Today begins the ninth day on the road, and I am now heading towards Myrtle Beach one of America's major golf tourist meccas. Along the way I past through historic Georgetown and at first continued down the road, until, I remembered that - there was no need to hurry, this trip was suppose to be about discovering things along the way; I turned back around and returned to discover just what was historic about Georgetown.
What, was and is, historic about Georgetown is that, Georgetown was once the rice capital of the world; producing at its peak, just before the war between the states, over 50% of the worlds annual rice production. Charleston, of course also owed much of its wealth in the early years to
its rice plantations, but the heart of the South Carolina's rice production was Georgetown County.
Five rivers the - Pee Dee, Waccamaw, Black, Sampit and the Santee (which forms the southern border of the county) provided the Georgetown "low country" with the potential to capitalize on the valuable rice resource. Unfortunately, the key to exploiting this rice was - slave labor; and hence, after the civil war, the loss of slave labor effectively meant the demise for rice production in Georgetown County. The soft "low country" soil could not support the heavy equipment required to competitively produce rice, and Georgetown lost it's importan
ce as a major rice producer. Our History books are filled with how cotton was king, but for the Georgetown and Charleston County areas, it was rice (and to a lesser extent indigo) - not cotton, that was king.
After leaving Georgetown, I once again proceeded to make my way for Myrtle Beach, little more than 30 miles north of Georgetown. Upon arriving in Myrtle Beach I discovered that, my timing was perfect; this was the weekend for the Myrtle Beach Bike Rally, with thousand of biker's having descended upon the city. Fortunately, despite the number of campers who were in Myrtle Beach this week-end, I was still able to get the last available campsite in the state campground.
Actually there appeared to be more happening in South Beach than the city of Myrtle Beach itself. This was due in a large part (as I learned later) to Myrtle Beach's insistence to override the state's - no helmet law, with their own (self imposed) ban on riding helmet-less within the city limits of Myrtle Beach. Regardless of where you stand on the issue of - helmet or no helmet, one has to question the city's right to override the state's own law.
Despite being unfamiliar with Myrtle Beach and even though, there were a lot of really crazy things going on, I survived the insanity, quite well - thank you!
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