James Island County Park is a 643 acre park with a campground, 4.5 miles of paved bike trails through wooded and open areas, a fishing pier, canoe launch area, and many other day-use amenities. The park is fairly similar to Stony Creek or Kensington Metroparks. The campground has 124 sites, including some with full hook-ups. Most of the sites are well-spaced with a decent amount of trees and shrubs in between. This park was a nice, spacious contrast to the campground onTybee Island.
We spent our first afternoon exploring the park and relaxing. The next day we drove into Charleston. We parked where we had in 2017, when we spent a couple of nights at the historic Elliot House. On that trip we visited Fort Sumter and used the city buses to quickly go to different parts of the city, as well as to cool off (it was about 100 degrees in July of ’17). We were so happy we had seen so much during our last visit, because this time the buses were not running. Even if they had been, we would not have boarded a bus during the pandemic. We didn’t feel a lot of pressure to see everything, since we had already seen so much. We spent 2 – 3 hours walking through the historic district, along the waterfront area and through some parks.
When we were ready for lunch, we really wanted to return to Amen Street Fish & Raw Bar where we enjoyed a fabulous dinner before (heavenly she-crab soup and crab cakes) , but it was packed full of people. Our back-up plan was to go to The Griffin, a pub which had an outdoor patio, but the patio was too crowded for our comfort. Though this was disappointing, we looked online and discovered another area of Charleston, known as The Brewery District. The area is somewhat similar to Midtown in Detroit, with older homes being refurbished and old warehouse areas becoming restaurants and breweries. We went to a really nice restaurant and microbrewery called Edmund’s Oast. The seating was all outdoors (due to the pandemic) with a huge patio, many well-spaced tables and very strict mask protocols. The place had a great atmosphere and we were happy to relax and have an awsome lunch and beer, after so much walking. At one point, Dave announced he was on “historical overload”. Considering that, and the fact that Goolge Maps failed us on the way home, we agreed the next day should be more relaxing.
We spent an afternoon at Folly Beach, a small beach town. It is apparent that it’s a weekend or holiday destination for locals. There are shops and restaurants, while the beach and fishing pier are the main attractions. It was not warm enough for swimming or comfortably sitting on the beach and the fishing pier was under reconstruction. Many businesses in town were still closed for the season. These were perfect conditions to check it out, without any crowds. We will likely return during a future visit to the area.
Beautiful campsite at James Island County Park, Charleston, SC
