Enjoying Downtime at St. James and St. John Island

As you’ve picked up from our last post, it became necessary once we reached the Charleston area to really scale back on activities for awhile for Ken to get some ‘recuperation time’.  Rather than the Charleston extended sightseeing of the Yorktown, historic Charleston, etc., we chose instead to stay close to our campground, James Island County Park.

 

This is a very well maintained campground and park, with very helpful staff at the campground office.

 

 

 

 

In between relaxing time we took off with the jeep to do some exploring in the park.

Being the dog fanatic that I am, I found their unique dog park really nice.  The dogs have many acres of free ground to roam including a beach and a lake. Since Ken didn’t feel so hot we decided not to actually test out our furkids here since they can be very protective of each other and it would have been a lot of ground to cover to keep up with them if they should decide to cause trouble.

 

The coolest attraction at St. James County Park was the 50 foot climbing wall.

This was certainly not something Ken was interested in trying after his recent vertigo episode but it was really fun to sit and watch.

 

It was obvious this was quite the full-body work out. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Believe it or not this smaller climbing wall is actually portable and can be rented for parties.  Now wouldn’t that be an interesting way to entertain guests!

 

 

 

 

 

We couldn’t have picked a better time of the year to be in this part of the country with all of the azaleas in bloom everywhere we turned.

Another of our shorter drives was to check out the  ‘Angel Oak’ which was on nearby John’s Island.

  Sometimes we run across little slices of this lovely world where it seems you can just feel yourself entering a sacred space – this was one of them.

 

You have to drive down an old dirt road to get to the oak.

 

 

 

 

 

 

But, it was definitely worth the trip!

You almost had a sense of the tree ‘reaching out’.

It’s obvious that they are taking great care of the old girl with posts and retaining poles in several places to help her in holding up her massive branches.

As we pulled away from the angel oak park we saw a sign pointing toward a historic church so we decided to check it out as well.

 

 

This turned out to be a pretty cool find for us in our meanderings as well.

 

 

 

We ended up spending quite a bit of time just wandering the church graveyard with all of its spanish moss covered trees and gravestones contained lengthy disertations from grieving loved one’s on the qualities of their departed.  For example, it was obvious from the stone below that the beloved Elder Becket was a slave owner as the epithet included the phrase ‘a kind Master’.

When we got back to the motorhome, we did some chicken on the grill and I spent more computer time while Ken kicked back under the awning with a local newspaper he’d picked up.

As it turned out, while this wasn’t the full day of sightseeing I’d expected in Charleston, Ken and I had one of our best days yet in this new lifestyle.

Hugs, C