Tuesday morning we got up at 0600 and after coffee and breakfast got up and started getting ready to leave about 0800. As per usual, Connie did the inside and Neil the outside. He didn’t have much to stow since we only put the lights underneath the house but he got them rolled up and re-stowed them and our outside chairs in the basement. After that he got our holding tanks dumped and the hoses and such stored away.

Meanwhile Connie got the inside finished up and about 0920 or so we went through our pre-underway checklist, got hitched up and ready to go. We left Pelican Roost almost exactly on schedule a few minutes before 1000.

We stopped for lunch at an El Cheap truck stop in Georgia…had some pretty good fried chicken. Once we were at the South Carolina welcome station about 2 hours from our original destination (the Joint Base Charleston Fam Camp) we called them to see about openings…this was our plan so that if they were full we could just go directly to the KOA in Mount Pleasant. Turned out that the Fam Camp was full…they had some overflow available but that’s water/electric only so we told them we would call them back and decided to just go to the KOA. Called the KOA and they’re booked solid for the next 3 weekends for some reason (despite it being early in the season and we didn’t figure their would be any issue with site availability). 

We regrouped a little bit and did a little more campground searching in the Charleston area…called 2 more places and both were likewise full. At this point…Neil said that maybe we should just move our SC stop to Columbia instead of Charleston and while we were considering that Connie decided to check and see if there were any other military campgrounds in the area. Turns out that the Naval Weapons Station at Goose Creek about 20 or so miles up the Cooper River from the old Navy Base had a campground…a quick phone call got us 10 days in site 24.

We reprogrammed our GPS and headed for Goose Creek…on arrival at the base we slightly misinterpreted the directions notes that Neil grabbed off of the campground website and wandered around the housing area on the base for a few minutes before finally figuring out where the campground sites were. We drove directly in and headed for site 24…only to be intercepted by the camp host who wanted to know who we were and why we were here. We told him that the reservation folks told us to just drive in and go direct to the site…but apparently they forgot to get the word out to him. Nonetheless…he quickly finished up the paperwork for our registration and we got backed in just fine. Here’s a shot of our setup.

As you can see; we’ve got a nice concrete patio/driveway area and although it’s not a concrete pad there are concrete strips for the wheels. We had to back through a mucky area right at the road intersection about one BAT length out of the frame to the right (it’s a really long site) but that was no worries. Since it was pretty cool and looking like it wanted to rain we skipped most of the outside setup until today. Neil’s headed out for a bike ride in a bit but he’s going to put up the flag and signs before he head out.

What a nice little find…no noise, woods behind us…way better than the Air Force Base where we would have planes landing throughout the day and night. We’re really glad we happened across this one. Had some burgers and leftover potatoes and veggies for dinner and slept late this morning. 

Connie’s off to get her nails done and Neil is doing outside setup and bike riding. Late this afternoon we’re off to the SMART Muster at the fairgrounds nearby…turns out it’s less than 2 miles from where they used to live…I’ll go by and grab a picture of the first non apartment they lived in way back in the late 70s. After that it’s the SMART dinner and entertainment then we’ll see about fun stuff and work for Connie maybe some tomorrow…probably the latter since it’s going to be cool but Friday and over the weekend are supposed to be warm and sunny so we may save the fun stuff until then.

Cyas.