Feb 3 and 4-Charleston, SC and Fort Sumter
After limping to Jacksonville with my “repair” of a leaking air line, we spent the night in a true Florida storm, complete with thunder, lightning, heavy rain and wind heavy enough to leave our slide-outs shut tight. It was a night to batten down the hatches, try to point in to the wind, and basically be rocked to sleep with the winds buffeting against the motorhome. We woke to both a strange phenomenon and some very sad news.
We may have already mentioned before, but when the east coast gets a rainstorm, it is what I would call a deluge of 1 to 4 inches that is amazing in itself, but with the 4 or 5 storms we have been in it has always been clear and sunny the next morning. This is so different from what we have at home. It is no wonder that east-coasters, when they hear that it rains all the time is Seattle, think that it must be intolerable. I assume they are thinking that we get rain like they get rain. If that were the case, they would be right and the Pacific Northwest would be washed away.
The very sad news was that we witnessed the very outer border of a huge storm that crossed Florida just a bit further south of where we stayed in the Kissimmee area with Laura. I’m sure you have heard of the deadly tornado that crossed Florida as part of this storm. It traveled 20 miles south of the RV Park we staying with LJ, but hit directly at Melbourne along the coast where we stayed at the Canova Beach Wal-Mart 2 nights earlier.
This section of the trip from Disney World to Jacksonville was different than the rest in the fact that we drove for 2 whole days with the Atlantic a couple of hundred feet off of Barb’s side window and the Intercoastal Route a couple of hundred feet off of mine! We made stop after stop along the way to walk the beaches and let Elsie stretch her legs as you have already seen in Barb’s photos.
Anyway, I wanted to tell you about this fantastic storm on our way up the coast. Charleston, SC and Savannah, GA were our two destinations to visit quickly before Barb flies home for a week.
We left Jacksonville with a keener eye on the gauges, especially the boost gauge that can tell me if there is a further problem with the air line leak and how it affects the exhaust brakes. The air tanks stay full while we are driving but still slowly bleed out while we are stopped for the night.
We drove through Jacksonville and traveled the quicker path up I-95, across this small coastal area of Georgia to the SE corner of South Carolina and the old city of Charleston. After my usual “interview” of innocent passers-by, I formed my plan to drive in to town so we could take a late night walk along the parks, ending up at South of Broad, the restaurant that my walking poll voted best 4-1. Of course we talked our way in without reservations on a Saturday night and we enjoyed dinners of local flavors. The building has been a landmark since the Revolutionary War. The walls are two foot thick brick and the balcony is adorned with an intricate detailed cast iron balcony. The site was originally a cotton exchange, later became a bagging factory and then Sailors’ Tavern, a popular local watering hole.
The dinner was great, but the long walk to the restaurant and then back to the Jeep definitely was the hit of the evening. We parked along the harbor in what is rightfully called the Battery, with its cannons pointed seaward. We walked in to town along an elevated stone bulkhead right above the water. After dinner we veered in to the oldest part of the city and walked along narrow cobble streets with street after street of houses dating back to the pre-Revolutionary War era.
The next day, Monday the 5th, we drove across their beautiful brand-new suspension bridge to visit Ft. Moultrie NM on Sullivan’s Island across the waterway from Charleston. This was another living example of a number of forts that protected harbors from invasions. Charleston has always been a very important seaport, which continues today, in competition with nearby sister city of Savannah as the 2nd largest shipping port on the east coast.
We then drove back across the bridge to catch the boat to Ft. Sumter, the site of the first action in the Civil War. The NPS, as usual, has a wonderful visitor center with all of the information one could ask for on that specific site. We bought the tickets for a short boat ride out to the fort and a great narrative from a Park Ranger that explained the entire story of the fort and the battle which signaled the start of the War Between the States – as it is normally referred to in the South.
The Fort and the man-made island on which is stood was Union-owned. While the fort was being built the Union forces were holed up at Ft. Moultrie but, in the dead of night, were transferred to the still unfinished fort called Sumter. Being on an island the idea was that it would provide more protection for the Union soldiers while both sides knew that it was a prime site to either protect Charleston or to cause mayhem to the ships coming into the harbor. The Confederates demanded that the Union abandon the fort in turn for a safe exit and passage back North. On April 12, 1861 the growing strife between the North and the South erupted when Confederate artillery opened cannon fire on the fort, definitely by an excited mistake! After a 34 hour barrage from both sides, the Union forces were forced to surrender the fort and head north. It then took the Union forces nearly 4 years to take it back.
A couple of interesting items concerning Ft. Sumter:
1. The island on which the fort was built was a shallow shoal. Ships sailed from New England (for 10 years!) with their holds filled with granite boulders used for ballast. The granite was dumped on this site which eventually made a rock-solid island in which to build the fort.
2. The Commander of the Union forces that were forced out of Ft. Sumter, as an item of surrender, was able to take the flag that flew over the fort with him. He was invited back fours years later to raise the same flag after the end of the war. That flag is on display there today. – But now for the 2 “biggies”:
3. Even with a 34 hour bombardment aimed at the fort, there was not one person killed in this initial skirmish. In fact, the only casualty of the entire affair occurred when the Confederates (actually!) gave a cannon “salute” to the Union forces as they sailed out of Charleston Harbor. A single cannon misfired and wounded a Confederate cannoneer/soldier, Daniel Howe. His right shoulder was removed from his body by the blast so he technically became the first casualty of the US Civil War. Leave it to a Howe to be in the wrong place at the right time! I, obviously, never knew this, but couldn’t help think that “could this be the real reason I’m left-handed”??
4. Now for the one that floored me (this NP Ranger was spectacular!): He explained that Abraham Lincoln, at the last minute, decided not to attend the flag-raising ceremony at Ft. Sumter just weeks after the end of the Civil War. He politely declined because he had tickets to Ford’s Theater that would “prevent his travel at this time”. Think about that for a while!
When we returned from Ft. Sumter we then walked, again, through the old streets that we walked the night before. We went inside the church that George Washington attended during a visit in 1791. Touching the square pew where Washington sat (again!) is just plain cool. He visited Charleston from May 2 through 7th, 1791. His popularity as our first President is very apparent wherever he visited. On his way out of town that day in May, many of the townspeople rode their horses to the city limits, a street aptly named Boundary Street. We walked to this street and back again on another just spectacular street bordered with beautiful old homes. Just like our first President that day, “our” next destination is Savannah, Georgia.
Charleston is everything I had imagined it to be. It’s beautiful harbor, old houses and buildings, fountains, the whole place dripping with history just as much as the more publicized Boston and other northern cities. As we were on our walks we made the remark that it appears that they clean the entire area just as Disney does at their parks. Everything was spotless, which was easily noticeable. Not bad for a quick 2 day adventure. Bye Charleston . . . On to Savannah!
We may have already mentioned before, but when the east coast gets a rainstorm, it is what I would call a deluge of 1 to 4 inches that is amazing in itself, but with the 4 or 5 storms we have been in it has always been clear and sunny the next morning. This is so different from what we have at home. It is no wonder that east-coasters, when they hear that it rains all the time is Seattle, think that it must be intolerable. I assume they are thinking that we get rain like they get rain. If that were the case, they would be right and the Pacific Northwest would be washed away.
The very sad news was that we witnessed the very outer border of a huge storm that crossed Florida just a bit further south of where we stayed in the Kissimmee area with Laura. I’m sure you have heard of the deadly tornado that crossed Florida as part of this storm. It traveled 20 miles south of the RV Park we staying with LJ, but hit directly at Melbourne along the coast where we stayed at the Canova Beach Wal-Mart 2 nights earlier.
This section of the trip from Disney World to Jacksonville was different than the rest in the fact that we drove for 2 whole days with the Atlantic a couple of hundred feet off of Barb’s side window and the Intercoastal Route a couple of hundred feet off of mine! We made stop after stop along the way to walk the beaches and let Elsie stretch her legs as you have already seen in Barb’s photos.
Anyway, I wanted to tell you about this fantastic storm on our way up the coast. Charleston, SC and Savannah, GA were our two destinations to visit quickly before Barb flies home for a week.
We left Jacksonville with a keener eye on the gauges, especially the boost gauge that can tell me if there is a further problem with the air line leak and how it affects the exhaust brakes. The air tanks stay full while we are driving but still slowly bleed out while we are stopped for the night.
We drove through Jacksonville and traveled the quicker path up I-95, across this small coastal area of Georgia to the SE corner of South Carolina and the old city of Charleston. After my usual “interview” of innocent passers-by, I formed my plan to drive in to town so we could take a late night walk along the parks, ending up at South of Broad, the restaurant that my walking poll voted best 4-1. Of course we talked our way in without reservations on a Saturday night and we enjoyed dinners of local flavors. The building has been a landmark since the Revolutionary War. The walls are two foot thick brick and the balcony is adorned with an intricate detailed cast iron balcony. The site was originally a cotton exchange, later became a bagging factory and then Sailors’ Tavern, a popular local watering hole.
The dinner was great, but the long walk to the restaurant and then back to the Jeep definitely was the hit of the evening. We parked along the harbor in what is rightfully called the Battery, with its cannons pointed seaward. We walked in to town along an elevated stone bulkhead right above the water. After dinner we veered in to the oldest part of the city and walked along narrow cobble streets with street after street of houses dating back to the pre-Revolutionary War era.
The next day, Monday the 5th, we drove across their beautiful brand-new suspension bridge to visit Ft. Moultrie NM on Sullivan’s Island across the waterway from Charleston. This was another living example of a number of forts that protected harbors from invasions. Charleston has always been a very important seaport, which continues today, in competition with nearby sister city of Savannah as the 2nd largest shipping port on the east coast.
We then drove back across the bridge to catch the boat to Ft. Sumter, the site of the first action in the Civil War. The NPS, as usual, has a wonderful visitor center with all of the information one could ask for on that specific site. We bought the tickets for a short boat ride out to the fort and a great narrative from a Park Ranger that explained the entire story of the fort and the battle which signaled the start of the War Between the States – as it is normally referred to in the South.
The Fort and the man-made island on which is stood was Union-owned. While the fort was being built the Union forces were holed up at Ft. Moultrie but, in the dead of night, were transferred to the still unfinished fort called Sumter. Being on an island the idea was that it would provide more protection for the Union soldiers while both sides knew that it was a prime site to either protect Charleston or to cause mayhem to the ships coming into the harbor. The Confederates demanded that the Union abandon the fort in turn for a safe exit and passage back North. On April 12, 1861 the growing strife between the North and the South erupted when Confederate artillery opened cannon fire on the fort, definitely by an excited mistake! After a 34 hour barrage from both sides, the Union forces were forced to surrender the fort and head north. It then took the Union forces nearly 4 years to take it back.
A couple of interesting items concerning Ft. Sumter:
1. The island on which the fort was built was a shallow shoal. Ships sailed from New England (for 10 years!) with their holds filled with granite boulders used for ballast. The granite was dumped on this site which eventually made a rock-solid island in which to build the fort.
2. The Commander of the Union forces that were forced out of Ft. Sumter, as an item of surrender, was able to take the flag that flew over the fort with him. He was invited back fours years later to raise the same flag after the end of the war. That flag is on display there today. – But now for the 2 “biggies”:
3. Even with a 34 hour bombardment aimed at the fort, there was not one person killed in this initial skirmish. In fact, the only casualty of the entire affair occurred when the Confederates (actually!) gave a cannon “salute” to the Union forces as they sailed out of Charleston Harbor. A single cannon misfired and wounded a Confederate cannoneer/soldier, Daniel Howe. His right shoulder was removed from his body by the blast so he technically became the first casualty of the US Civil War. Leave it to a Howe to be in the wrong place at the right time! I, obviously, never knew this, but couldn’t help think that “could this be the real reason I’m left-handed”??
4. Now for the one that floored me (this NP Ranger was spectacular!): He explained that Abraham Lincoln, at the last minute, decided not to attend the flag-raising ceremony at Ft. Sumter just weeks after the end of the Civil War. He politely declined because he had tickets to Ford’s Theater that would “prevent his travel at this time”. Think about that for a while!
When we returned from Ft. Sumter we then walked, again, through the old streets that we walked the night before. We went inside the church that George Washington attended during a visit in 1791. Touching the square pew where Washington sat (again!) is just plain cool. He visited Charleston from May 2 through 7th, 1791. His popularity as our first President is very apparent wherever he visited. On his way out of town that day in May, many of the townspeople rode their horses to the city limits, a street aptly named Boundary Street. We walked to this street and back again on another just spectacular street bordered with beautiful old homes. Just like our first President that day, “our” next destination is Savannah, Georgia.
Charleston is everything I had imagined it to be. It’s beautiful harbor, old houses and buildings, fountains, the whole place dripping with history just as much as the more publicized Boston and other northern cities. As we were on our walks we made the remark that it appears that they clean the entire area just as Disney does at their parks. Everything was spotless, which was easily noticeable. Not bad for a quick 2 day adventure. Bye Charleston . . . On to Savannah!
posted by Barbara @ 7:21 AM
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