After leaving Folly Beach, I reallized that I really didn't spend any time in Charleston, except for one night out to eat at Magnolia's. So, I went downtown and walked around for a bit. I kind of liked the place and I learned that there were a couple festivals going on at the time, Piccolo Spoleto and the Spoleto Festival. Piccolo Spoleto, from what I gather, is an art festival where local artists display their work at a park in the middle of town as well as other schedules events. The Spoleto Festival seemed to be more of a smattering of opera, music theatre, dance and special events. So, I decided to stay a couple more days to be able to partake in at least one of the festivals' events.

I knew that Charleston had a highly rated hostel called the "Not So Hostel", a play on words due to the similar soundings of hostile and hostel when said with a southern draw. So, Sunday night and Monday night I stayed in this hostel. It was a pretty nice place with a real laid back atmosphere. There appeared to be more people travelling in groups at this hostel than at many of the others that I had stayed at.

I spent Monday morning trying to plan out where I would be going after Chucktown and what I would do while I was there. That afternoon I played a round of golf at Patriot's Point which was a decent course, but not one I'd play again before checking out others in the area. That evening I decided to partake in one of the Piccolo Spoleto Festival events, Harvard Sailing Team: "Clean-Cut Ivy League Sketch Comedy". I had never really seen anything quite like this... Eight people (four guys/four girls) dressed in Solid Polo shirts, Jeans, and Chuck Taylors using nothing but six chairs, a small table, and their collective creativity to entertain poeple via the medium of short skits. The skits ranged from recreations of songs from Disney's cartoon Beauty and the Beast to portraying a coffee shop scene. I was intrigued with how they would cleverly weave in themes or subjects from earlier sketches into the later ones. One of the funnier things was when they performed a rather bland skit that had a few quirky exchanges only to reperform that exact skit later in Spanish. It was an interesting venue, but I enjoyed it.

I hit the road Tuesday morning, heading to a campsite outside Charlotte, NC. While on the road I saw a couple signs for Congaree National Park and decided that I should at least stop by since I was so close.

Congaree is a small national park that used to be referred to as Congaree Swamp. It dropped the swamp title because it didn't really fit because the ground was not mostly covered with standing water, instead it was more of a Floodplain for the Congaree river. It hosts some of the tallest trees in the state as well as the tallest Canopy in the world. I walked the boardwalk that makes a loop through the park then decided I better get moving if I wanted to reach my campsite before nightfall.