Thursday, January 9, 2003
We did the Charleston VM first thing after a minimal breakfast of bagels and corn flakes at the Super 8, where we were once again entertained by the conversation between a lady and the counter clerk. The lady started off by saying, “We didn’t have no hot water last night!”, and I caught myself parsing the double negative. She further discussed how she and her husband had paychecks on alternate weeks, and how they each had some designated bills to pay from their paycheck. They seemed to be living at the hotel, and clearly altho they both worked there was little, if any, money left over at the end of the month. Yet another reminder of how the other half lives.

The Charleston VM looped us around the historic district and waterfront of the city. The homes in the historic district are very varied and picturesque, and uniformly well kept. We also passed a lagoon where we saw a variety of pelicans and other waterfowl flying around.

The city has constructed a series of parks along the riverfront with a walkway. The parks are beautifully landscaped with trees and fountains along with great views of the river, among which was the view of the WWII aircraft carrier Yorktown across the way.

Hungry and hoping for a lunch, we drove over to visit the Yorktown. We never did find a place for lunch, but we spent a very interesting 3 hours touring the Yorktown. A series of 6 tours have been laid out amidst its cavernous spaces, each featuring a different aspect of shipboard life. We also saw a 1943-era film about the “Fighting Lady” and its role in the latter part of WWII in a theater carved out of the bow of the ship. The first Yorktown was sunk at the Battle of Midway, so this was the second carrier to carry that name in WWII. The film had many gun-sight film clips of bombing and strafing of shore emplacements, and ships from Truk lagoon to the battles of the Philippine Sea. From those films it was absolutely clear what a huge commitment Japan had made in establishing these far-flung military bases of their empire. From the sheer magnitude of these efforts, clearly the Japanese were dead serious about permanently conquering this entire part of the world, and equally clearly, the US was the only thing that stopped them. One of the featured pilots in the film was lost in combat in the later campaigns, which lent a certain poignancy to the account, and appropriately enough the theater was named for him. The movie and the tours took about 3 hours, and since there wasn’t a restaurant on the grounds, we still hadn’t eaten by 3 o’clock. So we decided to be on our way and find a place to eat even tho there was also a submarine and a coast guard cutter on display with the Yorktown. Maybe we’ll see those next time.

We stopped at an IHOP for a really big (late) lunch, and drove south on Route 17 along the South Carolina coast to Savannah, Georgia. We branched off to I-95 before the border so we could check on camping and motels in the Savannah area. We found a state park on Skidaway Island that had camping, called ahead for a reservation, and hot-footed it down to the park by about 6 p.m. The ranger was still there, and we signed up for a night altho it was rather expensive at $20. By this time it was dark, so we had the challenging task of setting up the tent in the dark. It didn’t help that we hadn’t gone camping since last July! Monika was blinded by the headlights and fell over the fire pit, but wasn’t too badly hurt. We finally got the tent up, cots assembled, air mattress inflated, and sleeping bags unrolled, so we could tumble into bed after some snacks for a minimal dinner.