🎉Charleston, SC 🌼 Here we come! Monday, May 8th (Day 8)

😱Oops – We slept in on a moving day! Woke up at 8:48, showered, dressed and packed up and we were on the road by 10am. 10:53 we crossed into SC! (77* & ☀️) Stopped at a QT station which reminds us a lot like WAWA. I ordered us a ham, cheese, & egg croissant that was amazing! Coffee & a Diet Coke to start off our late morning! ☕️🥤 Got on I-95 for the next 27 miles.

1:00pm we arrived at James Island County Park. Site #53 with Full hookups. We set up inside & outside then had a chicken sandwich and at 2:15pm we left to go exploring. We drove into Low Country to Charleston Tea Plantation, on Wadmalaw Island. Who knew one even existed! 🤷🏻‍♀️ We sure didn’t. As far as your eyes could see….fields and fields of thousands of tea bushes (Camellia sinensis). Tucked back in big beautiful oak trees sat this building. Big porch with rocking chairs as we came up. 🪑 A woman greeted and told us to help ourselves to as much hot & cold teas we’d like as we shop in the gift shop and go on a factory tour. Factory tour was free! All you can drink and free tour…sounds great! We learned so much on the factory tour. Black, oolong and green teas are all from the same tea leaves. It’s how they are processed is what makes the difference..

For a small fee we took the trolley ride throughout the fields, saw the green house and also the huge tea harvester. Very interesting adventure! And to top it off since they were closing and we were the last tour they told us to drink up the tea because they just throw it away at the end of the day so…..we filled up our Yeti’s!

So it’s only 4:30 and the night is young so off to the next adventure! We went to Angel Oak Park on John’s Island to see the largest Oak tree. It’s 400-500 years old…stands 66.5 ft tall, 28 ft circumference & shading an area of 17,000 square feet. What an amazing site to see!

So now it’s 5:30 and we’re headed back when we see this unique Brewery! Low Tide Brewing. Yup we stop! Indoor & outdoor seating, food truck …our kind of stop. We ordered a queso/pimento tater tots then some beer. I had a Sour watermelon seltzer which was amazing, Tim had a citra n cream IPA 6.3%, lagoon lounger IPA 6%, and a liquid Liberty IPA 7.7%! It started to rain so we went inside and it was free bingo night! After 4 rounds & no wins we needed to get some food…..because we slept in and rushed to get on the road I didn’t take anything out for dinner! Oh darn! So we looked up to see what was around us. 🤔 hmmm Tatooed Moose sounded interesting….understatement. What a place. It was featured on Diners, drive ins, & dives! A husband & wife owned bar and they supply markers to you to tattoo the walls, tables, chairs and yes even the bathroom! 🤦🏻‍♀️ Have to say it had the most delicious meals. Tried Duck fat fries for the first time. Served with an aioli sauce. I had a Thanksgiving Sammy sandwich & Tim had a Porkstrami Rueben. Huge meals we took 1/2 of our meals home.

We arrived back to Ruby at 8:25 pm. What an exciting first day in South Carolina! It’s 73* We traveled 165 miles today. Time to relax, journal & blog.

Charleston Tea Planation- In the late 1700s, tea bushes, also known as Camellia Sinensis, first arrived in the United States from China. Several attempts were made in South Carolina over the next 150 years to propagate and produce tea for consumption, but none were successful. Not until 1888, when Dr. Charles Shepard founded the Pinehurst Tea Plantation in Summerville, South Carolina did American grown tea become a reality. In Summerville, Dr. Shepard created award winning teas until his death in 1915. After his passing, the Pinehurst Tea Plantation closed and Dr. Shepard’s tea plants grew wild for the next forty five years.

In 1963, a 127 acre potato farm located on Wadmalaw Island in the Lowcountry of South Carolina was purchased and Shepard’s tea plants were transplanted from Pinehurst to the farm.  For the next 24 years research was conducted on this experimental farm.  In 1987, William Barclay Hall purchased the land.  Hall, a third-generation tea taster who received his formal training during a four-year tea apprenticeship in London, England, converted the research and development farm to a commercial operation.  Thanks to Hall’s vision the Charleston Tea Garden® was founded.  During his seventeen year tenure, his original “American Classic” tea became the first tea ever to be made with 100% tea grown in America. For almost thirty years, American Classic has been immensely popular with tea lovers in the Carolinas.   

In 2003, seeking additional financing, Bill reached out to his longtime friends, the Bigelow family.  A partnership arrangement was worked out and the Bigelow Tea Company bought the garden.  The Bigelow’s brought sixty-five years of experience in the specialty tea business to the Garden and the American Classic brand.  Since 2003 the Charleston Tea Garden® has transformed into a true American icon.  American Classic Tea has maintained its faithful fans since its start in the late 1980s and thanks to Bill Hall’s creativity, many new teas have been added under the Charleston Tea Garden® brand. 

Angel Oak – The oak derives its name from the estate of Justus Angel and his wife, Martha Waight Tucker Angel. Local folklore tells stories of ghosts of former enslaved people appearing as angels around the tree. Despite the claims that the Angel Oak is the oldest tree east of the Mississippi River, bald cypress trees throughout North and South Carolina are significantly older. One example in North Carolina is over 1,600 years old.

Low Tide Brewing – The name “Low Tide Brewing” was conceived while kayaking on the waters around Johns Island in 2012, but Mike’s dream of starting a brewery began long before that. Mike started home brewing in the basement of his fraternity house and always held on to the dream of opening up his own brewery. After a two-year stent in Australia, Mike decided it was time to make his dream into a reality. After finishing his business degree and while working for CB Craft Brewers in his native upstate New York, he headed back to settle in his favorite city and hit the ground running. Andy joined Low Tide in 2015 to continue the journey of opening Johns Island first brewery. Andy, a Colorado native, has worked with the folks at O’Dell’s and was the head brewer at Benson Brewing in Nebraska. Together, Mike and Andy dedicated themselves to not only creating delicious, unique Low Tide beers, but also crafting custom beers in collaboration with restaurants and bars in the low country. With a unique model and things moving forward, Low Tide opened its doors March 12, 2016.