Monday November 19: Nice Day in Georgetown

What a nice day today - which for us means it didn't rain all day and we actually saw some blue sky for a short period of time.

Out for breakfast. Lesson again learned: never assume home fries are grilled - often they are deep fried. Will we never learn and remember the lesson?

This is the 3rd oldest city in South Carolina. Charleston is the oldest, then Beaufort and then Georgetown. The Historic District is a very short bike ride away from our marina and it was so nice to be able to be out and riding around again.

Many, many homes are large, well taken care of and upwards of 250+ years old. Some are not in such good shape though even though it seems there are efforts to preserve these old homes.

Many in the near downtown area were from the 1700's and 1800's. The first African-American representative to Congress was born here in Georgetown and represented South Carolina.

Rice was the product that made this area the number one distributor of rice in the WORLD until the late 1800's. So what should we do but go to the Rice Museum!

Big plus - they had a video! The couple we viewed the video with came a short distance from Florence, SC. Interesting couple. Both kept answering questions with "yes, ma'm" - even the wife ... am I looking that much older???

Anyway, the museum was very worthwhile and really detailed why this area was such a perfect place to grow rice - as long as everything could be done by hand.

There was also a wooden cargo ship dating back to the 1700's found up river about 15 miles from here - discovered in the 1970's.

The museum detailed the recovery - quite interesting. The roof from this building was removed so the restored ship could be lifted to the 3rd floor  - which was actually a hardware store back in the 1800's.

Steve wanted to support the museum so he purchased some Carolina Plantation rice plus a jar of Frog Jam and a jar of Kickin' Muscadine Pepper Jelly (I think this one is all his!).

He's making some of the rice for dinner tonight so we'll see how it is.

A trip to the store that shall not be named was on the agenda after breakfast. For a while I thought Steve as wrong about the location (it's not like this is something that has never happened :-)  ), but eventually we happened upon the store. Sadly when we walked out of the store, Steve was trying to figure out where we parked the car :-)

Since he was the only one with a backpack, there was some restraint on what was purchased. Plus we'll be in Charleston tomorrow - home of the first Harris Teeter he ever went to. The best grocery store - ever.

On the way back we stopped at the 100-year flood level sign which indicated the water was over my head in this spot.

A couple of locals scoffed at the sign and indicated it never was above waist high and the sign was merely there for whatever state department erected it as justification for the department's existence.

Whatever, I think the water would have been over my head :-)

Time to put the bikes back on the boat. Note the blue sky in the background.

It was a good stop and will be on the list of places we will return to on the trip north next year.

Tomorrow: the currents are in our favor early in the morning so with a 60 mile day (8 hours) to Charleston, we'll be leaving at 7 am. Guess that means no sleeping in ......