Charleston, SC (3/13 - 3/20/24)

Moving north, we visit our last beach area for a long time before we get into riding more bike trails inland. Here we stayed at the Mount Pleasant / Charleston KOA Holiday. We didn't do a whole lot of biking here, but we did visit a few of the interesting sites in the area.

Our campground was located not too far from the The Avian Conservation Center & Center for Birds of Prey. Here we spent a few hours watching flight sessions and seeing the birds in many exhibits. In addition to providing education on birds of prey, they provide medical care and rehabilitation to injured birds, plus conduct other conservation initiatives.

The best part was the flight demonstrations where trained/permanent residents fly right over the heads of the audience. We stayed for two sessions, one on various birds of prey and one focused on owls only.

After seeing flights of several owl types, here they brought out an 8-week old that was being groomed as a future demonstration bird.

Although we didn't find much trail biking opportunities here, we did manage to get some bike miles in on the West Ashley Greenway that was located just west of Charleston.

It was about 10.5 miles each way and we stopped at the Edisto River Brewing Company at the end for a refreshment and some live entertainment on St. Patrick's Day.

Another day, we went to the harbor to see the USS Yorktown. From the ship you have a nice view of the Arthur Ravenel Jr. Bridge.

At the Patriots Point Naval and Maritime Museum you can see the Yorktown aircraft carrier, a WW2 destroyer, an outdoor Vietnam Experience exhibit, and where you can take a ferry over to Ft. Sumpter.

The Vietnam Experience exhibit was interesting in that it played loud sounds of helicopters and other wartime sounds in a full-size simulation of being in a remote wartime base in the jungle.

We also took a tour of Ft. Moultrie that was just across the bay from Ft. Sumpter. This Ft. protected the east side while Sumpter covered the other.

After we left Charleston and headed to GA, where we stopped at a Harvest Host along the way. The Stable View Farm was a huge equestrian event venue that had all kinds of activity going on with tons of room. Once we get to GA, we will embark on riding multiple Hall of Fame Rail Trails over the next few months, so stay tuned to my upcoming blog posts!