Isle of Palms – Ocean Inn

This was a great place to stay, laundry room, efficiency kitchen, good Wi-Fi and very reasonable rates, check out in particular the weekly and monthly rates.  Stay on the beach and be minutes from Charleston, it really is the best of both worlds!

The outlying suburbs of Charleston burst upon you once you’ve left the primeval Francis Marion Forest. You’ll also begin to see sweetgrass weavers and their roadside basket displays as Highway 17 officially becomes the Sweetgrass Highway. The works of these Gullah descendants of West Africa are well worth a stop to watch the skillful weaving and pick up a few of these unique woven art objects. You won’t be sorry and you’ll be helping to maintain a traditional skill.

In our early planning (what, you laugh when we mention planning?) we figured we would stay at a KOA due west of the Isle of Palms, and either stay a night and then move on to Charleston or stay a few nights and use it as a base to explore Charleston. Given our “mosquito coast” experience (see the last post) – we decided we would first check and see if anything was available on (in?) the Isle of Palms, and we were successful in finding something out at the beach. Although we did not stop to see the highly recommended KOA, we offer the following travelers tip: what some don’t know is that most KOA’s also have cabins, which are great places to stay, clean, inexpensive and usually very close to a lot of places you might want to visit – and of course, you don’t need a tent or an RV if you stay in a cabin.

When we entered South Carolina we stopped at the Little River Welcome Center (welcome centers for most states are great sources of information on hotels, maps, natural features, etc.). We’d picked up a info on Isle of Palms and as a result picked out a hotel on the beach, the Seaside Inn which we found to be completely occupied for the next several days and they also informed us that all other accommodations on the island were full. So we reluctantly headed off to the mainland, but at the last moment decided to drive up and down along the beach to find somewhere for lunch, and took a quick turn.        

Our travelers luck held out and there was a sign; Ocean Inn  and it said VACANCY! We figured they just forgot to put the NO out, but thought we’d try anyway. Well they had a cancellation – and had quite a bargain on a studio apartment in this very nice and very well managed (especially Thelma!) 19 unit condominium with pool. We signed up for 2 days, and by the end of the first day, signed on for another day and ended up staying 4 days. We had a , nice studio apartment, no view to speak of, a block from the beach and right next to most of the town’s restaurants, shops and bars with a nearby convenience store. It was quite the fortuitous find, but then that’s was this whole trip has been!

That's our efficiency, first floor in the corner, nice porch/deck, table, one chair, parking outside the door and everything else just steps away.  Larger accomodations with multiple bedrooms are available.

More on IoP's restaraunts, bars and marvelous beach, in our next post.