Established in 1670, Charleston, (pronounced Charles Towne) by the locals, and named after King Charles II of England, was the chosen location for the beginning of our full time RV adventure. Sara and I plan to be on the road for the next five years and the “Holy City” was a logical place to start. The weather is in the 70’s to 80’s at this time of the year with relatively low humidity which is anything below 80%. This is spring in South Carolina and the dogwood and azaleas are in bloom Also, the bird watching, according to experts, is supposed to be some of the best on the east coast. Sara, armed with her new binoculars and the Sibley Guide to the Birds of Eastern United States, was ready to go. Her life bird list is up to 56 species and she is anxious to get to 100.

Imagine three fingers pointing east out into the Atlantic Ocean. The middle finger much shorter then the others is bordered by the Ashley River to the south and the Cooper River to the north. The middle finger is the site of the city of Old Charleston, with a tiny man made island at its tip, Fort Sumter, often incorrectly suggested to be the location of the start of the Civil War. It actually started six months earlier when cadets at the Citadel fired on a Union ship in the Charleston Harbor. The finger to the north is the location of Mt Pleasant while the finger to the south is community of John’s Island. The wrist of these fingers, far back from the harbor is called North Charleston. We are staying at a lovely RV resort in John’s Island called Old Plantation on a huge site under a stately moss covered live oak. Its location is far enough out of the central city to make it an excellent base to explore the many attractions that surround this grand, southern city.

Charleston was one of the major slave ports, and more slaves were brought to America from Africa and later Barbados between its shores and the harbor in Savannah, one hundred miles to the south, than any other shoreline in the US. We signed up for a walking tour of downtown Charleston and it was led by a “grand southern lady” named Estelle whose knowledge of the local history and lore was truly impressive. Estelle had a lilt in her voice that betrayed her Southern pride and suggested slight distain for “Yankees” like us. When she referred to the Civil War, a war that killed over 650,000 Americans as “that late unpleasantness”, you would have never thought that she was on the losing side. For over two hours we explored the many homes and churches of the old city. Estelle had a story for each and was eager to answer our group’s questions. At the end of the tour on the waterfront overlooking the harbor I asked Estelle, “Do you know why it is always so windy in Charleston? and answered my own question by stated that, “It is because the North sucks!!” It was greeted by Estelle with throaty laughter, and I didn’t have the heart to tell her I had seen the question and answer on a bumper sticker during the tour.

We saw the one home where George Washington had slept and paid full price to avoid the suggestion of political patronage, imagine that, marveled at the influence of the Germans and Italians on the architecture, and cranked our necks at the many towering church steeples that give Charleston the nickname, “The Holy City.”

As for the bird watching, it has been great. Birding is a major activity in the Charleston area as there are many state parks and wildlife refuges. . We visited the Caw Caw Interpretive Center south of Charleston. The best birding is at what were once magnificent rice plantations. Large dikes were built by hand by slaves to control the flow of water into the rice fields. They make ideal walkways to observe the water birds nesting and form transitions with the surrounding pine forest. We took a guided bird walk led by Perry Nugent, a 70 year old local birder, who has over fifty years of experience, and had has been leading groups at Caw Caw since 1985. His knowledge of birds was awesome. He could name most birds simply by their call, their flight pattern or their location. He carried a 60x spotting scope over his shoulder, binoculars around his neck, a water bottle on his hip and a southern sense of humor which included comments like “that birdie just ain’t gonna cooperate”, “they dump so damn much mosquito spray around, funny the birdies don’t starve”, and about an uncooperative, screaming child in the parking lot as “there are some stages in life that are best spent in solitary confinement.” We saw a bald eagle long after it saw us, an osprey, Carolina chickadee, orchard oriole, swamp sparrow, wood duck, hooded merganser, black vultures, turkey vultures, and the illusive pilated woodpecker and wood stork just to name a few. Of course, you really can’t count a bird on your life list unless you are fairly confident that you could identify it again in a different place and time, so Sara was only willing to add new 10 species to her list. She will reward herself with a new spotting scope when the list hits the magic number 100. We were so impressed that we took a second bird walk at the famous Magnolia Plantation north of Charleston on Easter morning with Perry. As Perry says, “God would rather have us out admiring his creatures than sittin in some million dollar church listening to some guy quacking away for an hour or two.”

Sara and I also visited Folly Beach which is on the tip of John’s Island and the location of many summer homes. We are enjoying the fresh strawberries that are in season and the delicious sea foods. Sara does not like the taste of soft shell crabs but has finally agreed that shrimp are not “cold, clammy grubs” and will enjoy them if they are butterflied, lightly breaded, and cooked in hot oil to a golden brown, a process that Don has perfected in the wok on an outside grill. But her absolute favorite is the locally baked peach pie which she divided in 12 equal pieces in truly obsessive-compulsive style and rations them over a week. Don stuffed over 100 damn grapes leaves (dolmas) with beef, olives, mushrooms, pine nuts, rice, mint and parsley to be served with mint flavor yogurt. They are frozen and waiting for a mid afternoon snack. Not exactly southern cuisine, but oh so good.

We will stay one more week in Charleston before moving up the coast to our next stop, Huntington Beach State Park, south of Virginia Beach. Then it is on to Cape Hatteras National Sea Shore and Washington D.C. the third week in May, before the kids get out of school and start to flood our nation’s capital. As for Charleston, what a grand Southern city and a great place to take a vacation.