Road trip!

Matt and I were being lazy and doing absolutely nothing early Saturday afternoon. I suddenly got sick of being lazy, so I decided we were going to go to Charleston, South Carolina. I looked it up on Google maps, and it's about a 5.5 hour drive from Daytona Beach. Why Charleston? Two reasons - first, I could cross South Carolina off of the states that I hadn't been to. Second, Matt was stationed there for about a year.

So, within 30 minutes, we packed up and headed out. We ran a few errands in town and off we went. The drive up was fun. Matt and I talked most of the way, which we don't seem to do as much as we used to. The sun set on us after about an hour of our journey, but that made the trip that much more interesting. Somewhere in Georgia, we pulled off the interstate and found a secluded spot to look at the stars. I hadn't seen so many stars in a long time. I realized that it's almost impossible to stare at the sky at night without plummeting into deep thought. As we drove on, Matt and I discussed our views on the meaning of life, spirituality (or lack thereof), civilizations, religion in the world today, space exploration and many other heavy topics.

Along the trek up, I came to realize something about the Georgia and South Carolina coasts - they stink. I don't mean that in a metaphoric manner, I literally mean that they smell bad. Matt described it as the smell of someone's breath who hasn't brushed their teeth in a few years. Anyway, we made it up to Charleston and found a hotel room close to the base that Matt used to live on. However, sleep was not to visit on this night.

I think that we were in a room below some amateur wrestlers. Starting at about 1:00, the wrestlers stomped around in their room. They didn't stop until 5:30. At one point, Matt decided to turn on the fan in the air conditioner to drown out the noise. As soon as he turned it on, the room was filled with a smell worse than the bad breath of the state we were in. Matt described this new smell as follows - someone had peed in the fan, it had dried and stayed there for a bit waiting for him to turn on the fan.

At this point, I was laughing pretty hard. Matt did end up getting a couple hours of sleep and I learned a lot about grizzly bears from the discovery channel. The next day, we went out for breakfast, drove around Charleston Harbor, stopped at a Fort Sumter Civil War museum and went to the Charleston aquarium. We were glad to get home, though.