Construction has already stopped on the movie studio. After working Sundays and holidays, it all came to a screeching halt when the money ran out. Who would have seen that coming? The developer insists that the financial embarrassment is temporary, and that lenders will be coming forward soon to get it moving again. But it doesn’t look like the Target store will be open in time for the holidays.

I just got back from a vacation in the Carolinas. Prior to the trip, all I knew about the South came from William Faulkner, “The Dukes of Hazard,” and “Deliverance.” The expectations were a little weird. I’ve been going on bike trips with the same group for 30 years now, and we are beginning to run out of new destinations. So we ventured South. My guess is that our trip was like somebody spending a weekend in Park City and thinking they understand Utah. We were in Ashville, North Carolina, and later in Charleston, South Carolina. It was a sample, but the ore was salted.

There are a lot of trees in the South. We spent a couple of days riding the Blue Ridge Parkway. The woods on either side of the narrow road were so dense you couldn’t drive a cow through them. Later, driving over to Charleston, the freeway was completely encased in trees. The only breaks were where power lines crossed the freeway. There, for a split second, you could see farms and towns. About the time it was becoming so claustrophobic that I was about the scream, they decided to let the forest grow in the median of the freeway, too, so the forest closed in even tighter. A drive I had been anticipating as my quick view of Southern life was as good as a subway tunnel.

Part of the cycling had us on side roads leading to and from the Parkway. Where it wasn’t woods, the housing included everybody from the Vanderbilts to the Clampetts, often on adjoining lots. Transylvania County (no kidding) was having an election on whether to legalize the sale of alcohol. There were lots of “Vote No on Alcohol” signs posted along the roads, along with huge crosses promising “blood redemption.” I never saw a sign in favor of either alcohol or sin. The “wets” were keeping a low profile.

In a little store that was both a souvenir shop and the local hardware store, there was a reproduction of a “sundown town” sign. These were warnings to black workers that they needed to be out of town by sundown, or would suffer consequences. Insert picture of guns here. Obviously that isn’t the law any more, but it was unsettling that somebody thought enough people would find that an appealing souvenir to add to the home décor to print up reproductions for sale. We saw Ft. Sumpter, where the Civil War began. It didn’t feel like it was over yet.

Charleston was the high point of the trip for me. It’s a very old city, and is amazingly well-preserved. There are street corners where you can stand and look at buildings from three different centuries, all still fully functioning. There are new buildings in the historic core — our hotel looked like a 1970s special — but they fit in. They weren’t replicas of old buildings. You knew them as new buildings, but they fit. No Lincoln log towers or concrete shipwrecks protruded from their museums.

Walking through Charleston, it was clear that a modern city could operate in a tightly preserved Historic District. Charleston is something of a boomtown. I couldn’t help but think of what Park City’s Historic District might have been if the City hadn’t given up on it a few years back. Once we started jacking up houses and stuffing garages underneath, and plopping 3,000-square-foot additions on top, it was over. Not much history left. There was a lot of construction activity in the core of Charleston, both remodeling of old buildings and construction of new ones. Clearly the tight regulations had not destroyed the market.

Both Ashville and Charleston were thriving, prosperous places. Ashville had a kind of hippie vibe, like Boulder, Colorado, only bigger and less stoned. There was more life on a slow Thursday night than Salt Lake’s downtown sees in a year. The pace was a little more genteel in Charleston, but the stores were busy, and the restaurants were packed.

Charleston is a big “foodie” town. The server could name a dozen different kinds of lettuce in the salad, and knew the provenance of every caper. They served grits with every meal. Twice, we had waiters who had spent a year or two in Park City. The trendy drink in Charleston was High West Son of Bourye. Go figure.

Tom Clyde practiced law in Park City for many years. He lives on a working ranch in Woodland and has been writing this column since 1986.