Beaufort, South Carolina

We arrived home from lovely Beaufort yesterday around 1 pm.   It's a three day drive either way, which we have decided is too long for us nowadays.  Next time we go south, we will probably fly and rent a car.  We did need a car in Beaufort - to go to the laundromat, to visit the other islands, and to go to the Kazoo Museum.  Other than that, we walked everywhere which was fine with us in such nice weather.  There was only one rainy day, and we even managed to get outside between showers then, too.

Our motel was downtown and just a block from restaurants, shops, and tour meeting points.  We took several tours, beginning with a golf cart history tour that took us by some amazing antebellum houses once owned by plantation owners, briefly run as Union hospitals in the Civil War, and then owned by other wealthy folks.  Their gardens were amazing.

Beaufort is a very nice city, perfect for tourists.  Our first morning walk brought us by Harriet Tubman's monument, and we learned about her time teaching freed blacks and organizing a raid on rice fields owned by Confederates.  On an excellent walking tour led by a ranger from the Reconstruction Era History center, we also learned about Robert Smalls, a former slave who captured a Confederate ship, and later served in the US Congress.  A major motion picture is being made of his life.  

The Pat Conroy Literary Center was high on our list of places to see, and we enjoyed our tour with a northern transplant.  A couple also on the tour were devoted Conroy fans and lent other information about one of our favorite authors.

As I mentioned, on a rainy day, we visited the Kazoobie Kazoo factory and museum for what turned out to be a fun tour.  Everyone got make their own kazoo in colors of their choosing.  Paul's is all black, but mine is purple and hot pink.  The kids on the tour really seemed to enjoy that part, but Paul and I enjoyed learning about and seeing all of the similar instruments that have been developed.

The Gullah-Geechee three hour tour on St. Helena Island was very good, too.  Our guide, who also works as a storyteller, talked to us some of the time in Gullah, a West African patois based on the native language ("Krio") of the people brought over to farm rice and indigo on the islands around Beaufort.  We visited the Brick Baptist Church where Martin Luther King, Jr., worked on his "I Have a Dream" speech, and e drove on back roads, including the one where they filmed the "run, Forrest, run" sequence in Forrest Gump.

There were lots of great restaurants to try, but the hearth-cooked lasagna at Plum's was to die for.  I did enjoy some crab cakes, but unfortunately Paul didn't get a po'boy.  Next vacation, maybe!