After a few more days of catching up on work and staying indoors to escape the humidity, I emerged from my hotel room to go on my first tourist ac­tiv­i­ty of Charleston. One of my co-workers flew in to Charleston in preparation for the wedding that we will be attending this coming weekend, so I went with him to the South Carolina Aquarium.

I’ve been to the Shark Reef Aquarium at the Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas, the Seattle Aquarium, and the Henry Doorly Aquarium in Omaha, so this was my fourth aquarium experience (as far as I can recall).

The first area we walked through was the turtle hospital, where they were nursing injured turtles back to health. This was an interactive experience where recovering turtles were visible along the walls, and there were exhibits showing what it’s like being a doctor treating a turtle.

After the turtle hospital, we moved onto the main section of the aquarium. Like all the others I’ve been to, it is particularly difficult to take good-quality photographs in aquariums due to all the reflections on the glass.

There was a section of the aquarium where you could reach into the water and pet some of the fish. I personally am not really the biggest fan of dipping my hand in water touched by hundreds of different people during a pandemic, and I also didn’t want my hand to come out smelling fishy, so I opted not to participate, but I took a photo.

The aquarium also had a random area near the escalators that housed a bald eagle. The photo looks a little weird because the eagle’s body was facing me, but it had turned its head nearly 180° so it looks like its head is facing away from me.

I have extremely bad eyesight, so when I saw this tiny bird eating something, I just assumed it was a worm, though I was wondering how the worm was so short and fat. Well, after opening the files on my camera and reviewing my photographs, I found out why—the bird wasn’t actually eating a worm, but rather, what appears to be a mouse fetus.

Next up was the reptile and amphibian section.

The last area of the aquarium we went to was the outdoor section.

There as a bird sitting outside that I think was a pelican, and it kept on dipping its beak into the water and trying to snap at the pufferfish. Needless to say, it wasn’t very successful.

There was a lot of boat activity that was visible from the aquarium, so I snapped a photo of the largest boat.

It took right around two hours for us to get through everything at the South Carolina Aquarium, and that’s without reading all the text, so if you’re a marine life enthusiast, this could easily become a 3- or 4-hour trip. This was one of the more interactive and education-centric aquariums I’ve been to, and there are many opportunities to learn new things through kinesthetic means.

My week in North Carolina is already over, and as of yesterday, I’ve arrived on the coastline of South Carolina in the city of Charleston. Apart from a few hiking trips, I’d say North Carolina was also somewhat uneventful. One of my favorite parts of the state was driving through the Appalachian Mountains when I was traveling in from Tennessee, but otherwise, I spent a lot of this time catching up on more of the “mundane” parts of my life.

My hotel of choice in Charlotte was the SpringHill Suites by Marriott Charlotte Huntersville. I’d say it was probably my favorite hotel room so far throughout my road trip. As you might already know, I’m not really the biggest fan of flashy or fancy hotel rooms, and SpringHill Suites gave me all the es­sen­tials and none of the extras. The hotel was new, the room was large, the location was great, the gym was decent, and the staff was friendly and help­ful.

The first week of each month is usually the busiest time for me, and my time in Charlotte basically coincided nearly perfectly with the first week of Oc­to­ber. I had to get end-of-month finance tasks done for September, including cash flow transaction itemization and independent contractor payroll, and I also had a few special legal projects that I needed to wrap up leading into the launch of the closed beta testing period for The Bazaar coming up soon.

Usually, I like to go to the most popular tourist attractions in each city, specifically focusing on what the city is particularly known for. Charlotte is best known for NASCAR and is home to its Hall of Fame, which acts as a museum. However, seeing as I’m not really that much of a racing enthusiast, and I also recently went to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, I decided to pass on the NASCAR Hall of Fame in lieu of going on another hiking trip.

This was at the Clarks Creek Greenway, which was nestled in more of a residential area and was an out-and-back type of trail. I ended up parking at a local middle school near one of the trailheads, walked all the way out to the edge of the path, and came back.

After arriving in Charleston, there was basically only one thought I had in my mind, and it was how unbearably and debilitatingly humid it was. The rain was obviously making things worse, but the weather apparently said that the relative humidity was 98%, which is literally the highest I have ever seen in my life. The worst part is that my hotel is in North Charleston by Charleston International Airport, so I can’t imagine how bad it’s going to be in the actual city of Charleston, closer to the Atlantic Ocean.

Although nowhere near as nice as the newly-constructed SpringHill Suites I mentioned above, my hotel for this week of my trip is still pretty good—I’m in the Courtyard by Marriott Charleston-North Charleston. The room is definitely much smaller, but the good news is that the cost per night is much more affordable than being in Charleston, and even better, air conditioning works very well, so the humidity is actually bearable inside my room. (Though, if I literally just open the door to my room and step out into the hallway, the humidity becomes overwhelming again.)

Because of the rain, I’m not quite sure how viable it’s going to be for me to squeeze in some hiking trips to what I imagine will be extremely muddy trails. However, I’ll be attending a wedding in Charleston this coming weekend, and another one of the attendees is one of my co-workers, so we will probably be going on some indoor tourist activities before and after the event.

I mentioned that the Louisville Slugger Museum and Factory was going to be my final tourist activity of Louisville, but it ended up being so un­der­whelm­ing that I decided to tack on one more activity before I left—the Big Four Bridge.

The Big Four Pedestrian Bridge spans across the Ohio River and connects Kentucky to Indiana. It stretches alongside the two vehicular bridges, one of which I took to get from Indiana to Kentucky.

After making it to the other side, I explored the Big Four Station a bit, which was a small park with a little manmade waterfall and some sculptures. I also walked to a very small local frozen yogurt shop and got myself some dessert—a swirl of candied apple and salted caramel, topped with some gummy bears and whipped cream.

After enjoying my treat, I walked back on the bridge to the Kentucky side.

After wrapping up my week in Louisville, I drove to Knoxville, Tennessee.

When selecting my hotel in each city, I usually look at things like location, price, guest ratings, and year of construction. I like to find a good balance of a low rate at a new hotel not too far away from the main tourist attractions that also doesn’t have too many complaints by former guests.

As you can see, one of the things I don’t consider is the type of room and what’s inside it. This is because there is a baseline of what I expect from a hotel room—a parking lot for my truck, clean sheets and towels, disposable bath amenities like shampoo and conditioner, and a desk where I can set up my computer workstation. I have never seen a hotel where I wasn’t able to have this, so I never really considered it as something I had to keep in mind.

Until now.

This is my hotel room at the Aloft Knoxville West. It has very hip decor that may appeal to a zoomer, but you may notice it is missing one very critical piece of furniture: a desk.

I went back down to the check-in desk and informed the customer service representative that I am currently living out of hotel rooms and need to set up a full computer workstation in my room. I asked if they had any foldable tables I could bring into my room, or any other suggestions for my situation. Her response was that they had no tables or desks they could let me borrow, but I could use the tables in the lobby.

I did a double-take, wondering if she was actually so stupid as to imply I should set up a computer tower, two monitors, a keyboard and mouse, a web­cam, dual speak­ers with a subwoofer, and a microphone in a public area. I was considering making a comment, but decided against it, and went back to my room to strategize.

That little coffee table ended up being larger than I expected, and if I set my monitors up so a third of the stand is hanging off the edge of the table, I can erect my monitors side-by-side. I also set up my keyboard and mouse on the coffee table, but it’s not very stable, so every time I type, the table shakes and it gave me motion sickness looking at my monitors. I removed the coffee maker from the little compartment that houses the refrigerator, removed the refrigerator, and moved the compartment over to the seating area to use for my keyboard and mouse.

This is obviously extremely uncomfortable, but the only alternative seemed to be to use the bathroom countertop (which in that case, I would have no chair). I considered switching hotels, but because it would be a short-notice booking, I wasn’t able to find many good rates.

I learned my lesson, though—I definitely want to stick with my regular Fairfield Inns, SpringHill Suites, Courtyards, and Residence Inns from now on, with Elements being a decent alternative if the price is right. After this experience, I am definitely going to be avoiding brands like Aloft and Moxy that try to make my stay more fun and social. I’ve found that hotels with just the core essentials with no extra bells and whistles are the best ones.