Fort Sumter National Monument

There's a bazillion forts in South Carolina and there's a TON of history here in this state. There are historical markers all over the surrounding area where we are staying. Even the Revolutionary War Trail is here..Fort Sumter is one of most well known forts, having been the first to be fired on on April 21, 1861, the shots signaling the start of the Civil War. Actually, the first shot was a 10" mortar shot fired OVER the fort as a signal for the Confederates to open fire on the Union held fort. For 34 hours, the fort was bombarded with artillery shells and mortar. It was pretty much reduced to rubble, but has been repaired and reconstructed to some degree. There were actually two more tiers on top of this one originally.

There's a great story here, and Dennis Birr was the ranger who gave us the talk as we came into the fort. He was an enthusiastic and funny guy who made history come to life, and who actually got Sparky's 100% undivided attention as he spoke. (That guy was GOOD to be able to do that, let me tell you! says Eldo.) He would make a great teacher and Sparky would have done a whole lot better in history class if she had had teachers like him! He made the key players in Fort Sumter's history come alive, and he had the crowd chuckling over his stories....He made it INTERESTING, which is more than Sparky could say for most of her history education.

Fort Sumter was a manmade fort--70,000 tons of granite were brought in from New England to build up a sandbar at the entrance to Charleston Harbor. The fort is a pentagon shaped structure, walls five feet thick standing 50 feet tall over low tide. It could hold over 600 men and 135 guns, but was never filled to capacity, which caused the Confederates to successfully take it over in 1861 after bombarding it for 34 hours. It would take the Union another four years to get it back.

The soldiers at Fort Sumter numbered 127 men, 13 of them musicians. They had their own band at the fort! At first the enlisted men had their families there, and it sounded like a rather relaxed state of affairs. Major Robert Anderson, in charge, had moved the soldiers there from another fort in the area, Fort Moultrie and hadn't gotten permission from Washington. The fort wasn't complete yet, and not all the guns were in place. The soldiers had inadequate supplies and men and artillery for any kind of prolonged battle. The confederates tried more than once by sending messengers to the fort to get Anderson to leave, and he refused. The fort was short on everything! Abraham Lincoln tried to get reinforcement, food and supplies to the fort before hostilities began, but the efforts were unsuccessful and came too late. Once the bombardment started, it was all over soon, with casualties AFTER the battle and that was during a 100 gun salute...A canon misfired and a Confederate soldier bled to death. On the 47th shot, a Union soldier took a hit and died, and another was mortally wounded. They shortened the salute to 50 shots after that. Major Anderson left with his men, escorted to his ship, went back to New York where he was feted with a parade! Guess he was a hero for holding out and not giving up the fort, but it could have been a lot worse for him and his men...

ferry to the fort

This was a very reasonably priced tour, and we paid 15.00 a person for the senior rate to ride a 30 minute NICE ferry boat ride over to the island where the fort is located, and then you have about an hour on the island before heading back. On the way, Sparky even saw a pod of dolphins in the distance!

After hearing Dennis's story, walking around and reading the signs all about the fort, you really felt like a part of that moment in history....seeing the shells stuck in the walls....

Seeing the BIG guns.....

Walking the halls.....

We really enjoyed our tour today of Fort Sumter and highly recommend it! Sparks Notes: You DON'T buy them at the Visitor's Center in downtown Charleston--ask Sparky how she knows that! You DO buy them at the park service's Fort Sumter visitor center which is right next to the Charleston Aquarium. Preferable parking is at the parking garage right across the street from the Fort Sumter visitor center at the wharf, NOT at the downtown visitor's center, unless you desire a nice 20 minute walk to the boat dock or want to dally along the way to check out that part of town. The historic district is not too far from there.

On our way back walking to our car...we got a glimpse of Charleston, just a little bit...the beautiful old homes and churches....This is the oldest African American Methodist Episcopal Church, dated 1818, also having the oldest continuous congregation south of Baltimore as well.

We'd love to come back for a historical tour of the town, but that will have to be for our next visit to the area...You just can't do everything you want to do when you are on a budget! We're saving our money for the SavannahTall Ships Challenge....see you on the wharf!

Back to Beautiful Beaufort, SC

It's HOT, HOT, HOT in South Carolina...89 degrees...We're trying to stay cool, running the air conditioners in the rig and going places near the ocean and marshes, like the beautiful town of Beaufort, South Carolina during the day. Beaufort really is a beautiful town with beautiful antebellum houses...There's a whole section of town called "The Point" down by the waterfront, and it's just street after street of really big, beautiful old and historically and architecturally significant houses. Geez, I really need to come up with another synonym for beautiful, but that's what they are! You can get information about the walking tour from the Visitor's Center, which is a really cool Civil War arsenal station, or you can drive around and gawk, which is what we did.....

There are great stores for shopping and there are beautiful, waterfront parks...

And Beaufort has mermaid statues like Yellowstone has bison....

Beaufort also has a beautiful Episcopal church that is celebrating its 300th year birthday this year! Sparky had a special interest in the church, as she was baptized Episcopalian...The church is called St. Helena's Episcopal Church.

The grounds immediately around the church contain a beautiful cemetery with incredible wrought iron railings, decorative fencing, and of course, VERY interesting tombstones and history. The church's tombstones were used as operating tables during the Civil War.

The inside was pretty amazing, too....Don't miss this beautiful church if you pass through Beaufort, SC....There is so much to see in the surrounding areas and because of all the islands. After viewing some of the beautiful homes and the church, we decided to drive across the bridge over to Lady Island to have lunch at a restaurant called The Steamer Oyster and Steakhouse to have a very popular southern dish called "Low Country Boil"...a.k.a. "Louisiana Boil"...a.k.a. "Frogmore Stew"...Here it is and it was DELICIOUS!

Sausage almost like a bratwurst, corn on the cob, redskin potatoes, celery, onions, and grilled shrimp with a side of cornbread...Wow! It was TERRIFIC!

We did so much today, we don't want to have you give up reading a very long blog, so tomorrow, we will tell you all about Hunting Island State Park and the lighthouse there...And, Sparky's painted buntings, and.....stay tuned, there's more!

Hunting Island State Park SC

Wait till you see this park! It's fantastic! It's gorgeous! It's lush with verdant foliage everywhere! (Good grief, Sparky, speak English!) Well, I was just trying to get away from being redundant with the word beautiful. :-) What I was trying to say was, this is one of the most beautiful state parks we have seen. It's thick with trees and abundant palms and ferns everywhere under the trees. The entrance coming into the park is like going into a primordial forest...like the forests from eons ago....(Can you tell she likes it? asks E.) Eldo does, too....

First of all, it's on the Atlantic Ocean, so there's a beach...Not a pretty beach with white sand, but a beach ravaged by previous hurricanes, brown sand, palm trees uprooted, dead and brown, but still cool. Turtles come to nest in the DUNES...These are like the beaches we grew up with in the midwest...And we like them just as much as the perfect beach with white sand.....

Second, it has a LIGHTHOUSE....

Sparky paid a paltry 2.00 to climb the 167 steps to see the great view from the top!

And third, Hunting State Park has a nature center with a wonderful variety of birds flitting around...Sparky has always wanted to see some different birds other than the usual robins, sparrows, finches, and woodpeckers you see in a midwest backyard. Her dream was to see a painted bunting..They are such a BEAUTIFUL bird! Here's a picture from the nature center billboard.

There were at least three buntings flitting around the nature center. Sparky forgot her zoom, so not very good photos of them today, but SHE SAW THEM! They were BEAUTIFUL, uh, GORGEOUS! and next time she WILL have the zoom with her!

And she saw a summer tanager! That was a pretty bird, too!

Sparky is a very happy camper, having seen a painted bunting, and more than one! (If Sparky is a happy camper, Eldo is a happy camper!) What a life we have together........and it's not just for the birds!

On the way home, we stopped at a beautiful church ruins not too far from our RV park. It was about eight miles from The Oaks at Point South at the exit off highway 21 onto 17 south. There is a sign just a few yards beyond the exit for Old Sheldon Church Road. The historical site is called the "Old Sheldon Church Ruins"....free admission to walk in and roam and take in the splendor of this old church and think about what it might have looked like in its day.....It was built in the Greek Revival style between 1745 and 1753. It was burned by the British in 1779 during the Revolutionary War. In 1826, it was rebuilt. In 1865, the locals panicked over the Civil War ending, and it was pillaged and burnt again. The ruins lie among massive old oaks and scattered graves. Colonel William Bull, one of the early governors of South Carolina, and the surveyor who helped Oglethorpe plan the Savannah city layout of grids and squares, is buried inside the church ruins.

They still hold an annual service here, and many weddings take place as well....It was beautiful!

"Like Nascar on Bikes..."

Note: This is a BIG blog today, lots of photos we wanted to share. We heard that there was going to be a BIG bike race in Beaufort! (In the south, you say "Bew-fert". Just don't say "Bow-fort", or they will know you are a northerner :-)  It's called the Beaufort Memorial Cycling Classic, the 6th annual one. It was the third in a series of seven races in nine days, each in a different southwestern city. It's an exciting race of a different kind in the sleepy town of Beaufort. It's called "criterion" racing--a short, fast course in an urban area. Everybody is gonna wake up for this one! They are expecting 3,000 spectators, so we thought we'd better get there early. The workers were just starting to set up the rails when we got there...but the crowd didn't start gathering until around 6:00...They had rails all along the course, and hay bales in the turns in case of a crash.

It's an exciting .6 mile course where the bikers might hit speeds up to 40 miles per hour, coming into tight turns at these fast speeds...The bikers go round and round the course, 75 times or 45 miles for the men's race. Criterion racing is based on teams and the cyclists have strategies to protect their sprinters who have the best chance of winning. Sort of like Nascar, where drivers on teams draft (riding just behind the rider in front) and use strategies to help get the win. The riders can save up to 30% of their energy by drafting. They even have a pace car, like Nascar races. It was an all electric Leaf, by Nissan. The pace car stays ahead in the race the entire time, making sure the coast is clear for the riders barreling down the street behind it, honking before each turn. What a great choice! No exhaust for the riders to breathe...We were wondering if the car would make it through both the men's and women's races, but it did...It has a 100 mile range on a full charge.

The race is ensured to keep speed at a constant high, by the riders competing for "prime" ("preem") laps in which the fastest rider for the lap wins a prize. There are many of these offered during the race, so the rider doesn't hold back in speed to sprint at the end. The racers are sort of divided into groups by the nature of the race--you have ones that are going for the final win, you have riders that compete just to get lap prizes, and you have riders that aid the teammate in pursuit of the win. There are "groups" that jockey during the race in order to control the speed of the race, too. The "breakaway" is when a rider or two splits from the pack and makes his move. You might be able to see the teams in some of the photos....

We really wanted to see this, so mid-afternoon today, we headed to Beaufort to find a place to park the car and a good vantage point to watch the race. Nothing like getting there early to get a good spot. The event was FREE and open to the public. Woo-hoo! We're in!

We got ourselves situated, got Sparky (and Eldo) fed with some good local food "to go" from a place called "Luther's" and settled in to wait. We took a quick walk on the way in, around the waterfront park, which was absolutely GORGEOUS, while waiting for the kids' race to start at 5:00 PM. The waterfront park in Beaufort is one of the most beautiful parks we have ever seen...beautiful grassy, shaded areas, porch swings, many of them down by the waterfront, greens for bocce ball, and a wonderful view of the harbor.

Time for the kids' race...They were so cute!

This kid gave the fist up winner's signal....He's a future winner of something, for sure!

Next, the women's race, 70 competitors.....50 laps around the streets for a total of 30 miles, speeds averaging 25-30 m.p.h. coming into the first turn at Scott Street. And--there was a CRASH!

Nobody was seriously hurt, just some bruised egos, bent bikes and frustrated riders...This gal below, was in the crash, but as you can see, but she has a winning attitude....and a winning outfit! Wow! (And a few other winning things, says E., smiling)

Eldy enjoyed checking out the women's cycling outfits, like the one above. Sparky thinks it makes the sport extra "cool" to see these amazing outfits and gear.....Unbelievable, the cool shoes, racing outfits and gear, including the bikes! The price of the bikes is in the thousands for these skilled racers, who came from all over the world to participate in today's race. No harm in lookin' good, even if you may not be the best of the best, Sparky says...But these are the best of the best riders, they come from all over the world and the U.S. to compete in this race.

The rest of the women's race proceeded uneventfully...Sparky got lots of camera practice with the Nikon D3100 but had lots of trouble with figuring out the best setting without getting blurry photos. (Sparky is not very good about doing her homework beforehand! explains Eldo.) But this is kind of a cool blurry photo. It's her attempt at an "artsy fartsy" kind of photo, showing the speed, the riders really were a blur as they went by, they were going so fast!.....This was from the men's race after the sun went down....

Almost immediately after the women's race, the men's started, with 118 competitors. You could really see the difference between the speeds in the two races. The men's was much faster and more intense, even the pace car traveled faster around the course, and the competitors were much more close to each other, just inches away. They hugged the rails a lot more closely, too! You didn't dare stick an arm out with a camera over the railing, or you might break an arm or cause a wreck! Eldy said he could see the whites of the eyes on some competitors, they were so close! It was a little unnerving, he said. The WHOOSH of air as the pack went by was a STRONG gust of wind.

Here they come, get out of the way!

Some people tried to cross over to the other side to get a different perspective on the race and had a close call! Eldy said that he could have easily touched the riders as they came by...You didn't want your arms or a camera to be outstretched, that's for sure! The men came a LOT closer to the rails than the women did.

Some people were bored by the whole thing, but that was a rarity.... ;-> Most hung near the rails for hours to watch the cyclists whir by again and again.

It was a very well organized event from everything we saw. It was really exciting and the crowd grew as the evening hours descended.

You think the group of racers is just a bunch of riders all trying to win, but it's much more complicated than that, and we learned a LOT about criterion racing today by watching and listening to the announcer. The team that can get a small group of riders to the front of the pack to keep the speed up and protect their sprinter, is the one that is going to win the race.

When we heard the announcements of the winners tonight, we heard the name, and "Team ....." demonstrating just what a group effort it takes to win a race like this. The only disappointment we had in the race was the announcer botching the names of the women's race winners. He couldn't even recall the names of the three winners and used the excuse he had been to too many races this month. Sparky was very upset about that! (She's a feminist, you know...) Shame on him! But it was exciting, there were lots of cowbells ringing and people urging the riders onward and faster, ringing the bells, hollerin' and whistling, the crowd had lots of enthusiasm for the race today. Heck, Sparky got into the spirit of things and was whooping and hollering for the racers and she didn't even know anybody! It was a great celebration of healthy living and southern town hospitality and we will definitely come back to Beaufort, South Carolina for another visit! Hope you enjoyed your visit at the Beaufort Memorial Classic today!

Heads Up Hilton Head!

We're comin' to see you! And we did..We just decided to go see the golf capital of the world...Well, it's not really the golf capital of the world but it could be, there are enough championship golf courses there for the most discriminating golfer. We just wanted to see it...It's one of those places where you have an image in your head and it's nice to verify whether it's the right one or not. It wasn't...We were very surprised to see it's not the extremely expensive place we thought it was (at least where we were) and it's far more beautiful than many resort areas that we have seen. There are NOT the high rise hotels and motels and restaurants lining the roads to where you can't see the water...They must have a lot of restrictions on how you can build in the area. It was so lush and green with vegetation!

It's a beautiful community....the restaurants and hotels are there, but they are set back from the road, there are many protected "green spaces" on the island, there are tons and tons of trees and beautiful landscaping around all the shopping areas...We just took a little jaunt today to see it, so we just scratched the surface, but what we saw we thought was wonderful.

porch swing by a massive oak on the resort property

We kind of stumbled upon a resort area called Sea Pines...and a little section called Harbour Town. You pay 5.00 to enter the resort area-- you can shop, eat, see the Hilton Head lighthouse, and a famous golf course, Harbour Town Links, whose 18th hole lines up with the Hilton Head Lighthouse. The 18th hole has been one of the most photographed finishing holes in the world. Sparky climbed the 114 steps of the lighthouse to see the 360 degree view of the island. It's a 3.50 cost to get a little exercise and get a little history about the island, both militarily and in the golf arena.
We walked around a bit, then rocked in one of the many red rocking chairs that are available for you to sit and watch the world go by. We did.....

There are some fantastic bike trails in that part of the island. They were absolutely beautiful..You can rent bikes there if you want. We are definitely going to return and ride and ride and ride (well, maybe just ride, says E.) in a couple of days, after the high 80's temps go away....The bike trails went for miles and miles all around the island and were very shaded and level. Can't wait!

beautiful bike path to the right of the road

Kayak rentals available down at the harbor, along with jet skis....

What was interesting about today, was, Eldy decided to "check in" on Facebook just for fun. He did, and a post went out over "Cyberland" where he was, in Hilton Head...We took a photo, too, of the two of us to. This was about 1:00 PM. A little while later, we headed over to Pinckney Wildlife Refuge to check that out...no photos of that today, it was too hot to get out and hike. When we got back home today, an old high school chum of Eldy's commented on Facebook that he had been at the Hilton Head Lighthouse at noon today. We just missed him!  Eldy hasn't seen him since high school. Small world, getting smaller all the time with technology.....Tomorrow, it's back to Beaufort.....