In the shadow of a fire tower

We showed up to the Francis Marion rec area with a bit of a gamble. It was a free campground that was open, first come-first served. But it worked out in our favor and we didn’t have to check out any of our backup locations!

We have been using a website that shows free campsites all over the U.S. but you have to research a lot of the sites, and many of them are Cracker Barrel and Walmart parking lots. Not bad if you just need to crash in your car overnight so you don’t crash from falling asleep, but we are hoping to avoid those kinds of stays if we can (mostly for my mother’s sanity)

We took Raina mountain biking for the first time on a trail and she loved it and did so well! She ran in between Dakota and me, stayed really close, and had a ball.

We also got to explore a raptor sanctuary! The Avian Conservation Center for Birds of Prey was amazing and we got to watch a flight demonstration. As many people know, vultures are one of my favorite kinds of birds, and they had so many of them! They also had burrowing owls, golden eagles, hawks of all kinds, and even a stork.

We also found time to check out The Rice Museum in Georgetown, SC. Yes, it was a museum all about rice! It was a super small museum and these Micro and Mighty Museums are my absolute favorite. I had no idea there was such a strong rice and indigo industry in South Carolina. It was also really interesting to see the same tools used in SC as we saw in used in the rice fields in Malawi.

If that wasn’t enough, we also found our way onto the USS Yorktown, which was the tenth aircraft carrier to serve in the United States Navy. We got to explore all around the huge ship! The crew’s quarters, boiler room, kitchens, flight deck, everywhere. We walked around for hours and it was so easy to forget that you were actually on a ship on the water. Poor Dakota was just too tall and kept hitting his head on everything.

They also had a section that was designed to look like a Vietnam War cp. It was interesting but felt so strange to walk around. It was designed to sound and feel like you were actually there, and it made me think of how hard it all must have been for my grandfather. He was a Huey pilot and rarely talked about what happened over there. The few times he did, it was with a lot of sadness. They had a video playing of some of the men who had been there talking about how they were treated when they came home and it was horrible to watch but also incredibly important to remember.

At the end of our stay, we did take a single day to visit Savanah Georgia so we could visit Bonaventure Cemetery. Personally, I love cemeteries and feel so at peace when I am exploring them. When I was a young girl, my mother and I would go take walks in cemeteries while I was growing up, reading all the tombstones, taking picnics, and exploring. THIS CEMETERY IS THE MOST BEAUTIFUL CEMETERY I HAVE EVER SEEN!!!

Words can’t express it, and honestly, I don’t think the footage does either. But it was absolutely stunning and is also apparently one of the most photographed cemeteries in the world.

It is just so crazy to me that this is my life right now. I am so blessed, it is just insane.