Charleston

The long and winding road took me out of Edisto Beach and up to Charleston.  I started with a carriage ride through the historic district, and once again, that was a good way to get a taste of the loveliness that is this Southern Belle.  I then spent two days walking those streets, taking pictures, fascinated with the architecture and the care of restoration.  Like Savannah, it is a city that suffered after the Civil War, but also like Savannah, it was not burned.  The historic area is much larger than Savannah, but has much of the innate beauty.  I can't seem to get enough of the old homes.  There is the hint of a refined time which has been extended into the present.  And given the graciousness of the population, and their helpfulness in answering any questions, it does seem people here are living a charmed life.

While I have loved the food everywhere I've been, and appreciated the few places where I've had a full kitchen so I could cook myself, I decided to see what I could find in Charleston.  I had  two great recommendations from the carriage driver.   One was an Irish pub where I had shrimp and grits.  I was a little hesitant.  I shouldn't have been, and eating it with a Guinness adds just the right touch.  The other recommendation was one of the most delightful restaurants of the whole trip so far, called 82 Queen St.  I was shown down a little hallway, into a lovely white table garden courtyard.  I had a sapphire martini in honor of Richard, and then sat down to the perfect courtyard setting.  I started with she-crab soup, which includes some of the crab roe.  I had had some a couple of nights before in St. Augustine, and it was way too salty. At 82 Queen, it was seasoned perfectly, full-bodied and, well, crabby, with a hint of sherry.  I then had fried okra as a vegetable, wonderfully al dente, served with a marinara sauce.  My main dish was grilled tiger shrimp with fried goat cheese ravioli.  I was in heaven, sitting under a magnolia tree with a two foot diameter, which was rising up through the courtyard.  I wish I'd had more time to eat here again.

Before I left Edisto Beach, Lucy had recommended that I consider going to a couple of performances at the Spoleto Festival, an annual event in Charleston.  I took her advice.  I attended an opera called "Flora" which was first performed in the old Dock Street Theater in the late 1700's.  It was real cute and enthusiastically performed.  I also attended there the Noel Coward play "Present Laughter."  There's something special when traveling to be able to duck in and sample the local festivals.  The Dock Street Theater has a wonderful history and has been carefully restored.  The play was very cute, very 1940's (written in 1939, but not produced until 3 years later), and a great romp.

I also took most of a day and went outside of Charleston to a Magnolia Plantation, the house and gardens built by the Drayton family in 1640.  I loved the description of the history, the features of the house, and realized that we now live in so much more luxurious creature comforts now than even the most wealthy of that era.  The gardens were lovely.

There was also an exceptional guide on the part of the tour that took one through the restored slave quarters. He discussed how at the same time they were being bought and sold, and considered less intelligent that whites, that they were the ones who brought the technical knowledge of how to grow rice in this climate, that allowed the fortunes which built houses like Drayton and the beautiful mansions in Charleston to be built.  Apparently, slave traders were very careful to send slaves from a specific area of Sierra Leone to the Charleston area, as they were in high demand.  I was intrigued with the research going on here to study and understand the slave experience from the slaves' perspective.

And then there are those beautiful houses in Charleston.  They're all over the place, but the area called South Battery is especially memorable.

Finally, before I left, I took a tour of the USS Yorktown, and very famous WWII aircraft carrier which is docked permanently in Charleston.  It was really impressive and I'm amazed at the level of engineering which it takes to create such a ship.  I was especially interested in the medical facilities onboard, which were pretty up to date for the time, given that this was a floating city.  I then left Charleston and headed on to Raleigh to visit my friend, Michele.  On the way I managed a round of golf in about 90 degree weather.  It's been really hot and humid, and while I tend to like it, I sure appreciate air conditioning after much time outside.

Edisto Beach

I think the biggest surprise of the trip so far has been Edisto Beach.  Wyndham has a resort there which is an amalgam of various buildings spread both within one main section of the area, and then some other buildings slightly distant.  I had a condo which was at Bay Point, about 1/2 mile from the main resort.  The condo was cute, the view perfect.  I was just inland, with the ocean around the corner.  I was on the river, looking out at miles of waterways and salt marsh.  I was able to watch the pelicans diving for fish, and many other birds (egrets and great blue heron) hunting for food in the marsh.  Edisto was the quiet, sleepy little beach community that I had originally assumed Destin would be.

There are a few restaurants, but nothing real fancy, which was great with me.  The food, however, was great.  It's a fresh seafood and juicy burgers type of place.

When I arrived, I went to the golf course (the Plantation Course) and asked if I could make a tee time for the next morning.  I was informed that the next morning was their usual ladies group, and would I like to join them.  Well of course.   I had a wonderful time.  Both of the ladies in my group lived at Edisto part time, and were a wealth of information.  The course was great fun, and I finally, finally, got to see an alligator in one of the pools on the edge of the fairway at 11.   It was about 6 feet long and just quietly floating on the surface.

One of the gals in my group, Lucy, asked if I'd like to play with her the next day, which we did.  Another really fun round on what ended up being a very nice course, well taken care of.  After the round we went for hamburgers at McConkey's which were perfect.  She then took me on a driving tour of the island, and introduced me to one of her friends.  There are many islands there, and Lucy has a house on one of them all connected with short little bridges.  It's quiet, just the sounds of the marsh and, because it's very warm, the bugs.  We parted mid-afternoon, after Lucy gave me some advice about Charleston, to attend the Spoleto Festival, and some upcoming performances there.  I took the road out beneath the towering pines, dripping with Spanish Moss.

I've had an interesting mix on the trip of time alone, time with friends and family, and in Lucy's case, time with someone I meet along the way who really adds to the experience.  I like all of it, and it both gives me a nice mix of freedom and companionship.

Savannah

After a one day stay in St. Augustine, where I went to the World Golf Hall of Fame and also spent some time walking around the historic district, I moved on to Savannah.  I very much enjoyed St. Augustine.  The Golf Hall of Fame was impressive, and it was fun learning a little more history of the game and seeing some of the greats that I'd heard mention of, but didn't really know much about.  The historic district in St. Augustine is fun if you have some historic information or do a tour (which I did), but it's pretty commercial, so you have to be able to look past that a bit.

Savannah was simply a love affair.  I stayed at the Doubletree Hotel in the northwest corner of the historic district, and it was convenient and the service was what I very quickly came to experience in all of Savannah.  Genuine friendliness and a willingness to tarry a moment for a few words were the norm.  I initially took a trolley tour of the historic district, and then walked everywhere, spending more time at the places I'd seen on the tour, and discovering a few new ones.  I loved the restored homes, especially the Owens-Thomas home:

 Mostly, I really enjoyed the pride the people took of their city.  They love it here, and like to talk about it to tourists.  As a city that was spared at the end of Sherman's March (after the burning of Atlanta) they have felt both fortunate, and also a little that it was deserved, because they're so pretty.

There are park squares all over town.  They're fun to study, since there are frequently statues of famous people in them, which tell the story of the city.  Forsythe Park is especially beautiful, at the southern edge of the historic district.

I have too many pictures of houses to attach, some really elaborate, some looking somewhat plain, but with great historical significance, and a few looking a bit dowdy.  Here is one I especially liked:

The food here was wonderful.  Of course, many people now know about Savannah's favorite cook, Paula Deen, who has her famous Lady & Sons restaurant about 3 blocks from my hotel.  I confess I didn't eat there, only because one has to arrive right when they open on any day to make reservations for later in the day.  By 9:30 am, I was usually well into my day walking.  This is a city I know I'll come back to with affection probably many times in the future.

On To Destin, Florida

From Mobile I drove to Destin, Florida.  I had assumed that Destin was a sleepy little place with isolated beaches, probably from some novel I had read.  It must have been an old novel.  Destin is a buzzing, fun, very well developed area for about 15 miles along the gulf coast.  I was staying at the Wyndham Bay Club II in Sandestin, a resort community.  It had three golf courses, and my goal for the week was to enjoy some golf and hit the beach.  I played 5 rounds of golf, and after the frustration of the courses of the Robert Trent Golf Trail in Alabama, while these courses had their challenges, I started playing better, especially after my second round.

The Links course in Sandestin resort was not in tip-top condition.  It had recently been plugged and the greens were a bit sandy and bumpy.  But the course is beautiful, with a number of challenging holes with water on both sides.  I really enjoyed looking at the turtles on the lagoon side of things, poking their little heads out of the water, and then scurrying away if anyone came near.  I then played the Baytowne course a couple of times, and loved it.  Beautiful course, smooth greens, and I played well.  These courses wind through the resort, with longleaf pine woods and a lagoon system throughout.

On the beach side, the weather was pretty hot with a very high humidity, so I had to limit my beach time a little.  But the water was blue, and the sand there is really sugar fine white.  Everyone was talking about the oil.  I was there May 22-29, so no oil had arrived.  The Gulf of Mexico apparently drops off quickly not very far out, so deep water fishing is a major tourist draw here.  I was hanging by the docks one day and got to see it when someone unloaded a shark they had caught off one of the day charters.  Even now (writing about a month later) the beaches at Destin have been spared.  Here's how it looks:

I really enjoyed Destin.  While it's a very busy place, it is also very convenient, with all the restaurants and services one might want.  Inside the resort, it was quiet and lovely.  I did some running in the mornings before it got too hot, but also spent some time in my room as respite when I'd been out a lot.  I'd really like to go back to Destin again.

Robert Trent Jones Golf Trail

Karen and I arrived in Mobile, Alabama to meet Kit and Jim, with a plan of 11 days of golf ahead on the Robert Trent Jones Golf Trail.  We started in Mobile because there was an LPGA tournament taking place there.  We went to the tournament for the Pro-Am on Wednesday, and then the next day took off for golf.  It was fun going to the Pro-Am because I'd never been to one before.   It was curious that the women pros all seemed to be paired with 4 men, who were the amateurs.  I think we saw only one woman amateur playing.

We got to see some of my favorites, Christina Kim, Suzann Petterson, Jiyai Shin, Se Ri Pak and Kristy McPherson.  The weather was beautiful, if a bit hot, and it was a nice preparation prior to hitting the trail for golf ourselves.  I'm not going to go through every course we played and discuss "memorable holes" of either triumph or disaster (although in my case, disaster is the more common).  But I'll give some general impressions.

First of all, the people of Alabama were uniformly exceptionally friendly and helpful.  They have to take into account here the need for water on the course due to the heat.  Off the course we had wonderful food (although we joked about one "tavern" we ate at that didn't have any beer on tap).

I found the Robert Trent Jones Golf Trail to be loads of fun, and the courses at times stunningly lovely.  The fairways wind though longleaf pine forest, and I found the courses very challenging.  On more than one occasion we commented on the fact that Robert Trent Jones senior must have been a sadist.  But more objectively, I would have to say that there was one glaring problem.  It was clear that the addition of tee boxes for women was an afterthought.  Their placement frequently left blind shots off the tee that the other tee boxes did not have, or necessitated hitting a very short first shot because the box had been placed too close to the dogleg.  It penalized women who hit drives of longer than about 150 yards.  We managed.  Of the three of us women, Kit clearly was playing more consistently well, with Karen and I alternating between playing solidly or struggling, usually at different times.

I had expected that playing 11 different courses would cause my play to improve significantly as we progressed, but that didn't happen.  Or maybe it did, in that the level of difficulty of the courses caused me to improve enough that my scores were in the neighborhood of what I usually experience on other courses (usually 90-93).  I'll go into the experience in Destin in the next blog, but I consistently scored about 4-5 shots better on those courses there (more water, but less hilly and few blind shots).

The other thing we did when not playing golf was sightseeing.  We had a great time in Mobile, Montgomery, and Birmingham.  We went to the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, which was exceptionally moving.  We noticed that each of these cities has now a very open attitude about the benefits for all citizens of the improvement of civil rights after 1964, but they also don't hide the past history, which makes the museums quite stimulating.  They go through in detail the roles of various officials who fought tooth and nail against integration, and the commitment of the civil rights workers.

Much of the fun, as always with golf, is the lively conversation with Kit, Jim and Karen, both on the course and otherwise.  In addition of course to solving all of the problems of society, we (Jim excepted) manage to excuse all of our lack of skill on the golf course.  Jim, of course, plays so well that he's sort of on a different planet anyway.  Karen had to leave a few days before we finished on the Trail, but Kit, Jim and I struggled onward, braving more unbelievably beautiful scenery, sweet golf course people, and very warm temperatures.

The final day got rained out.  We were in Muscle Shoals, and the thunderstorm was impressive.  We drove to Birmingham and dropped off Kit and Jim there, and then I drove on to Mobile, so I wouldn't have to drive so much the next day on my way to Destin.  I really enjoyed the RTJ Trail, but if I were advising them, there are a few things I'd suggest they do differently.  But it was great fun, and a real treasure to be able to do it with people with whom one is close.  Thanks Kit, Jim and Karen.