#19: Take a Vacation with Friends - Part I

"I have found out that there ain't no surer way to find out whether you like people or hate them than to travel with them. " ~Mark Twain

We've never taken more than a weekend trip with friends before, so I thought this would be a great item to put on my 101 list.  We might not be able to do this after we all start having kids, so it was something I'd had on my mind to do sometime soon.

Rachel's parents have a timeshare that they said we could use to get a discounted condo for a week.   So the six of us (Hathaways, Herkens, and Trevor & I) decided to go to Hilton Head Island.  Somehow there was a little confusion with Rachel's mom booking it, so we ended up with a condo on Edisto Island.  After researching Edisto Island and talking to some people that had been there, we thought it sounded great.   It is a lot less commercialized than Hilton Head and advertises itself as "South Carolina's Best Kept Secret".

I think I'm going to break the trip up into a couple of posts since we have so many pictures.  For my own organization, I've arranged everything by day.  Sorry if it feels like you're reading my journal or something. :) 

Saturday:

We left bright and early Saturday morning to drive to Nashville.  

Everyone was really excited to take off. (Especially Justin!)

Some of the enthusiasm wore off after a little while... :)

Along the way we saw a few sites:

We drove through St. Louis.  I actually don't think I've been there since I was in the 7th grade.

A few people on the trip were the type of travelers that don't like to stop, but just want to keep going to get to your destination.  We had to convince them to stop in Metropolis, Illinois to see the "Giant Superman Statue" we'd seen advertised along the way.  In 1972, DC Comics declared Metropolis "Hometown Of Superman", the comic book superhero who is based in the fictional city of Metropolis.

It ended up being a nice little detour off the road, and it made for some entertaining pictures!

Sunday:

We stayed the night in Lebanon, TN (outside Nashville) with Karen's grandparents on Saturday night and woke up to a delicious breakfast Sunday morning prepared by Karen's Nana. 

She cooks her husband breakfast every day.  We girls weren't too excited for our husbands to hear that!

We then had our own church service and then we took some pictures before we left.

Justin, Papa, Nana, & Karen (Gotta love those Southern nicknames for grandparents!)

The group in front of the SUV.  Blair's dad let us borrow it for the week so that we could all fit in one vehicle.  We're so thankful for that!  You can see in this picture how we had to attach some extra storage for all our luggage.

We didn't really make  any stops on Sunday.  I think we were all ready to get to the beach.  Once we got there, we checked into our condo. 

The resort had these signs up everywhere.  Our neighbor told us there was a 500-lb. alligator that lived behind our condo named Brutus.  We always looked for him, but never saw him.

After unloading, we headed out for a quick bite of pizza on the island.

We couldn't wait any longer, so we all headed over to see the beach after dinner.

My feet in the water for the first time on the trip.  This was Trevor's first experience ever seeing the Atlantic Ocean (other than flying over it)!

Monday:

We took off to visit Charleston in the morning.  It was about an hour's drive away from the condo.  I fell in love with the place!  The buildings were beautiful, the food was amazing, and the historic downtown district we were in wasn't too commercialized.

We explored a little and then decided to eat at Poogan's Porch.  Blair and Rachel honeymooned in Charleston and had eaten there before, so they knew it was a good place.

We ordered some fried green tomatoes.  It was the first time I've ever tried these!

And we also ordered some fried alligator.  I had tried this once before in Arkansas.   It is surprising REALLY good.

The group of us at Poogan's Porch.  Notice that homemade biscuit on Karen's plate.  They were the BEST biscuits I have ever eaten.  On the way home from the trip, everyone was sharing their favorite thing from the trip.  Trevor's favorite thing was "Poogan's Porch's Biscuits." :)  He does love food!  I do think it is one of the best places we ate.

Blair & Rachel were sharing the story about Poogan's Porch that they had learned on a Ghost Tour they took on their honeymoon.  For such a big guy, Justin sure doesn't like to hear anything scary!

    Karen in the women's bathroom that is supposedly haunted!

We explored the city more after lunch.  I just loved all the buildings and the history that goes with them.  Charleston is known as the "Holy City" because of all the church steeples that dot the city skyline.  We visited the oldest church in Charleston - St. Michael's.

I thought their pews were really interesting.  They were sections of seats boxed off and assigned a number.  And we joke about "assigned seating" in our churches today....

We then visited the St. Michael's graveyard:This is the gravestone of a Revolutionary soldier who apparently died when he was only 8 years old.  Wow.  Or maybe that's just the dates of the Revolutionary war....that would make more sense!

If you click on this picture to zoom in, you can see the sign that says this is the grave of John Rutledge, one of the signers of the U.S. Constitution.

There were two signers of the Constitution buried in this graveyard.  This is the grave of Charles Cotesworth Pinckney.  Poor guy - located right under a utility box now.

We then headed over to The Battery.  It stretches along the shore and had some amazing homes.

The Battery includes a park called White Point Gardens.  The boys couldn't get enough of looking at all the artillery that was used during the civil war.

I think Karen and Trevor are the only ones "in character" in this picture.

We explored historic downtown Charleston some more after that.  There are just so many details that are interesting.  You could look around forever!

I don't think anyone would try to break into this house!

In Charleston, a lot of the nice, old houses had privacy doors.  Since there was no air conditioning, and it gets awfully hot in South Carolina, they wanted to be able to open the doors to their house.  So they would build their house like this with privacy doors on the front so they could keep that front door shut.

The market had lots of of sea grass baskets for sale.  Here are some people making them.  The slaves made these baskets (similar to those made in Africa) for cultivating rice during the rise of rice crops in the 1860's.

We did find a Charleston shirt designed by our very own Rachel Herken.  Rachel works as a graphic designer for Gear for Sports.

That evening we ate at an Italian restaurant called Bocci's.  It was really good.  We didn't have any bad food in Charleston!

After dinner we went to another place for dessert.  We ate a lot of dessert on this trip!

After dessert, we had made reservations to go on a walking ghost tour.  We decided on the Ghost & the Graveyards tour at 9:30.   I wasn't sure what I would think of it (not believing in ghosts and all!), but it was interesting to hear the stories and a lot of it was just plain history. 

More to come on the story told on this Mausoleum in a later post... We went back to Poogan's Porch on our ghost walk as it is supposedly haunted by both the friendly ghost of Poogan (the dog the restaurant is named after) and a not-so-friendly ghost of a lady named Zoe who lived there.   The Travel Channel voted Poogan's Porch as the "Third Most Haunted Place in America" in 2003.

Charleston is considered one of the most "Haunted Cities in America".   We saw this sign earlier in the day at one of the churches. :)

Well, that's all I have in me for tonight, so I'll continue with the rest of the trip soon!