"I don't think I'll make the tennis tourney today," he said with a snicker.

Over on Daniel Island in khaki shorts and a white knit shirt, Mark Hale of Dallas waited in line to get into the Family Circle Cup.

Asked whether he planned to attend the biker rally, he looked over the top of his sunglasses and said, "We won't be making that."

The two men represent the eclectic group that descended on the Holy City this weekend. At least 40,000 bikers on one side of town. Twenty thousand tennis fans on the other.

But there was at least one thing the two groups had in common.

Many from both camps took in the historical hoopla surrounding the burial of the crew of the H.L. Hunley Confederate submarine.

Like throngs of other bikers and thousands of tourists, Thompson stood on The Battery and watched history unfold as America's last Confederate funeral passed by.

"This won't happen again," he said. "This is history."

While Laura Sachwitz of Washington, D.C., flew in to take in the tennis tournament, she spent Friday and Saturday evenings rubbing elbows with Civil War re-enactors camped on Sullivan's Island.

"The children enjoyed talking with the re-enactors, but the crowd was too small for what they had to offer," she said.

That's the only place the crowd was too small.

From The Battery to Daniel Island to Ladson, tens of thousands of people came together at different venues in what's being called the busiest weekend in Charleston in recent history.

Add in the more than 1,000 registered participants for the East Coast Canoe & Kayak Festival at James Island County Park and it's not hard to see why it was difficult to get a table at some downtown restaurants, why most hotel rooms in the metro area sold out months ago, and why even campsites weren't available.

"I've been in the hotel business for 14 years, and I've never seen anything like it," said Tripp Hayes, president of the Greater Charleston Hotel and Motel Association. "This is the busiest weekend I've ever seen. Hotels were selling out in November and December. The Cooper River Bridge Run (weekend) doesn't sell out that early.

"The planners of the Hunley probably didn't realize they had enough people to fill the city alone," he said. "We directed people as far away as Savannah and Santee."From Washington state to Washington, D.C., from Gadsden, Ala., to Cleves, Ohio, and from Beaufort to Bamberg, people flocked to the weekend's triple crown of events, many taking in at least two of them.

Some stayed with relatives; some stayed with friends; others found the only room they could.

Bikers Rick and Deree Stobaugh of Columbia tried two months ago to reserve a campsite in the Charleston area.

"We couldn't get in, so we are staying with a cousin in Summerville," Deree Stobaugh said.

Tennis fans Brian MacDowell and wife Debra Stauffer of Asheville found a room in Mount Pleasant.

"We booked two months ago," MacDowell said.

Priscilla Bragg just got lucky.

The Woodlawn, Tenn., waitress and her three teenage daughters, all dressed in widow period attire for the Hunley procession, found a room Thursday night in Walterboro. Then Bragg got luckier than Hunley commander George Dixon at the Battle of Shiloh when a $20 gold piece in his left pocket blocked a bullet.

"We found a room at the Embassy Suites downtown," she said. "It was a little expensive, but it was worth it."

Downtown innkeeper Elaine Howard wished she had had more rooms to spare.

"We had between 500 and 600 calls this week from people trying to get a room," she said while looking over the bikes at the Exchange Park Fairgrounds. "I wish they had spread the events more across the calendar."

Crowd control, though, didn't seem to be a major problem, even though hordes of extra tourists, on top of the usual April crowds, were in town.

"Considering everything that was going on, everything ran smoothly," said Lance Cpl. Paul Brouthers of the S.C. Highway Patrol.

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