Fort Sumter

Saturday, June 2 – This, of course, is where the Civil War began.  Our overall assessment of the voyage:  Great ferry ride. Fantastic views of Charleston, the Ravenel Bridge and an aircraft carrier.  Very informed tour guide at the fort.  Good value for the money.  Even made friends on the ferry.  All that + beautiful day = Definitely worth it. 

We had such good seats on the top deck.  We - along with everyone around us - wanted to claim “same seats” for the ride back.  So, in the spirit of looking out for the team, which included a couple from Montgomery, AL on one side and a multigenerational extended family on the other, Sandy high-tailed it back to the ferry to save seats for everyone as most of the people were still taking their time in the fort.

As we were on our way back to Charleston from the fort, a “tall ship” on a cruise of the harbor also appeared.  Very appropriate.

BTW…  Today was laundry day, since it marked the end of week one.  We found a great Laundromat on the campus of the College of Charleston before we went to Fort Sumter in order to get our chores done.  It’s good to be clean.

Home of the 39th President

Wednesday, May 30 – I honestly have to say that I never thought I’d be in Plains, Georgia.  However, when a road trip route takes you within 20 miles of a significant U.S. Presidential site, I think you have to see it.  Unfortunately, we were within TWO historic presidential sites after 5pm, and we were tight on time to get to our destination for the evening.  The other site was Warm Springs, FDR’s “Little White House,” where he also died.  And while one might argue that FDR played a little more of a significant role in our nation’s history than Jimmy Carter… we chose Jimmy.  It was closer to our route, we thought we might be able to see a little more with the museum closed, and he’s still alive and lives in town, so maybe we’d bump into him…

Well, we didn’t see him, but there was a great sign at the city limits (in case you didn’t pick up on it, we love good signs), a really nice museum site at the old Plains high school operated by the National Park Service (which we also love), a “historical” downtown with Jimmy Carter’s campaign headquarters, which looks frozen in time from the late 1970s, and to top it off, a rockin minivan for the Jimmy Carter National Historic Site.

Natchez Trace Parkway

Monday, May 28 - We love national parks.  So, we'd been looking forward to drive about 90 miles of the 440 mile-long Natchez Trace Parkway, which is operated by the National Park Service.  The parkway follows the course of the old Natchez Trace, which was a major overland route from Natchez to Nashville, Tennessee before steamboats provided a faster alternative.

It's a very relaxing and scenic drive, with historic points along the way.  One of those historic sites is the Emerald Mound.  I have to say that I had never heard of a mound before I started reading up on the Trace.  Thus, today marked my very first mound visit. What's a mound, you ask?  It's a prehistoric ceremonial site.  This one was built and used from about 1200, and was still in use when the first Europeans arrived in the 1700s.  The Emerald Mound is the second largest mound in North America, is 35 feet high and covers about 8 acres.  The big mound actually has two smaller mounds on top of it.  That's me standing on top of the second mound (though it's hard to tell), which is about 60 feet high in total.

One more kinda cool pic...  Due to the way the topsoil settled in this area, some parts of the original Trace are actually sunken about 20 feet.  We took a short walk through one of these sections.  Nice for a little hike, but can't imagine going 440 miles through this...