The first leg of the trip starts with a ride from Asheville, NC to Charleston, SC. I convinced my friend Jack to ride along with me and hang in Charleston for a few days. It was nice to have a riding buddy for the first part of the trip. We took the long route from Asheville to Charleston which was about  6 hours of ride time. We took Highway 176 instead of 26 which took us through Saluda, Tryon and a few other small towns. Great weather for the first stretch of this trip. Once we got down around Columbia SC we jumped on I26 for the remainder of the ride. We landed in Charleston at about 7:30 pm.

The only significant issue during this stretch was that my Sony camera wiggled itself off the mount and hit the road at about 60 mph. Luckily Jack was behind me and saw this happen. He slowed down to recover the camera. When I looked in my rear view and didn’t see Jack it made me super nervous. I immediately looped back around only to find him gather the pieces of  my Sony off the highway.

While in Charleston we hit Folly Beach but only after going by the Kite store for Jack to pickup a new trainer Kite. These Kites are made for Kite surfers to practice with while they get a handle on the power and maneuverability. As soon as Jack unpacked the Kite and started to fly it, we had a beach walker come up and ask to try. He apparently is a master Kite flyer who just so happened to have perfect timing. He gave us a crash course on how to control the Kite.  Good times!

I decided to setup my hammock and sleep in the backyard of my sisters house. This worked out great until 4 am when the underground sprinkler system kicked in and somehow found a window between my rain fly and hammock. It soaked the inside of my hammock and sleeping bag. Just as I fell back asleep it kicked in again but this time I knew the sound and managed to lift the edge of the hammock up enough to keep the water out.

I’m now off to Savannah, GA and then on to Jacksonville, FL.