Antebellum Homes, Fried Shrimp and Convertible Rides

Yesterday we drove the 2-seater convertible up to Beaufort, SC to see the Beaufort Shrimp Fest. It was the first cool sunny day of Fall, and it was October first. the only problem--they just invited too many people. Everybody and his uncle was there. Getting to a booth to have some shrimp looked like an ordeal. We walked through the park and it was shoulder-to-shoulder all the way. People would just stop to talk to someone or decide on a booth to try and everything would grind to a halt. There was no way around them. You just had to stand there. Now I like shrimp well enough and there was the promise of some cold beer to wash it down. The waterfront has a fine view of the Beaufort River (which isn't a river at all, it is a tidal strait, full of Atlantic seawater, plain and simple. More about that later). But it was a little ridiculous. We toured a shrimp boat, but it was packed with people and you could hardly get near the boat's captain, who was there to explain a little about a shrimper's life. In short, the fest was trying our patience.

Then we saw it--The Prince of Tides--a tour boat with a dozen or so people sitting on the benches taking it all in from offshore. We went and got some tickets, and I bought a beer and we were on board for the 90 minute tour of the river. I had to share the beer because we could not find a place in that crowd to buy herself a soda.

We had a fine boat ride, we saw many of the antebellum homes from the ocean side, heard about The Great Skeedaddle-when the city's residents all ran away when the Union forces overwhelmed the fort at St. Helena Island and sailed in to occupy the City of Beaufort. With the residents gone, the Union army turned many of these homes into hospitals as many as 14 were hospitals. In post-bellum days, Beaufort boomed. Because of the Union occupation it was largely intact, and it was a center for all sorts of trade and exports of farm products. Most all of that was wiped out when the Great Storm of 1893 submerged nearly all of South Carolina.

Soon we ran out of land and homes to talk about and our crew turned to the lively eco-system of the Beaufort River. We saw both the top and bottom of the food chain. The top of the food chain are the dolphins, which consume 25 lbs of fish daily. At the bottom are the microbes that live on the detritus from seasonal comings and goings of spartina grass that grows on the tidal waters.

Later, we went to the Wren, a restaurant with unique interior design and an in-between menu for people who (like us) are too late for lunch and too early for dinner. It was tasty. All in all, a very special day.