Day 86 of the Journey - Charleston, SC

We wanted to get out of bed at 7:30 to get started on figuring out what the problem was with unhitching, cleaning the love bugs off the vehicles, and then venturing off to the downtown area for a day of touristy stuff.  That didn't work out quite as planned.  We got out of bed closer to 9:00 and puttered around a bit on the computers (I had a little bit of billable work to do anyway).  Mitch was able to figure out the problem with relative ease.  It's amazing what being fully rested and calm can accomplish!  It was a matter of a button that needed to be pressed in.  So we dis-attached the Beast by 11:00 and decided to go out.  The cleaning can wait another day, as that will be very time consuming.

The ride to the City (downtown Charleston) was about 20 mins away.  It was a pleasant drive until we hit the city limits.  Did I ever mention how much I HATE cities?  Ok, so far Raleigh is the only exception.  This reminded me of lower Manhattan, specifically Chinatown, Little Italy and Greenwich Village - where the streets are very narrow and congested and there is no easy parking.  Mind you, we have a truck that takes up the length of at least 1 1/2 cars, so even if we found a space, chances are it would be too short.  We rode around a bit and finally found a lot with 2 back to back spaces.  What luck!!!  We parked there, and walked over to the sign that said $10/day.  What we didn't see until we got to the sign was "Private Lot - Parking by Permit only.  All others will be towed."  Oy!  We didn't want to take the chance, so we got back in the Bull.  We were going to pull forward but discovered there was a large curb, so we had to back up out of the space into the street, which had 2 way traffic and was very narrow.  Since you know nothing ever goes smoothly for us, this time was no different.  We had a little accident.  There was a car in the street that was in his blind spot so when he was slowly backing up, he gave the car a little love tap.  There wasn't even a dent in the other car - only a few scratches on the bumper and a broken piece of plastic covering the taillight on ours.  No big deal on either vehicle.  But it was an older, foul tempered woman who said she just bought the car less than a week ago, so she was not going to let this go.  She had to call the police to report it.  An hour later, we were finally able to get back in the car after the paperwork was done.  The officer told us where we could find a day lot that would accommodate the truck, which we found and were grateful for.

We put this aggravating incident behind us, so the rest of the day was very nice.  The city, in general, is very old, with a few modern buildings thrown in.  There are no skyscrapers or skyline to see in the distance.  The houses, which run anywhere from $2 million and upwards, are very old and some of them in great need of repair as they are about 2-300 years old!

En route from the parking lot to the area where the tours began, we passed a lot of artisan type stores as well as the City Market.   The City Market is like one large craft show with high end artists and craftsmen.  Very beautiful and creative stuff, although there was nothing I needed or wanted to buy.  On the other hand, there was a lovely spice & tea shoppe.  I am a sucker for spices and tea, so of course I had to go in there and purchase a few items.

We took a horse & buggy carriage ride through the historical district and learned quite a lot about the time periods of the Revolutionary War and War Between the States (we Northerners call it the Civil War).  Pretty amazing how these horses get through the narrow streets along side the cars.  Below are a few pics of the carriages:
 

Horse drawn carriage

Another view of carriage.  That's the step stool needed to climb up into it.

View of the carriages lining the street

We finished the one hour tour at 4:00.  Not too far away (but too far for me to walk) was the Aquarium and Fort Sumter National Park (you actually need to take a ferry from the park to the actual fort).  I wanted to go there but we would have faced the same parking issue.  I think all will be fine in the future when we get our urb-e's.  Then we can park outside the city limits and use our scooters to get all over town.  It sucks to have such bad arthritis!  At least I was able to walk quite a bit today.  Not as much as I would have liked, but it was probably about a mile in total.

We left the city and stopped at a Walmart to pick up a few needed pieces of hardware to use for our washing job tomorrow.

One more photo:  the speed limit in the campground.  It is very difficult to maintain this speed exactly!