back on the road, first on route 17 and then a comfortable stretch on side roads. As there wasn't any coffee within 25 miles of the camp site, Greg spent the first couple hours in a sleepy haze with Camille leading the way. Just short of our original planned stop; however, we saw Seewee Restaurant just across the street. They would open in 10-15 minutes and the menu looked promising, so we decided to wait. It was well worth it. The meal started with a bowl of delicious hush puppies, fresh from the oven. Greg had a a bowl of the fish stew and a poboy with blackened scallops, green tomatoes and some delicious sauce with a side of onion rings. Oh, and two cups of coffee! Camille had fried calamari with fried green tomatoes and sweet potato casserole. The place was creatively decorated with a lot of local flavor on the walls and the service was fast & friendly.

Traffic was clearly starting to pick up as we left the national forest and before too long the nice wide shoulders disappeared to be replaced by a decent sidewalk. We turned onto local roads before long hoping to escape what had become heavy traffic, but unfortunately, our new route was probably even less safe with little to no shoulder, a 45 MPH posted speed limit and moderate traffic. We spent a lot of time with cars hovering over our shoulders waiting for an opportunity to pass. Every attempt to pick up side walks that appeared pretty quickly gave way to disappointment as the sidewalk ended.

Eventually we turned onto a nice off road path for a couple miles before crossing a pretty long bridge (with separate pedestrian and bike lines!) onto the Isle of Palms. Somewhere along the bridge, Greg's bike started producing a rattling sound. Stopping to examine the bike just after the bridge, we could see that one of his spokes was broken. We stopped to remove the spoke and as the wheel was now also out of true, loosen his brakes to compensate.

Leaving the Isle of Palms, we faced some nasty headwinds and it felt like slow going. We enjoyed riding through some beautiful and varied neighborhoods on the way into Charleston before crossing over another enormous suspension bridge into center city Charleston. Charleston had a lot of character, but regrettably we didn't have much time to explore the city. We agreed that we'd plan to explore when we returned after the holiday.

We planned to take a short break from the trip to join Camille's family for Thanksgiving. We had a car rental pick up scheduled at 5 pm and arrived right on time. We were helped by a very stocky man who seemed really impressed by our journey and wanted to hear more when we returned after the holidays. For dinner, we enjoyed some tasty Thai curry. We did not, however, enjoy the noisy neighbors who chatted late into the night.