3-13-10 South East Coast Trip Day 1

Our first big expedition! And right after we got back from out west; but that was a work trip. Saturday morning was rainy. The downtown of Alexandria was flooding and the Potomac was even with the walkways down by our house. We drove by to take a look and some pictures before we left for our trip.

The plan is to drive south to use our three night stay at the Marriott resort on Hilton Head. We want to see Savannah GA, Hilton Head, Charleston, Myrtle Beach and maybe Wilmington NC. So today we started by driving to Florence SC, a good stopping place for the night. On the way, we made our first encounter with cooking trending to Southern - we got lunch at a BoJangles - a place we had never heard of before but we thought it might be good to try. Well, it was good, but not good for you. Lots of that wonderful fat stuff - I had a blueberry fried muffin - well, it was not quite fried but had some much grease that it might as well have been fired. Yummy - I scarfed it right up! But the guilt!

The drive down was pretty boring - the road is flanked almost the whole way by stands of pine trees. It appeared there were clear cuts behind the trees. The trees often have standing water bogs at their roots. The billboards are funny - they will clear out a swatch of trees at an angle to the road to let the billboard be seen from the road as you drive by - or - they will put the billboard on a huge pole above the top of the trees, and these are tall trees. Looks like it's meant for one to read the billboards on the opposite side of the road.



For dinner in Florence we thought we would go to what looked to be a local place, after having gone to Mass at 5 in a small Church close to the hotel. Again, the cooking was not what we were used to. And the sweet tea - Argggg. Everything is sweet. So, we need to be careful about eating.

The town is pretty, the folks are friendly. And while reading about Florence, I discover that it was bombed in 1958 with the BIG ONE. That's right, the AF dropped an A-bomb on little old Florence - without the nuke stuff fortunately - but 200 pounds of High Explosive went off and somebody lost his house! The things you find out when you look. Savannah was the beneficiary of an A-bomb also it turns out. They were dropping like flies. After the Florence affair, the AF changed its policies and required the crews to lock the bombs into the plane, so the plane had to come down to have the bomb come down. The crews had been jettisoning the bombs if they got into trouble.