In June I’m leading the Master’s Miata Club on a trip to the Hwy21 Drive-In in Beaufort. We are going to be joined by the Low Country Miata Club from Charleston. Last year the 2 clubs got together to go to the only other drive-in in operation in SC, The Big Mo, just up the street from us in Monetta.
Today, Donna and I took our first fact finding mission to Beaufort. We left Aiken at 9:00 AM and it took 2-1/2 hours to make it there, with 2 small breaks. This seems like a good start time, as it will get us into town around lunch. After lunch, activities will probably be walking around the historic downtown, shopping or just sitting around the waterfront. Mid afternoon we will drive to the hotel and check in, maybe freshen up before heading over to the drive-in to get in line so we can get good parking spots.
The drive-in is about 5 miles from the historic district and is across from the Marine Corp Air Station. You can’t miss it as they have a huge sign right on US21 visible for about a mile in either direction. The drive-in is about 200 yards down a side road. Because they also do a flea market thing on Saturdays during the day it was open, so Donna and I stopped in for a visit. The first thing you notice is that it is a lot bigger than the Big Mo. There are 9 rows for cars where as Mo has 6, maybe seven. The concession stand and the restroom facilities are light-years improved over the Big Mo’s. They are bigger, brighter and better kept up. We chatted with the owners a bit, told them we were coming with a car club in June. They seemed very friendly. When we told them where we were from they of course asked if we knew of the Big Mo. These guys are only coming up on one year of drive-in ownership, so when they were starting out they of course visited the Boaz’s at the Big Mo to get pointers on running a drive-in. As a matter of fact the FM transmitter they use for the movie audio is the Big Mo’s back-up unit. The cool thing about the Hwy21 is that they didn’t actually need the transmitter, but felt they should have one for modernization, because nearly all of their corded speakers still work!
We thought at first we would try to stay in a B&B. That might have been an expensive proposition and we were not too sure that the Miata Club folks would want to go that way. Plus it seems a shame to stay at a place like that when you are really getting a short night sleep and leaving, what with staying out late at a drive-in. A B&B should be savored. There is a Best Western right in the historic district, so we went inside to check it out. They were already all booked up for the Saturday night in question anyway. For kicks we asked the price, $139 to $169. Yikes! Those B&B’s are not sounding so expensive after all. When we left town we drove back the way we came and there are about 6-8 chain motels in between downtown and the drive-in. There was a Country Inn and Suites that looked promising. When we got home we went to the internet to check prices and they are $115 a night. Ain’t nothing cheap.
More research is required. I envision at least one more day trip in our future. Cool thing is I now have a Beaufort phone book, no I didn’t steal one from a phone booth, they had them as giveaways at the Visitor’s Center. While we were they we also picked up a bunch of menus from restaurants in town. In tomorrow’s installment I will tell you all about lunch in Beaufort…
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/05: 25