Our drive here was long (18+ hours) and we encountered our share of traffic and crazy drivers including a guy and a girl talking through their car windows as they were driving down the interstate in Augusta, Georgia! Of course they were taking up both lanes of traffic and couldn’t be passed. Our first day out we stopped for lunch in Little Rock so we could see Ken’s brother Don. Then we drove on to Tupelo (Siri says “TOO-pelow”) because it was halfway more or less. Because it was here, we drove over to Elvis Presley’s birthplace. There is a whole little complex built around the tiny two room shotgun house where he spent the first 14 years of his life. It was evening so everything was closed but we were able to walk around and take pictures. We had some trouble finding it and then had trouble finding downtown and getting back to our motel. What we discovered was that the map we were using was printed upside down and that we’d been going in the opposite direction each time. My useless fact for the day was that Tupelo was hit by an F5 tornado in 1936 that is still ranked as one of the deadliest tornadoes in history. At least 250 whites were killed and an unknown number of blacks. Sadly no one valued their lives enough to count.
Sunday we drove through Mississippi, Georgia and South Carolina and arrived in Beaufort about 7:00 pm. It didn’t dawn on me until Saturday night that we would be changing over to Eastern time! Found our little rental studio easily and collapsed.
This morning we got up early and found a quaint cafe called Blackstones for breakfast. We had some time to kill so walked around downtown a bit. Beaufort is called Beautiful Beaufort and it is easy to see why. Many of the buildings date back to the 19th century and some as far back as the late 1700s. Stopped in at the Visitors Center for a map and then headed back to the place where we were to pick up our van tour.
Evelene was our tour guide and is the owner of the Spirit of Old Beaufort tours. She was quite a character and was very knowledgeable about the area. She said she used to do her tours in full antebellum clothing but couldn’t do it anymore because it was too hard in the heat. Our tour mates were late to start and got lost so we got a late start. That wasn’t a problem because we weren’t on a time schedule anyway. Our tour was quite interesting.
The Beaufort area was first claimed by the Spanish in about 1650. The French took it from Spain and then the British under King Charles took it from France. In the 1700 and 1800s slaves outnumbered whites. In 1861 at the start of the “Recent Unpleasantness” aka the Civil War the Union Army took the port of Charleston at Fort Sumter. The whites in Beaufort feared for their lives so they fled south and east leaving behind their slaves, their homes and most of their possessions. The slaves called it The Great Skeedaddle. The next day the slaves dressed in their owners clothing and stood on the banks of the harbor waving white hankies to welcome the Union ships and forces. They became contraband but were able to work for wages. Many of the slaves were able to save enough money to buy the great homes left behind by the whites at tax sales. A few joined the Union army for the duration of the war. Some notable names who came to Beaufort during the war included Harriet Tubman. I learned later in the day that Tubman led a battle on the Combahee River that resulted in the freeing of 700 slaves!
During our tour we saw movie sites from “The Big Chill”, “Forrest Gump”, “The Great Santini” and “The Prince of Tides”, among others. The Tidalholm house was used for the Great Santini and the Big Chill. It was for sale for 4 years with an asking price of 4 million dollars. It sold for around 1.5 mil. Apparently it needed repairs because it is undergoing major renovation. I’d like to share a photo but I am too tired to figure out how so I’ll add it to Facebook instead.
There was more to our day but I’ll have to add it later as I’m starting to see double. Tomorrow it’s off to Charleston!
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