Current location: Jacksonville, FL N 30 29.085', W 081 39.172', elev. 41 ft.

Yesterday morning, I left Myrtle Beach, or rather I tried leaving, but my car wouldn't start. So I had the extra fun task of pulling all of my crap out of my trunk, and digging out my jumper cables so my sister could give me a jump. I guess leaving the XM plugged into power for 4 days without starting the car was a bad idea. I was able to start out at about 9:30 after the jump and shoving everything back into my trunk.

I started out on US 17 S, which you can catch right on the edge of the Atlantic, past all the beach traffic and shops. The road opened up as soon as I got south of Myrtle and I was able to cruise comfortably to Georgetown, SC, where I had to put the windows up and turn on the AC. Georgetown has a huge paper mill associated with International Paper, so the air just reeks. After passing through Georgetown, I did turn the AC off and go back to windows open, but as soon as I did, my hands, the steering wheel, and other parts of my car instantly were sticky, due to the molasses of humidity and haze of southern South Carolina that I was driving through. Yesterday I registered my best gas mileage of the trip yet, over 28 mpg (put my average for the trip over 27 mpg), which is weird, since I had the AC on more yesterday than any other day, and I thought the AC is a huge detriment to miles per gallon.

Traveling down 17, I noticed an abundance of road side stands selling not p-nuts, not Wattamellons, not pecans, but straw hats. At one stretch of about 15 miles, I saw about 6 of these stands, just selling these same ugly skimpy straw hats.

Just wanted to mention that South Carolina has seemingly the most relaxed fireworks laws in the states I've been to, they sell fireworks all over the place in huge warehouse stores; but then they have some of the most strict liquor laws. They can only serve liquor at restaurants and bars out of those little nip bottles you get on airplanes. If you want a drink mixed with two different types of alcohol, they have to serve you two full nip bottles.

After a while of traveling on US 17, I got to Charleston, SC, (forgot to take a GPS reading). Charleston looks to be a beautiful city, and I drove out to a place called Patriots Point, which is a naval museum with the aircraft carrier Yorktown, a sub and two other navy vessels.



Yorktown

From here, you can catch a boat tour to Fort Sumter, where the first shots of the Civil War were fired.


Fort Sumter

I pad for the boat tour, and they handed me a pamphlet map with a history of the Fort. The map was in the same style as other National Park literature, and I realized I might have been able to do the tour free if I had pulled out my National Parks Pass. I rode out to Fort Sumter, and got to learn about the early actions in the Civil War, as well as some things about South Carolina's independent history. Not only was South Carolina the first state to secede from the US, but they were also the first colony to secede from Great Britain, a full 6 months before the Declaration of Independence was signed. A really interesting photo I got was from a cannon shot, still stuck in the wall from the early 1860s.



Bombardment remains

The boat tour ended about 4 PM, so I had very little time to explore Charleston, so I just drove around and took a few photos. Charleston looks to be nearly complete building one of those pretty span suspension bridges like the Zakim bridge in Boston.
Further south on US 17, near the Georgia border, I ran into a town called Sheldon.



In Sheldon, they had signs for a place called Old Sheldon Church, so I figured I had to check it out. I pulled up to the church yard, and found it was a ruin of a church originally built in the 1600's. It was really a cool place, the trees were all very old and overgrown, and the ruins were very picturesque in the middle of the forest. The graves and tombstones were scattered haphazardly over the yard and even within the church itself. I got some real neat photos here, and it was one of the highlights of yesterday's drive. And I probably wouldn't have even stopped here were my name not Sheldon.



US 17 met up with I-95 near the border and I drove into Georgia, and into Savannah. It was getting late at this point, about 7 PM, so I didn't have any time at all to check out Savannah, so I just rode around and took a few photos before heading back onto I-95. I'll be back. I was surprised to find that despite being such a large state, Georgia has the smallest swath of I-95 since Delaware, only about 109 miles to the Florida border. In Georgia, the air was pea soup thick and hazy, even at 8 PM. Something you notice driving through Georgia is you could build a junk yard if you collected all the car parts from the side of the road. Georgia has more eaten up truck tires on the side of the road than the other states I've been to, combined. I don't know whether they just don't clean up, or their roads simply inspire the tire treads to eat away. Additionally, Georgia had more abandoned cars on the side of the road than the other states combined. (I remember this from driving through Georgia with my college roommates on the way to Spring Break once.) In the 109 miles of Georgia, I must have passed at least 15 abandoned cars.

After Georgia, I drove on to Jacksonville FL. I wanted to camp out last night, but it was raining. The cheapest motel I could find was really awful.

All of the day's photos can be found here.