Last start this morning as we don’t have far to drive. Tasks before heading out included final dewinterizing, tank flushing, and more system checks. All in good working order.
We spent the morning in Beaufort walking along the port and strolling the shaded streets. Azaleas are in bloom here. We have been here several times and it is just as pretty as ever. After a lovely seafood lunch we headed to our next campsite. We had intended to stop in Savannah but since we have been there several times decided to skip it this time.
Good decisions… we like to travel off routes rather than interstates when we can. Today that proved to be wise as we chose hwy 17 instead. As it turns out, an accident on I95 caused a 90 minute backlog. Unfortunately traffic from I95 also clogged hwy 17 causing a 45 minute delay. Listening to Google maps tell you that you have a 45 minute delay but are still on the fastest route is a little disconcerting.
Our campsite for the next 4 nights is a lovely county park close to Brunswick, GA. More about this park tomorrow. Our neighbor in the campsite behind us is entertaining us all with his delightful guitar and country and western music.
Beaufort, SC
Beaufort is a city on Port Royal Island, one of South Carolina’s coastal Sea Islands. It’s known for its antebellum mansions, especially in the downtown historic district.
Chartered in 1711, it is the second-oldest city in South Carolina, behind Charleston. The prominent role of Beaufort and the surrounding Sea Islands during the Reconstruction era after the U.S. Civil War is memorialized by the Reconstruction Era National Monument, established in 2017.
Written history began 500 years ago with the exploration of the area by Spanish Captain Pedro de Salazar between 1514 and 1516. Thus, Beaufort County was the site of the second landing on the North American continent by Europeans. The Lowcountry region had been subject to numerous European explorations and failed attempts at colonization before British colonists founded the city in 1711
It flourished first as a center for shipbuilding and later, when the region was established as a slave society, as the elite center for the Lowcountry planters through the Civil War. The Union declared the slaves emancipated and initiated efforts at education and preparation for full independence. The Freedmen’s Bureau worked with local blacks during Reconstruction.
Gullah History
The Gullah are African Americans who live in the Lowcountry region of South Carolina and Georgia, which includes both the coastal plain and the Beaufort Sea Islands.
The Gullah are known for preserving more of their African linguistic and cultural heritage than any other African-American community in the United States. They speak an English-based creole language containing many African loanwords and significant influences from African languages in grammar and sentence structure; Gullah storytelling, cuisine, music, folk beliefs, crafts, farming and fishing traditions, all exhibit strong influences from West and Central African cultures.
The largest group of enslaved Africans brought into Charleston and Savannah came from the West African rice-growing region. South Carolina and Georgia rice planters once called this region the “Rice Coast”, indicating its importance as a source of skilled African labor for the North American rice industry.
In recent years the Gullah people—led by Penn Center and other determined community groups—have been persistent in keeping control of their traditional lands.
South Carolina and Georgia Plantations
Utilizing enslaved labor to till, sow, harvest, and prepare products for shipment, white planters sold agricultural staples such as indigo, Sea Island cotton, and rice to markets throughout the United States and in Europe. Some planters became fabulously wealthy.
Louise and Brian McLeod Travel Blog 
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