South Carolina

March 26 through 28, 2000

On Sunday morning, we set out on our “get acquainted” volkswalk in Charleston. This was a walk that suited our style perfectly. The weather was sunny and warm, there was a light (but not strong) breeze, and there are no hills in the historic district of Charleston. The walk meandered through the old part of town, with an emphasis on colonial homes. We saw many stately mansions, originally built in the early 18th century. In some areas, there were whole streets lined with the old colonial homes.

The typical architecture in Charleston is one that I had not seen before called the Charleston Single House. The homes generally have narrow frontage on the streets, and on the west or south side (whichever is the long side) they have multi-tiered “piazzas.” In Louisiana these would be called “galleries” and in the Northwest we would probably call them porches. In any event, they looked very practical in this climate, especially those that have the top tiers screened in to keep the insects out.

The walk also included a market that has been created from the old slave market. This area also included many, many restaurants and other tourist related retail shops.

We finished the walk in something over four hours rather than the more conventional two hours due to an excess of interesting things. When we did finish, we were too foot weary to do anything that required a lot of walking so we decided to take one of the many carriage tours of the town. Although it covered some of the same area that we had walked earlier, it also covered some that we had missed and it included narrative about what we were seeing. For example, we discovered that most of these colonial homes that we were admiring were getting multi-million dollar figures when they were sold. It is obviously not a part of town we could afford to live in.

On Monday morning (3/27) we took a boat ride out to Fort Sumter National Monument and did the tour there. (Aside – my spell checker doesn’t like “Sumter.” It suggests that I really mean “Fort Smuttier.”) That was very enjoyable, with my only complaint being that the tour only allowed one hour at the fort. We probably saw everything that we wanted to, but the pressure to hurry from one thing to the next was uncomfortable.

In addition to describing the shelling of the fort from Fort Moultier and Fort Wagner on April 12, 1861, there are also many descriptions of the siege of the fort by the Union Troops in 1863 and 1864 when the Confederates held it. There are even some of the Union Shells still embedded in the walls of the fort.

Another aside. I have commented before about my mixed feelings regarding the pride that a lot of the southerners seem to have in their role in the Civil War. After we had been to Bayou Teche, I picked up a James Lee Burke book, In the Electric Mist with Confederate Dead. Burke is a detective writer whom I enjoy and whose detective is David Robicheaux, a Cajun who lives in New Iberia. Near the end of this book, the ghost of a confederate general says, “Look at what I have invested my life in. Oh, we were always honorable – Robert Lee, Jackson, Albert Sidney Johnston, A. P. Hill – but we served venal men and a vile enterprise. How many lives would have been spared had we not lent ourselves to the defense of a repellent cause like slavery?” This seems to sum up some of the issues that I have with what seems to be the pride of the role that the confederates played in the Civil War. Some of this is seen in the displays at Fort Sumter, as well as nearly every place that civil war issues arise.

When we left Charleston, our next goal had been Savannah. While we were at Charleston, however, we met the nicest group camping next to us - Henry, his wife Ruby, and her sisters, Mary, Betty, Opal from various areas in North Carolina. Both Saturday and Sunday evenings we had nice visits with them. During one such talk we indicated that we wanted to see at least one of the South Carolina Islands. Henry pointed us to Hunting Island (just north of Hilton Head) and the state park that is there. On the first day out of Charleston we made it a full 100 miles to Hunting Island State Park. From the park, we walked on the beach next to the Atlantic Ocean. Having left the Pacific in southern California, we have now gone “from sea to shining sea.”

All day Monday the weather was shaky at best. Shortly after we got up a shower came across us, but it didn’t last long. During the day it was mostly threatening with a glimpse of the sun now and then. Once we got settled into the camp, however, the front must have moved through. For an hour or so it rained pretty hard, and then there was thunder and lightning. None of it was very close, but this was the first taste of a thunderstorm that we have encountered other than just a stray bolt of lightening and clap of thunder. It was kind of nice to see the lightening over the Atlantic Ocean.

On Tuesday (3/28) we woke up to a beautiful day. The sky had all cleared and we were back to the sunny weather with a light breeze. After fixing some breakfast, we went for a short walk on the beach. Then we packed up to go see the Hilton Head Lighthouse.

If there is anything that makes Hunting Island look good, it is Hilton Head. I knew it would be crass and commercial, but I was not ready for what met us. We stopped at the visitors center to make sure we knew where the lighthouse was. (There I got a picture of a bird that lives in the center.) When we started out to the lighthouse, the first thing we discovered was that the road I wanted to take was a toll road. We could kind of see our way through that. But when we got to a gate that wanted to charge us $5 just to go to the village area around the lighthouse that was too much. We just turned around and went back, just out of principle. If anyone is thinking about going to Hilton Head Island, my advice is that you don’t. After returning to the visitor’s center so we could use their parking lot for a picnic area, we headed off to Savannah, Georgia.