Beaufort, SC to Charelston, SC

This map shows our route from Beaufort, SC to Charleston, SC.

Friday, April 12th. We cruised 48 miles to Church Creek anchorage just 22 miles from Charleston. There was no need to arrive so late that we wouldn’t have time to explore so we opted to anchor and have an easy cruise in the morning.

Along the way we googled what the towns or sites were. This is fuzzy as I zoomed in— but the home is where they filmed the movie ‘Notebook’, based on the book by Nicholas Sparks. Or maybe another home nearby—all I know is that we were close. And this has two chimneys on top similar to the house that Noah built for Allie in the movie.

This home is for sale: $7,999,000—includes the dock! Actually the homes/mansions are beautiful and entertaining to see along the river.

We see alot of abandoned boats that look like they got into trouble with the constant shoaling that occurs. No telling when or if they are even recovered.

Saturday, April 13. We arrived to the Courtyard Marina around 11:30am. There was a issue with our head—-won’t go too much into detail but we needed a plunger—to move things along in the pipes. Since this dock was part of Marriott Courtyard’s propety, we were able to borrow a plunger and hooray—this issue was fixed. We can flush again. : )

After the flush success, we took advantage of the free shuttle to downtown Charleston.

These colorful homes are known as Rainbow Row. They were built in 1740 and used by the merchants that had their business on the ground floor. After the Civil War, this area was run-down and considered a slum. In 1931, Dorothy Porcher Legge and her husband Judge Lionel Legge purchased the section of houses on East Bay Street. Dorothy decided to paint the houses on this row a pretty pastel pink to make the area look nicer. As time went on, other residents began to paint their homes various pastel colors as well.

There are other speculations for the various pastel colored homes. One was so drunk sailors might find their way home easier. Another was was the various hues were the merchants’ way of indicating what types of items they sold there.

ANYWAY, all this was described to me by a nice lady that we ended up chatting to her and her husband for the next 30 minutes. This chance meeting was our serendipity in Charleston.

Our spot on Marriott Courtyard’s dock. There was only enough room for a few boats tucked in behind the mega docks in Charleston. We had a quiet peaceful day.

Sunday, April 14. Our day began early as we scheduled to take the first tour of the day to Fort Sumter National Monument. We heard about the famous Callie’s Hot Little Biscuit cafe from the nice couple on Rainbow Row yesterday. Oh my goodness they are huge and yummy.

The park ranger asked for help to raise the flag from all of us on the boat. It was a great way to begin the tour.

The attack on Fort Sumter marked the official beginning of the American Civil War. Interesting that we were visiting nearly on the same day in April when the war began 1861 and ended 1865. Fort Sumter was purposely built to protect the Charleston Harbor. It was named after a Revolutionary War hero Thomas Sumter. After the Civil War, Fort Sumter was mostly used as a lighthouse until the Spanish-American War began in 1898. The fort was again made battle-ready for WWI & WWII. There was a museum at the fort that we could have spent another hour reading about the history this fort has had.

When we returned from our tour,we walked to King street to find coffee. We found out the street is closed to automobile traffic every 2nd Sunday. This worked out well—however it was crowded. We went another block over and stumbled into the College of Charleston campus.

The college is the oldest university in South Carolina and the 13th oldest institution of higher learning the the US.

This photo actually has a spot designed to get the perfect picture.

I stood on the spot as directed.

Moving on—we loved walking through the campus and continued to where we saw a garden and some ladies were taking photos of eachother. I offered to take one of all of them—so they offered to take one of us.

After this photo we entered the garden and found it was a graveyard.

While walking through we could hear jazz music and poked our heads in the church where a band was playing.

Back on King street I was completely impressed with this Girl Scout advertising method to boost her troop’s cookie sales. A box of Thin Mints were bought—of course.

Back to our serendipity that happened from meeting the couple on Rainbow Row. She shared this map with must see destinations. We decided to go to the Old Slave Mart Museum as it was still fairly early in the day. Unfortunately, they do not open on Sundays. So looking at her map, we walked to the Dock Street Theatre as I remembered her saying it was the first structure in America built exclusively to be used for theatrical productions.

It was just after 2:00pm and when we walked in. Kaye, the woman in the ticket office, said they were in process of taking care of seating issues, but we were welcome to have a look around. Apparently someone placed a chair in a prohibited spot, and another guest was complaining about the perfume the woman she was seating next to was wearing. While Darth went around the corner, I started chatting with Kaye.

We had no idea what show was playing—all Kaye said was that it was very good. She was holding 2 tickets, so I asked if we could purchase them for the show. Kaye said she couldn’t sell them through the computer because the show already started. But for cash donation, we could purchase the two tickets and seat right after the opening performance. Well, I only had $36—-because I bought Girl Scout cookies—using a $20 bill. She gave me back $6 so we could buy something at intermission. Then she said—just go in that door and the seating attendant will guide you to the seats. Then said—you will like the seats. Unknown to us, we were holding 3rd row aisle seats!!

The play was wonderful. The actors were incredible, the song/dance numbers entertaining and we could not stop smiling. Darth and I saw Kaye at the consession stand and she beamed when she saw us. She said she loves making someones day. What an unexpected surprise we had that day. At the end of the play, the audience gave a standing ovation and we all sang and danced to Carole King’s ‘I Feel the Earth Move’.

We made it back to the boat as the sun went down to prepare our next cruise up the ICW.