Charles Pinckney National Historic Site, Mount Pleasant, South Carolina

This morning we took a quick trip out to see some of the plantations near our campground. Having watched the beginning of the miniseries “North and South” the night before, we were hoping to catch a glimpse of the Boone Hall Plantation, where many of the outdoor scenes were filmed. As we pulled up to the stand that guards the entry road to the plantation, we found that it would be almost $20 per person to tour the plantation, and since we didn’t have much time, I told them we just wanted to drive in and look at the outside of the building. In a very polite southern accent the gate attendant said, “Sir, if you drive past this gate, it costs $20!”. We promptly turned the car around and drove back down the road to find the free National Park Service site honoring Charles Pinckney.

Charles Pinckney was a southern gentleman from Charleston, the youngest member of the South Carolina delegation that attended the Constitutional Convention of 1787. One of the first to speak out against the ineffective Articles of Confederation by which our country had been governed since 1781, he is credited with significantly shaping over 30 of the articles in our current constitution. Snee Farm, his country estate north of Charleston, has been preserved by the National Park Service. While none of the original buildings remain, archeological digs of the area have uncovered more than 150,000 artifacts dating back to the late 1700s. The existing house was built in 1820, after the farm had changed hands, and provides an example of early plantation life. Live oaks (the leaves never turn brown) covered with resurrection ferns and Spanish moss, surround the home. We watched the movie about Charles Pinckney in the visitor center in the house, the kids obtained stamps in their passport books, and then we returned to the campground to prepare for the drive south.

Charleston, South Carolina

We had a great day in Charleston today, in spite of locking my keys in the truck. Here is Teressa’s detailed account of the day from her journal:

Kids were up by 8 and studying by 8:30. Gary and I walked Rocky and prepared to go into town. It was short sleeve weather from the get-go and very humid. Around 10, we drove the 10 miles or so into Charleston. Along the way we passed many little, shabby stands where ladies were selling their West African baskets.

Our first stop was the visitor’s center in the historic district. We signed up for a 90 minute greyhound minibus tour of Charleston. Our guide was a native Charleston man with a very thick southern drawl and some strange and quirky mannerisms. Boy, did he know his history. He took us through the college of Charlestown which was a beautiful old campus. Their common area, where graduations take place, is a large grassy park with a pavilion at one end. At graduation, only the professors wear caps and gowns. The graduating girls wear white dresses and carry half a dozen roses and the men wear white tuxedos. The tradition began when the first girl to attend the school graduated and received roses from her father.

We cruised down King Street, past shops and churches. Charleston is known as the “holy city” because pre-revolutionary war they would allow anyone with 7 members to start their own church. Many people moved to Charleston to escape religious persecution by the Puritans and Evangelicals of the Northeast and elsewhere. We saw all of the main tourist attractions in historic Charleston. Cabbage Row, later named “Catfish Row” was the location of the Dubose Heyward story “Porgy”. This story later became the basis for George Gershwin’s opera “Porgy and Bess”, a fictionalized glimpse of black life in Charleston during the 1920’s. The Battery is the area where many shipping businessmen lived and where Charlestonians watched the attack on Fort Sumter. Rainbow Row is a block of historical houses that were preserved but painted with bright colors. One thing we found interesting was that many of the homes had two front staircases—one going up from the right and one from the left, meeting at the top center. The ladies in their hoop skirts would walk up the right and the men went to the left so that they would not see the ladies’ ankles when they lifted their hoop skirts. These same women wore very low cut dresses with lots of bosom showing, but the ankles remained covered!

At the end of the tour, we walked to a Thai restaurant on King Street called Basil. It was just what we needed—healthy, great-tasting food. We then drove to a parking spot near the market area and Laura and I wandered through the multitude of vendor booths. A craft/art that comes from this area is coiled sweetgrass baskets. After talking with one of the black ladies who weaves the baskets, Laura and I learned what to look for in a quality basket. The skill has been passed down from Africa to the slaves and now to African American descendents of slaves. They are woven only in West Africa and South Carolina with most of the basket work being done in Mount Pleasant (which is where our KOA is). This is because the materials are only available in those locations. The baskets are made of sweetgrass, bulrush, pine needles and palmetto. After shopping around, we found a pretty basket that we liked and purchased it. Brian bought a crystal paperweight with the South Carolina palmetto tree etched inside of it.

Our last stop was the visitor center for Fort Sumter. We read the displays in the museum and Brian and Laura got their passports stamped. From the deck, we admired the bridge between Charleston and Mount Pleasant and looked out at Fort Sumter. When we arrived back at the truck, we discovered that the keys were inside. I had left my set of keys home to lighten the load of my purse. Fortunately AAA was able to send someone out in about 25 minutes. Laura and I took about a 12 block round trip walk and got a closeup look at some of the homes. The houses are built sideways. The side facing the street is very narrow and has just a few windows. The British used to tax people based on how many windows they had on the street side of their home. So, the southerners would build the house narrow but deep. Along the south side there was a porch the length of the house downstairs and a balcony the length of the house upstairs. Windows had shutters and could be opened up to allow the ocean breezes in during the summer time. Many of these homes fell into disrepair after an earthquake they had after the Civil War. To restore them so they could be used (since people didn’t have much money to rebuild) they inserted metal rods the length and width of the homes. At the end of the rod on the outsides of the home, they would place decorative end pieces. So we took some photos of those on our walk.

Back in the trailer we ate up our meatballs and potatoes and watched the first episode of the miniseries “North and South”. In the movie, the Mains’ home was actually the Boone Hall Plantation which is right down the road from the KOA. The Hazzard home was one of the mansions we saw today in Charleston.

Myrtle Beach, North Carolina

It was dark when we arrived at the KOA last night, so all we saw of Myrtle Beach were the golf courses and restaurants along the road on the drive in. Sometime in the middle of the night it started to rain, and when it rains in South Carolina, it pours! The main storm hit around 3AM. While lying in bed just before 6, I had the sensation that little drops of water were hitting the bottom of face. After convincing myself this was impossible, since gravity insures that water would fall down and strike the top of my face, I started wondering if Teressa was flicking something at me as a joke. I put my hand on the mattress between our pillows and found it was soaked. We sprang out of bed to find water dripping down the cabinet at the front of the bed. In looking at the roof of the RV as daybreak broke this morning, all I can figure is there must be a crack in the seal right along the top front. One more project for when we get to Orlando and it dries out.

After the rains stopped around 7:30, I took Rocky for his morning walk. There were puddles of water everywhere, and to Rocky’s delight, squirrels! We treed five of them before we were even 100 feet from the trailer (see the picture of our squirrel hunter on guard duty). The day was looking up! As we rounded the lake on the other side of the RV park, it sounded like a semi was approaching from the southwest. The semi turned out to be another tropical cloudburst. Initially we laughed as the warm rain drenched our bodies. Then Rocky started to whimper – either a flashback to when he was a stray, or stirrings of more recent memories at the groomer. Just as quickly as it started, it stopped, and we meandered back to the trailer. I’m sure the squirrels were laughing at him from the trees, as he now looked more like a drowned rat than a fierce Pomeranian.

When everyone was up and showered we jumped in the truck and went to a local pancake house for breakfast. I ordered grits so everyone could try them. Brian and Laura think it will also be the last time they ever try them. They don’t taste bad, in fact they don’t taste like much of anything, it’s more the consistency that is offensive. The rest of the food was excellent, and the waitress showered us with genuine southern hospitality which really impressed the kids. “She is like our new best friend”, Laura declared.

After filling the truck with diesel, we parked along the main drag in Myrtle Beach and walked down to the public beach access just as the clouds were breaking up. We understand that Myrtle Beach is a twenty mile long strip of sand, although we could only see a mile or so in either direction. Hotels, condos and restaurants line the entire length of the beach. The kids were thrilled to find a wide assortment of sea shells, some up to six inches across. A woman told us they were so plentiful because of the dredging and beach restoration project that is currently underway.

Duke Medical Center, Durham, North Carolina

Many of you know that my niece, Cece, has cystic fibrosis and recently underwent lung transplant surgery at Duke Medical Center. At 23 years of age she has endured more than most of us will in a lifetime. We were fortunate to be able to spend three days with her and my brother Dirk in Durham, and I'm pleased to report she is doing remarkably well, especially given what she has been through. It is fantastic to see her without an oxygen bottle or gasping for breath! Unfortunately she had to go back into the hospital for three days to treat an issue with lung rejection (apparently a common issue with transplants). She is obviously discouraged as this will likely push back their return trip to Helena, although in the grand scheme of things, appears to be a minor bump on her road to recovery.

We enjoyed playing multiple rousing games of “Catch Phrase”. I think the boys won more often than the girls, but somehow managed to lose the last battle for championship of the known universe. Oh well, there is still the unknown universe to play for. We also had a lengthy game of trivial pursuit. The questions were from the 1980s and 1990s, which apparently we all must have slept through! Finally the boys put an end to the agony.

We enjoyed eating out several times with Dirk (and once with Cece). The last evening we ate at Maggiano’s, an excellent Italian restaurant in the big Southpoint mall in Durham. By chance we met the manager of the restaurant, an Irish immigrant who has been in the US for 20 years. When he found out Dirk was from Montana we were immediately his new best friends! It turns out he spent a Saint Patrick’s Day in Butte a few years back, and thinks all Montanans are friendly folks. It was a great dinner and a great visit. We are really hoping that Dirk and Cece make it home to Montana to spend Christmas with the rest of their family (they have been in an apartment in Durham for six months).

Outer Banks, North Carolina

This morning we were up and on the road again by 9:30. Our first stop was the Bodie Island light house. The kids secured stamps in their National Park passport books before continuing on towards Fort Raleigh. While I quit running several years ago because of bad knees, we soon found ourselves in the middle of the Nags Head marathon! The course was laid out perfectly, so our delay was minimal. We took the back road into Fort Raleigh to explore the Lost Colony. In the late 1500s Sir Walter Raleigh sponsored a trip to send a group of English Settlers to Roanoke Island to help colonize the new world. Their leader came back to England a couple of years later to secure more supplies, but when he returned to Roanoke several years later, the settlers had all disappeared. The fate of the Lost Colony remains one of the great mysteries of our history.

The drive from the Outer Banks into Durham was uneventful except for the 40 minutes we spent on the bridge crossing the sound. Apparently the rotating draw bridge broke while letting several ships through, so we ate lunch in the trailer on the bridge in a line of cars that stretched for several miles. We arrived at the Birchwood campground by Duke with just enough time to park and get set up before it go dark

Kitty Hawk, North Carolina

From Yorktown we headed southeast in Virginia towards the Outer Banks of North Carolina. Our first stop was the Wright Brothers National Memorial at Kitty Hawk. While everyone learns in grade school that Orville and Wilbur Wright were the first to achieve self-powered sustained flight, the park service has done an excellent job preserving the exact location of that historic event. A 40 foot granite pylon sits atop Kill Devil Hill, the large sand dune where the flight originated, as a memorial to the ingenuity and determination of the two aviation pioneers. From the top of the hill you can see the entire path of the flight and get a sense for what it must have been like that day. The museum shows a documentary on early flight that helps put their accomplishments into the context of the time. There was a great race around the world to see who would be the first to achieve sustained flight. What struck me was just how far and fast we have come – less than 70 years after the Wright Brothers successfully piloted their wood and cloth plane for just over 850 feet, Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon. In a special tribute to the contributions of the Wright Brothers, Armstrong carried a piece of their original glider in his pocket when he stepped onto the lunar surface!

Leaving Kitty Hawk we continued along the Outer Banks to the Cape Hatteras National Seashore and our campground near Rodanthe. Straddling the Atlantic and the Pamlico Sound, Camp Hatteras is a large modern campground with paved sites and full hookups. Even though it was a Saturday night, the campground was less than a quarter full this November evening. The rain had stopped mid afternoon, and since it was getting dark as we approached the campground, we parked quickly and walked to the Atlantic beachfront. We had the 1000 foot campground beach to ourselves, which allowed Rocky to partake in his favorite pastime – running un-tethered in the sand. As he dashed back and forth along the edge of the pounding waves, we soaked our feet in the cool Atlantic waters.

Yorktown Battlefield, Virginia

We left the campground in Williamsburg at 9 this morning, just at the rain started to fall. By the time we reached the Yorktown Battlefield just south of Williamsburg, it was coming down pretty hard. Dashing into the visitor center in an attempt to stay dry, we watched the park service movie on the Yorktown battle that helped turn the tide and secure our country’s independence. With the help of the French navy and army commanded by Comte de Rochambeau, General Washington successfully secured the surrender of General Cornwallis and the British Army during the siege of Yorktown. The museum has several interesting artifacts from Yorktown, including the Lafayette cannon and Washington’s original wall tents. It was interesting to note that the Americans were the minority at Yorktown – both the French and the English had larger forces. I guess I’m going to have to stop bad mouthing the French! ;-)