Folly Beach and Charleston: The Rest

The weather was the same most days, very similar to Florida with sun all day and rain in the evening. We had a LOT of lightning though. Scary lightning! Pretty though. I love being at the beach in the rain. *siiiiigh* So relaxing.

Folly Beach is a NICE beach. No trash, no jellyfish, no tar. We rented two comfy beach chairs with a big umbrella one day. Soooo great. There is brownish water there like in Galveston and I still haven't researched what it is that determines whether a place has brown or clear water. I'm thinking it's the sand and/or the grade of the sea floor.

The day that Judy and Philip and their four kids spent the day with us, the lifeguard suddenly stood up and blew her whistle and yelled "everyone out of the water!!!" We figured it was a shark sighting, as they'd been catching sharks off the pier all week. Then a Coast Guard helicopter started flying back and forth. Turns out two swimmers were missing. So for an hour or so, we all stood there, looking into the water, waiting to see a body I guess. Yikers.

Later the two swimmers showed up safe. Thank goodness!

Charleston tours we did:

Fried Green Tours Haunted Charleston- mostly around the King Street area and College of Charleston. Such a beautiful campus. All old buildings with oaks and Spanish moss... the whole bit. Gah. Not super scary or anything, but very interesting and based on Ed Macy's book "Haunted Charleston." April is adorable!
Ed Grimball's Charleston Walking Tour- Ed is so knowledgeable and personable. Mostly information on the architecture of historic Charleston, with a lot of history along the way.
Charleston Tea Plantation- the only tea plantation in the US. It smells awesome when you walk in. The place is a subsidiary of Bigelow Tea.
South Carolina Aquarium- this is a small aquarium, but worth a visit. For another $10 per person, you can take a special tour of the Sea Turtle Hospital, where they had six "patients" at the time. There were just a few people on the tour. It was an amazing experience.

A note-- One of the coolest things I've ever seen is The Cooper River Bridge.

And finally... We found out that Gershwin and Heyward wrote "Porgy and Bess" at Folly Beach. Cool, eh?!