There is a trick to living the good life in Charleston, and we were lucky enough to discover it a few months after we moved here. It has absolutely changed our perspective on Charleston. We never would have visited so many places or attended so many festivals – FOR FREE! – without knowing about the brilliant CCPRC volunteer reciprocal program.

In a nutshell, anyone who volunteers for Charleston County Parks and Recreation Commission (CCPRC) for 35 hours or more within one year is entitled to a reciprocal pass. The volunteering opportunities range from pouring beer to judging pet parades, at festivals and events put on by CCPRC. The reciprocal pass covers access to all county parks, downtown museums/houses, all area plantations, harbor tours, and the aquarium, and the pass is good for the passholder plus one guest.

This means that once Kyle and I got passes, anyone who visited us could have their pick of the local tourist attractions and we could all go for free. For a while we tracked the value we got out of these passes, our best was when my brother and his then-fiancee visited and we saved over $500 in entrance fees through our reciprocal passes. We’ve been to the aquarium so much that we’ve memorized the names of our favorite animals (shout out to the river otters, Ace and Stono!).

The Volunteering

Kyle and I normally sign up to pour beer at festivals, since that is usually a pretty busy job and it was fun besides! However, one of the most interesting jobs I had was an ID checker at the Latin American festival. I saw all kinds of licenses and passports, I must have checked IDs from at least 15 different countries! For most volunteering events, CCPRC provides pizza for the volunteers, and the occasional t-shirt!

One of the best events we ever volunteered at is called Wheel to Surf. CCPRC partners with Adaptive Expeditions to help wheelchair-bound people get out in the water and surf! It’s an incredible event and so rewarding. It’s not for everyone, because as a volunteer it can be a little nerve-wracking when a participant goes into the water and they can’t swim. However, there is a huge team of volunteers in the water to work with the participant wherever their board goes!

For the last two months of the year, James Island County Park puts on a Holiday Festival of Lights. There are tons of volunteering opportunities here, plus it gives us a chance to see JICP all lit up with their Christmas decorations. 

Hands-down the best volunteering event is Charleston Outdoor Fest, the huge paddlesports festival weekend. We volunteer at one of the Try It Zone events, so we’re helping staff members get people outfitted to try out SUPs or kayaks. But the most fantastic aspect of this festival is that if you volunteer for two shifts during the weekend, you can take as many classes as you want – for free! Class passes normally cost a couple hundred dollars, but we attended an intro to SUP class for free – and we were the only ones there! Our instructor was recertifying, so he had another instructor there to verify, so we essentially had one-on-one SUP instruction. After the instructors gauged our skill level, they started teaching us some cool tricks and techniques. It was amazing, and all for volunteering a few hours of our time!

The Passes

We took complete advantage of our passes, first and foremost by visiting the SC Aquarium as often as we could. We also brought so many guests to the aquarium with us, nearly everyone who visited us in Charleston got to see the aquarium for free! We learned (too late!) that it helps a ton to ask about events as soon as we arrive, because not all of them are advertised on the bulletin boards. We never would have known about the behind-the-scenes tour of the Great Ocean Tank if we hadn’t asked!

We toured five plantations in Charleston – some multiple times – by using our passes. Again, nearly everyone that visited us in Charleston picked out a plantation that they wanted to check out, and we got them in for free. Normally our passes covered the base entry fee, and other tours (like boat rides, or seeing the interior of the plantation house) cost extra. However, just walking the plantation grounds gave us ample opportunity to see some crazy flora and fauna. Gators everywhere, a huge camellia event in the spring, and the peacock squawking that can be heard no matter where you’re at!

We tried to visit several of the museums downtown, in fact, whenever we were downtown and had some free time we looked up which museum/house we were closest to and tried to get a quick tour in if possible. These are hit or miss, but if you’re into history there’s some really interesting Charleston secrets here!

Lately

Kyle and I have been working on getting the rest of our hours in for 2017 but there have been some roadbumps. We had to cancel one of our volunteering opportunities because we were offshore at the time, and another event got canceled due to weather, so our hours for the year are unexpectedly low. We committed to getting our 2018 passes, which meant that instead of spending the weekend cleaning and organizing our new home, we spent it at CCPRC’s Harvest Festival. Since we signed up last minute, we didn’t get the fun jobs (beer pouring!) but when the festival ended the beer tent had some extra Ghost Rider pale ale so we walked away with a free growler full of local beer brewed with ghost peppers – not a bad tradeoff! The weather was fantastic and we had a good time, but it was still an exhausting day in the sun.

The net result was that we didn’t get any work done on the boat on Saturday because we were at the festival, and on Sunday we had to meet with our landlord, go grocery shopping, and do our weekly meal prep. Kyle made progress organizing the kitchen stuff and I worked on clearing out the settee and table so we had some livable space. There’s still much, much more that needs to be done.

But! Cada dia es major. Things are smoothing out. When we were in the midst of high-stress do-we-or-don’t-we misery (end of September), we agreed that when life calmed down again we owed ourselves a relaxing vacation to make up for it all. We’re finally starting to make plans for a weekend getaway – probably to IKEA so we can buy all the organizational things! and stop at a brewery or two and stay at a hotel with a hot tub.