Charleston South Carolina

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Good morning from Charleston. Yesterday we went out to Fort Sumter. It is a great tour and although I did it once before, it was worth it again. It is very interesting to see where the first shot of the Civil War was fired. After that we went over to market street. It is old and charming and we had lunch and then walked through the open air market. This structure dates back as well and was used as a market place pretty much as it is today. The difference being that you can get a new holster for your cell phone now and back then it was corn or rice or hand made baskets. It is at least partially sponsored now by the Daughters of the Confederacy. Next we walked over to the Slave Market. This is one of the actual locations where slaves were bought and sold. It is now a museum. From here we walked all the way over to the College of Charleston. It is a beautiful campus and one of the buildings here was used in "The Patriot" with Mel Gibson. It reminded me of how poorly I did at my attempt at college and how I never liked school one bit except for the girl watching which was still good after all these years. Different girls now though I'm sure. It is still quite hot and humid here. Marilyn started going in and out of shops but not me. I just found a bench to sit on with the other boyfriends or husbands and waited it out. I'm sure we were a sad looking lot all hot and sweaty and crumpled up with grimaces of torture but actually going in the shops would have been worse with the exception of getting in the air conditioning for a few minutes. I talked with one guy for a bit that was sitting next to me. He was married and waiting for his wife to stop spending his money and his back was hurting pretty bad. She finally came back and as he got up he looked at me and said "thanks for the therapy" so that made me feel useful and like I had done my good deed for the day. Poor bastard. We got back in the truck and headed for the grocery store and then went for a swim back at the RV Park. This is without a doubt the nicest RV park we have stayed at since we left California back in November. Today we drive north with Kitty Hawk being the next destination and that might be a two day drive rather than one but we will see how I hold up in the driving department.

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Photos

Me
Many cannon are still here. The ride out here was about 30 minutes.

Me
The sign out front of the fort as you get off the boat.

Marilyn
Look at the way she is caressing the barrell of this big guy!

Checking a cannon
Go ahead and pull the lanyard Cleetus so I can tell what's wrong with it!

Me
Memorial to the Union soldiers that fought here but lost. There were only about 85 guys here to defend it.

Fort Sumter
As the boat approached it. The small Union force ran out of supplies and surrendered to the Confederates.

North end of the market
The inscription reads "Daughters of the Confederacy"

Slave market
Now a museum.

On campus
Here is the building used in the Patriot movie.

Comments

[paul]

Girl Watching
Girl watching. Right. Who are you trying to kid?

[Ron Pinto]

Tennis Weekend...
Cool pixs et al but just one question.......Will you folks be back at the Ranch for the "Partner Swap" tennis tourney this coming Saturday? Plenty of open airline seats out of Charleston Friday. Great prizes tooo.