Old Buildings & Sand Part 3- The Rest of Charleston

Another reason people visit Charleston is the food.  This part of the world is referred to as the Low Country which includes coastal South Carolina and down into Georgia.  The style of cooking is delicious, albeit unique…

Your eyes do not deceive, that is fried chicken on top of a waffle. It’s a thing in these parts.  It wasn’t bad except we got it in a foo-foo restaurant.  That little pitcher was advertised as “maple syrup in a bourbon reduction.”  In practice, it was a shot of bourbon with a little maple syrup added just to make it honest. 

A seafood au-gratin, which consisted of scallops, shrimp and crab meat.  Very tasty.  Also, the side dish is advertised everywhere as Carolina Red Rice.  I was expecting a rice that was actually red.  This looks suspiciously like Mexican Rice we eat in Texas.  But it was good.

This was my breakfast the last morning we were in Charleston.  To break this down, the big plate has a fried crab cake topped with a fried green tomato which is topped with a poached egg, which was finally topped with some sort of tasty Thousand Island-esque sauce.  There were fried potatoes which were awesome, but hard to stab with a fork.  And the small plate has a homemade buttermilk biscuit that was utterly enormous and also very tasty.  I loved every bit of it.

One afternoon we were there, we visited the South Carolina Aquarium before our visit out to Ft. Sumter.

This albino alligator was probably the most interesting creature we saw on display at the aquarium.

There is a deck on the back side of the aquarium that looks out over Charleston Harbor.  This guy was out there, so we grabbed a photo with him.  He did not turn into a prince, Debbie is still stuck with me :)

From the deck you also get a great view of the Arthur Ravenel Jr Bridge, which crosses the Cooper River and connects Charleston with Mt. Pleasant to the north.  As an aside, I have no idea why they call it Mount Pleasant.  The only thing remotely tall for hundreds of miles is that bridge.  At any rate, this is one of the world's largest cable suspension bridges.  It was designed for a 100 year life and is supposed to be capable of sustaining 300 mph winds and up to a 7.4 earthquake (South Carolina is a seismically active area).  It has a path that allows walkers and bikers to cross over, they run races a few times each year over it.

After the aquarium, we jumped aboard the Spirit of the Low Country and took a ride out to Ft. Sumter.

Interesting factoid- the island that the fort sits on is completely man-made.  The military brought in some 70,000 tons of granite from New England to build the island.  It was meant to be part of the coastal defense system which was created after the War of 1812. 

After Ft. Sumter was surrendered by Union forces, not much happened thanks to the blockade by the Union.  Things began to heat up after the tide started to turn for the Union, and they were able to spare the resources to attack the fort. 

And when they did finally attack, jeez!  In the photo below, the wall you see should actually be a 3-story structure that connects with those brick pillars.  This was the soldiers' barracks.  During the course of siege, the Union deposited 44,000 rounds of munitions onto the fort and this is all that's left.  Confederate soldiers were still occupying the fort in this condition when it was surrendered.

Also in the photo are some cannons on display.  The one closest to us is called a 15 inch Rodman, it weighs 50,000 pounds.  It was the largest cannon used in the Civil War and was capable of sending a round about 3.2 miles out!  There is a smaller rifled cannon on display at the fort called a 6.4 inch Parrott that could send a round nearly 4 miles out.

A great example of how a cannon actually works from inside the fort.  It is rotated by rolling it along the curved metal track on the floor.  When it fires, recoil is addressed by allowing the cannon to roll up the ramp on the metal wheels just beneath it.  That also positions it for reloading.  There was no real need to change the vertical angle of the cannon- all targets were sitting straight out on the water.  I can’t imagine what the noise was like.  I wonder if they wore any hearing protection?

Looking down through some of the buttresses in a better-preserved section of the fort.

Just to prove I did do some birdwatching while on vacation, here’s a picture from a spot called the Pitt Street Causeway, which is on the north side of Charleston Harbor.  This is a Short-billed Dowitcher working hard for a meal at low tide.  Debbie gets a kick out of this photo.

Here is a good reason why you do your homework before going on vacation.  On another afternoon, we took a boat tour of Charleston Harbor, which was a lot of fun.  During his talk, the captain asked the question “what was Blackbeard’s real name?”  The pirate Blackbeard is an instrumental part of Charleston’s history.  He was very active along the coast of the Carolinas (more on this later), and at one point he blockaded Charleston Harbor in order to gain medicine and supplies for his men.  There was one person on the tour who knew his real name, which was Edward Teach.  Knowing that answer got me a wooden token to use at the snack bar.  I wasn’t all that excited about the prize until I learned that token also covered beer.  Here I am with the very best kind of beer in the world- free beer!

That same evening, we went down to Waterfront Park, which abuts Charleston Harbor and watched the sun set.  They love their fountains in Charleston, there are two at this park.

The pineapple seems to have special significance in Charleston.  We asked our carriage driver about it.  His answer was that at one time pineapples were very difficult to come by in Charleston, owing to the difficulty transporting them in time before spoilage.  Thus, they were very expensive, so if you had one it was a sign of wealth and prosperity.  There would be celebrations surrounding the serving of a pineapple. 

Here are some kids playing in a different fountain at the same park.  I had some fun trying to use a very slow exposure on my camera to achieve the blurred motion.

Looking out over the harbor at sunset.  The structure just left of the sailboat is Castle Pinckney.  It was intended to be another Coastal Defense installation, but I believe it was never used and sits in ruins today.  Just right of the sailboat, and much further in the distance is Ft. Sumter.

Today Charleston is a tourist destination, and it carries with it this genteel antebellum character, similar to what is portrayed in Gone with the Wind.  You get the War of Northern Aggression and all that jazz.  There is one thing about Charleston that wasn’t mentioned much while we were there.  Some 40% of the African slaves which entered the United States passed through the Port of Charleston.  We’re talking about millions of humans, the institution of slavery was part of the fabric that Charleston was cut from.  While there are still debates today over the causes of the Civil War, South Carolina’s economic interests were very definitely at stake when it came to any national conversation involving slavery.

After three days, we’d gotten a pretty good feel for the city and it was time to see some other places.  We made our way out of Charleston and headed north to the Outer Banks.

This is what it looks like driving over the Ravenel Bridge as we left town.

Completed in Part 4, which is here

Old Buildings & Sand Part 2- The Architecture

Charleston itself is the part that is built out on the peninsula between the Ashley and Cooper Rivers.  This is the oldest area, and the area that tourists focus on, like us.  Most of the time if you were to ask someone about Charleston, they would say it is where the US Civil War started.  This is true, the first shots were at Ft. Sumter.  More on that later.  After that, Charleston played only a minor role in that war thanks to the Union blockading the harbor.  Not much of anything happened after that.  Charleston had a much larger role in the American Revolution, although the Deep South is not much thought of when we talk about gaining independence from England.  Several instrumental battles were fought in South Carolina though.

There are several things that draw people to visit Charleston.  One is the architecture.  Because of limited space, the peninsula was pretty much built out by 1850 or so, and most of those buildings are still there.  There are some stunning examples of antebellum architecture, and a style that is unique to Charleston, the Single House. 

This is the typical house in Charleston.  The narrow end faces the street and the “front door” does not go into the house.  In most places we would say it opens into a porch, but that would be incorrect to say there.  It is not a porch, nor is it a veranda.  It is called a piazza in Charleston, because that sounds more cultured.  There are lots of windows and lots of open space to facilitate air flow.  It gets wickedly humid in Charleston during the summer.

Here the designers stuck windows wherever they felt like it.  I have no idea where the floors are in relation to the windows on the long side of that house!

Charleston has an Old World feel, but with palm trees everywhere.

Charleston was established in the late 1600s.  This is a picture of the Pink House, which is made of stone brought from Bermuda.  Construction on the house began in 1694, it is one of the oldest buildings in the South.  It has served as everything from a tavern to attorneys’ offices.

This is the Powder Magazine, the oldest public building in Charleston, built in 1713.  It was used to store gunpowder.  Doesn’t look like much but it has a pretty crafty design.  There are only a few exterior doors.  The walls are 3 feet thick at the base and only a few inches thick at the top.  Both of these features are there to push an explosion upward and not outward.  And the roof has a layer of sand built into so if an explosion did occur, the sand would pour down and start putting the fire out.  Like I said, pretty crafty.

Charleston is nicknamed the Holy City because of all the churches.  And they are everywhere!  That one above is St. Philips Episcopal church, which was built in 1836.  It gets a little confusing because St. Philips was built on the site of St. Michael’s church, which burned down.

And this is the “new” St. Michael’s Episcopal church.  It was built in 1751, so new is kind of a relative term.

One of the prettiest structures in Charleston, this the French Huguenot church, home to the only Calvinist congregation in the United States.  Debbie and I both really enjoyed the gothic style of this church, it was only two blocks from our hotel.

This was a block away from our hotel.  It is the Circular Congregation church.  Hard to appreciate from this photo, but it was a round building.  A very attractive one at that.  An interesting factoid is that many of the churches do not have church bells.  They were taken down because the metal was needed for the war effort in the Civil War with the promise all the bells would be replaced once the Confederacy was able to declare victory.  I guess it’s just symbolic now, but they’re still waiting some 150 years later.

We went on a carriage ride one afternoon.  I highly recommend carriage rides, they’re a lot of fun and very educational.  We learned a couple of things from our driver/guide.  Back in the day, it was not acceptable to display your wealth on the outside of your house.  Opulence was expressed inside the house.  But homeowners would make subtle efforts to display the industry they worked in.

Notice the flowers around the outside of this window.  The owner of this house worked in the cotton industry.

This gentleman worked in shipping, as evidenced by the rope running down the sides of his door.

I don’t have a picture of it, but our guide also pointed out that one can age houses by their siding.  He showed us some features in the shape of the siding and said certain shapes were not built after 1800.  If we saw those, it was safe to assume a  house was built in the 1700s and that it still had the original bald cypress siding!!  It boggles my mind to imagine natural materials exposed to the elements lasting that long.

We passed by a house that looked worse than this one that was for sale.  How much do you think the above house is worth, as-is?  Did you guess $50,000?  A good try, but you need to add a zero.  Houses that are nearly at the state of condemnation sell for a half-million dollars and will require at least that much to get back to a normal condition.  Already at a normal condition?  More than a million easily, and that’s for less than 2000 square feet.  Does it have a driveway?  That bumps it up to two million.    

Then there’s the process of doing *anything* at all to the house.  Charleston is ruled by an Architectural Review Board.  They have a lot of power, but they are there to ensure Charleston keeps its historical character.  What that means is that if you want to do anything to the outside of the house- for example paint your shutters the exact same color they already are, just a fresh coat of paint- you have to go get a permit from the ARB and jump through their hoops.  Its probably crappy for residents, but it does make sure Charleston stays what it is.

Every morning we were there, I got up at the crack of dawn and walked around Charleston before the city really woke up, and while it was relatively cool.  One place I came across was this, the Sword Gate House.  Those gates were built in 1838 and were meant for the city’s new Guard House, but were never installed.  They were put on this private residence in 1849 and have been there ever since.

A relatively unique structure in Charleston, this is the Farmers & Exchange Bank, built in 1854.  The style is called Moorish Revival.  Unfortunately it was impossible to get a shot of the full building, but it was pretty neat.

Last bit of architecture, this is the City Jail.  It is currently being restored and is actually home to the American College of the Building Arts, which focuses on historic restorations.  Another interesting place, evidently they built it with zero plumbing- incoming or sewage.  During its use some 14,000 people died here, mostly of diseases like cholera.

Continued in Part 3, which an be found here

Old Buildings & Sand Part 1- Getting there

For our annual vacation in 2013, Debbie and I visited and had an amazing time in Trinidad & Tobago.  For 2014, we decided to scale back, save some money for future foreign travel, and check out some places closer to home that we’d previously passed over.  Namely, we decided to visit Charleston, South Carolina, and then go on up to North Carolina’s Outer Banks.

Above, the red star represents our home right outside of Atlanta.  The lower magenta star is Charleston, and the upper magenta star is where the Outer Banks are located, perched out on the edge of the world as it were.

With the Kia loaded down with gear, we left out early in the morning on Sunday, May 11.  The weather was pleasant and mild, and we were on Interstate 85 in short order.  Within a couple of hours, we crossed over into South Carolina.  After another couple of hours, just south of Columbia, SC we reached our first stop: Congaree National Park, which is the blue star right next to "South Carolina" above.

Congaree is a neat place.  Kind of small as national parks go.  Perched along the banks of the Congaree River, it represents the single largest tract of bottomland hardwood forest left in the United States.  Here’s some of the bald cypresses with their “knees” sticking up.  Those are actually breathing tubes for when water levels are high.  It was pretty dry when we visited.

The park is around 26,000 acres.  That seems like a lot of land until you consider that bottomland hardwood forest once covered millions of acres from Virginia all the way back to East Texas, following the paths laid out by great slow-moving rivers and bayous.  Now only slivers are left here and there.  Another notable fact about Congaree is that thanks to a combination of plentiful water, plentiful nutrients, a long growing season & mild winters, the trees here get big.  Really big.  There are numerous national champion trees found within the park, although their exact locations are not advertised.  It is typical for trees to exceed 150 feet tall here, and some of the champions approach 200 feet.  Here’s Debbie hugging one of the biggest loblolly pines we’ve ever seen, and it is just one among equals in this forest.

We stopped here for lunch and then walked some of the boardwalk path that goes out from the Visitor’s Center.

This tree isn’t particularly big, but it makes us think of a ghost every time we look at it.  Plus the tree is doing quite a balancing act with all the mass it has up in the air.

We got back on the road and a few hours later we found ourselves in downtown Charleston, SC.  I had been intrigued by Charleston for a few years.  Around where we live, lots of people talk about how amazing the place is to visit.  I had always wondered why, what the big deal was.  Short answer- it’s a pretty cool place to visit.

More in Part 2, which you can read by clicking here

Old Buildings & Sand Part 4- The Outer Banks

The blue arrow shows where we camped that night, along the banks of the Neuse River at a campground in the Croatan National Forest , which had nice facilities. 

Sunset over the Neuse River.  Maybe hard to see, but Debbie is just at the left edge of this photo.

The next morning, we got up and headed over to the Cedar Island ferry port.  The red line on the map above shows the general path we took riding the ferry over to Ocracoke Island, which is part of North Carolina’s Outer Banks.  As you can kinda see from the map above, the Outer Banks are a series of barrier islands which stick pretty far out into the Atlantic.  For those in Texas, these islands are the same thing that Mustang and Padre Islands are in our state.

Ocracoke was an interesting place.  It is pretty difficult to get to, so there were just fewer people over all and the pace was pretty relaxed on the whole island.  The island was very isolated for a long time, so the islanders developed a very unique accent.  It was heavily influenced by their English ancestors, but it became its own thing.  I watched a video on it, and some of the natives said even when they visit the North Carolina mainland, they will have people ask them if they are from Australia.  To give one example, when they want to fly somewhere they go to the “eye-er-port.” 

That night, thanks to research I had done on Tripadvisor about food options, we ate what was possibly the best Mexican food we have ever had.  There is a food trailer there called Eduardo’s Tacos.  It was amazing, all the more so for the fact that we were at one of the ends of the Earth eating food from a trailer.  There was a taco that involved mango, avocado, cilantro and a soft Mexican cheese that was grilled.  Best food of the trip.

Following that, we retired to our campsite.  Our tent is tall and spacious.  It serves our needs very well, we can even hang out inside it if it is really buggy out and use it like a shelter.  It does not however perform well in torrential blowing rainstorms.  The following morning we were woken violently by a collapsing and flooding tent that was no match for the storm.  We survived but ended up a little soggy.  We headed back into town to a funky little coffee shop.  There was standing water everywhere, and suddenly Mallards!  Mallards everywhere.  Every single large puddle had at least two or three Mallards attending it, bathing, swimming and eating.  No idea where they came from, but apparently they know to take advantage when opportunity presents.

This is the Ocracoke Lighthouse, one of the three lighthouses of the Cape Hatteras National Seashore.  It is still functional today, although it runs on an automatic schedule.

Here’s Debbie trying to stay dry.

Another thing interesting about Ocracoke Island is that it was at one time Blackbeard’s favorite anchorage.  He could pass through Ocracoke Inlet and anchor his ships in a deep hole that was just offshore and protected from the ocean, which was not very far from where the lighthouse is at today.  Ocracoke is also the site of the greatest pirate party that ever occurred, courtesy of Blackbeard.  He put out the invitation, and apparently hundreds showed up.  They ate and drank rum for a week or longer, so the story goes. 

We only stayed one day on Ocracoke, and looking back wish we had stayed longer to explore the island, it was a neat place.  But, our schedule was calling, so we made our way to the north end of the island to another ferry port, so we could cross over to Hatteras Island.  While we were waiting to drive aboard, birds gathered…

This Laughing Gull is calling for a treat, but I think he was unsuccessful with our group of cars.

A Black Skimmer hanging out with the gulls and waiting for the sky to clear.

Once on the ferry, we had some birds trailing the boat.

A Common Tern in flight.

And another shot of a Laughing Gull.

As we crossed over to Hatteras Island, the rains followed us.  We visited a neat place called Graveyard of the Atlantic museum.  There are many shipwrecks in the area of the Outer Banks, and this museum is dedicated to the maritime history of the area.  Finally the rain started to relent and we were able to secure a campsite at the National Park Service campground near Frisco.

Here’s the sun setting over camp.  Being under the trees, our tent was much more sheltered than it was on Ocracoke.  The tradeoff was bugs.  Our tent got covered with harmless fuzzy caterpillars and many not-harmless ticks.

One of the more interesting aspects of camping here was the shower situation…

That’s the community bathhouse, four stalls (two on the other side).  I never saw anyone else even using the showers.  Kind of hard to see in this photo, but the lighting for the shower was provided via a skylight.  There was no electricity running to the bath house, so there were no night showers to be had.

That’s what a stall looks like.  There really wasn’t any place to put your things to keep them dry, you had to get creative.  There’s a grate in the bottom so that you wouldn’t be standing in debris (mostly beach sand).  Notice the rope…

This is what a campground shower head looks like.  Rig up a contraption of pipe with a cap.  Incorporate a spring-loaded handle (for a water faucet?).  Drill holes in the cap so you get something resembling a spray pattern.  If you want water, pull the rope.  Let go of the rope, goodbye water.  In practice, you let water run long enough to get wet.  Then soap up, and pull the rope again to rinse off.  You would not continuously use the water even if you could.  That’s because it came in one temperature- ice cold.  Oh and the water came out almost like a pressure washer in five blistering streams.  Showers happened very quickly.  I would tell you they were invigorating, but they weren’t.  They were just cold.  You can also see the skylight in the background in this photo.

This is the view from the dune crossing closest to our campground, looking out over the Atlantic Ocean.

Here’s Debbie engaging in one of her favorite activities- looking for shells.

Our first full day on Hatteras Island, we visited our second lighthouse of the trip:

Here’s an unobstructed view of it:

This is the tallest brick lighthouse in the United States, at 210 feet.  Its flash can be seen by ships that are 20 miles out to sea.  All lighthouses run a specific flash cadence so ships equipped with charts can determine where they are at based on that unique signal.

Here’s the most interesting thing about this lighthouse- that is not its original site!  In 1999, the original location was just 15 feet from the ocean due to coastal erosion (today that spot is now under water).  So contractors were hired, they built a path, hoisted the lighthouse up and rolled it on rails to its current location.  Pretty fascinating given that this is a really big, very static brick structure.

Here’s the lighthouse flashing at dusk.  This was at our campground where we crossed the dune over to the beach, and is about 4.5 miles from the lighthouse.  Even in the GPS age, lighthouses continue to run all night, every night.  Technology can and will fail and the old tried and true methods of navigation still serve a critical role.  Fortunately with a consistent pattern, I was able to time my shot to catch the flash.

The next day we visited our third and final lighthouse of the trip, the Bodie Island Lighthouse.  It is pronounced like body, not like bow-die.  You might also notice that each lighthouse I’ve shown has a different paint pattern.  This is to assist ships during daylight hours in case they are unsure of their location, something also noted in nautical charts.  While lighthouses all had keepers at one time, today none of them do.  They run on an automated schedule and are operated by a public entity, such as the National Park Service or the US Coast Guard.

I took this shot especially for all my people in the great state of Texas.  This picture is in fact NOT of Texas, it is still the Outer Banks.  If you look, you can see a sandy hill in the background.  That is the final dune, cross over that and you’re on the beach looking at the Atlantic Ocean. 

All too quickly, our vacation time had slipped past us.  We got to see a lot of history and got to spend a lot of time on beaches watching the endless ebb and flow of earth and sea.  On our last morning we knocked as many of the caterpillars off the tent as we could, packed it up, and made the long drive back across North Carolina to our house. 

As I like to do every time, I will leave you with a sunset photo.  This one is looking back across the dune field at our campground on Hatteras Island.  We hope you enjoyed sharing in our trip!  Brandon & Debbie