Good Karma Adventures: Experiencing Charleston

This is our first Charleston experience. I am not sure what took us so long to get here. This city is amazing! The people are friendly, the city is beautiful, and there are a million things to do. Oh, and the food is good too.

Charleston is so wonderful we have to divide it into several parts:

Boating around
Entertainment
Walking around

Elusive dolphins showed up again

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Boating Around

Osprey nest

We came into Charleston mid-afternoon on Friday May 24 after a long 7 hour ride from Beaufort SC. For the most part, the ride was boring and uneventful. Good Karma took the lead. We traveled with One September, Sareanna, and Jim’s Joy. As the lead boat, Kermit had to be on his toes to notice depth and markers then tell the rest of the group.

You can tell it was a holiday weekend. Every amateur and annual boater in the southeast apparently chose that day to test out their boats. They slipped in-between, zigzagged, and generally made themselves nuisances. These mostly smaller boats were actually a safety hazard. I mean bad boaters cutting in front of us. We had a smallish boat come south through a bridge at full speed as we were traveling through the bridge going north. Rocked our socks off.

We entered Charleston Harbor through several channels with lovely homes on either side. The channels couldn’t have been more than 40’ or 50’ wide. People waved and said hello from the sides as we passed.

The harbor is very busy. You can see the Yorktown Air Craft Carrier ahead on the right and the Battery directly ahead.

Judy Hechtkopf getting her boat settled at Harborage Downtown Marina

Downtown Marina - see how fast the water is running?

We turned to the Port (left) under a bridge to Harborage Downtown Marina. Joe and Eidie Rubin waved at the dock to greet us! When we pulled up for gas my sister Martha and her friend Liz showed up to greet us at the gas dock!

Charleston Bridge seen from the Yorktown

On the good side, this marina has great new floating docks and the deck hands are really nice and so helpful. The marina has a courtesy van that took us anywhere we wanted to go.

Kermit drooling

On the negative, it is further away from town, surrounded by expressways. We walked once from the historic area but for the most part if we wanted to go anywhere we needed to take the van. Also there was no place for Rusty to walk. We took a few turns around the parking lot (boring) and once walked along the expressway in both directions (hot and not so comfortable) so the poor fellow didn’t get much exercise around the marina. Oh well, he had lots of visitors which probably made up for it.

Looking south at Fort Moultrie from the Yorktown

Deanna and Dick Shepard

We took a water taxi across the harbor to visit the Yorktown Aircraft Carrier with Dick and Deanna Shepard. I am not sure I ever visited one before. It sure is big!

Katherine loves speed

Torpedo repair center on Yorktown

Deanna on the tour of Yorktown

We also went into the WWII submarine where I discovered that I am claustrophobic. That never happened before. I went down the stairs into the submarine and immediately felt an awful pressure in my chest and I got short of breathe. I tried to turn around but there were people behind us so I had to move forward. I said “excuse me” and pushed through to the end. Kermit didn’t enjoy the experience either because I disappeared. Oh well. Check that off the bucket list. No submarines for me!

We keep running into the Honey Fitz. First saw it in Hammock Beach, then in Savannah, now in Charleston!

Need to discuss tides. We were here during a full moon so the tide was huge. At night the tide water ran over the banks into the parking lot flooding over cars. Well not over but definitely up to the wheels in the parking lot. I am not sure these pictures do the phenomenon justice. The tide was higher at night than in the daytime high tide. Very cool.