Charleston

We stayed in an updated 1950's bungalow in North Charleston.  The house had a floor plan very similar to the first house I remember living in on Palo Alto.  It was a comfortable house, but we had to drive to attractions, so we didn't spend as much time in Charleston proper as we might have if we stayed downtown.  We did make a couple of walking tours through downtown.  

The Confederate dead are not forgotten in Charleston

I thought this church was interesting.  It is the Circular Congregational Church.  The congregation was established in 1681, but the building has been through several renovations.  There are two or three churches on every block of Meeting Street.  Charleston is a churchy city.

We had lunch at a very nice restaurant on Queen Street called 82 Queen.  I took a chance on the oysters and did not get food poisoning, always a gamble with oysters.

Another dramatic bridge, the Arthur Ravnel Jr. Bridge

We also took time to tour several plantations. Boone Hall gave a good history of plantation life and still grew a few crops. This lovely oak lined drive was original to the plantation.  The trees are several hundred years old. Patrick Swayze galloped up this drive in North and South.

The beautiful plantation house was built in the 1930's but furnished with period furniture and wood work.

There were two weddings going on while we toured.  A great setting for a wedding if you don't mind tour groups ogling you.

We had an afternoon flight, so on our last morning we toured Drayton Hall. It was a lovely peaceful setting, the house was original and is being preserved but not repaired. This is a sketch of the original house.

 And this is the house today. The landscaping has changed some, but the house looks pretty much the same.

This was the original privy.

And amazingly the original blue prints still exist, if you've ever wondered what a privy used to look like

And here is Calvin next to a 400 year old live oak.

 Amazing tree, Amazing man.

Bulls Island Alligators

During our stay in South Carolina we took a kayak trip exploring the edge of Charleston harbor and Shem Creek.  It was an interesting but pretty tame kayak adventure.  At the end of the trip they kayak company handed out flyers for an eco tour of Bulls Island.  It sounded fun and there was room on the tour the next day so we went.  
Bulls Island is part of the Cape Romain  Wildlife Refuge

They mentioned that there would be alligators on the island, but I was expecting to see a pen with a few toothless alligators. It turns out that the alligators roam the island and as long as you don't get between the alligator and the water there is no problem. Much of the island looked like this, and it was a little worrisome tromping through the jungle wondering if you were going to stumble upon an alligator.

Actually there were alligators in the water on either side of this walkway. They didn't seem to mind posing for pictures, but if you got too close they just headed back into the water.

The alligators were the high light of the day for me, but the beach was pretty nice as well.

I found this beautiful shell on the beach, brought it back to the house we rented, rinsed it out and put it in the dish drainer to dry.  Sadly, that is where it stayed.  I forgot to pack it.

I did notice when I got home that I have a rather large number of shells scattered around the house, so forgetting one in South Carolina is probably not a great tragedy.

Forts and other things

We visited a lot of military forts on this trip.  The Atlantic shipping ports needed protection at various times and forts were built.  Ft Sumter is probably the most famous fort we toured.  

On the eve of the Civil War Federal troops were stationed at Ft. Moultrie, but Major Robert Anderson realized that the threat to his troops would not come from the sea, but from land and Ft. Moultrie was indefensible by land so in December 1860 he moved into Ft. Sumter.  His stay was brief.  He surrendered to Union troops April 14, 1861. At the time the 33 star flag was the official Federal flag.  Anderson was there at the end of the war when Union troops once again took over Ft. Sumter and the original 33 star flag flew once more.  This flag was one of the most interesting things we saw at the fort.

By the end of the war, the fort was reduced to rubble and it hasn't changed much since then.

Later in the day we visited Ft. Moultrie which was flying the same 33 star flag. This flag was only used from 1859 to 1861.

Ft. Moultrie was upgraded for defense in the Spanish American War.

And it had some really big cannons

That day we also toured the USS Yorktown which is now a museum and had some really cool things for Calvin to crawl around in.

We also toured USS Laffey, which was a WWII destroyer. Amazingly it survived a kamikaze attack of about 50 planes. Watching the History Channel video of the attack while sitting inside the ship was pretty interesting.