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