An Idahoan in the Carolinas Roadtrip Step-by-step

Harms88

Sergeant
Joined
Oct 13, 2019
Location
North of the Wall & South of the Canucks
In 24 hours, I will landing in Charleston International Airport.

My plan is to take pictures and post the different stuff I'm up to. One pic for non-Civil War sites, multiple for Civil War ones. Not even all place related, such as the first meal I'll eat in the Deep South.

A fun way to post and maybe let people have a good laugh at idiotic decisions I'll make along the way!
 
I haven’t been down that way in several years. But I like standing on the deck of the Yorktown and seeing all the cargo ships traveling through the harbor.


At first I thought it was the original Yorktown but then I remembered that she sank at Midway so she couldn't be the original. Imagine my disappointment. lol

A quick look shows that I'll probably be rained on while in Charleston. I hope it doesn't, at least not through the whole trip, but they are saying that a new tropical storm is forming up, so hopefully I won't get hit by it, in either Charleston or Wilmington.
 
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Salt Lake Airport, with El Capiatin letting us know status of the plane.

Haven't been to this airport since I was coming home from my mission to Denver.
 
Welcome to the South and enjoy your trip! Shrimp and Grits is a real must along with all the best of Low Country seafood! The USS Laffey is a real "warship" as she survived horrific air attacks and came through with her flag flying. She is a true monument to the sailors of the "Tin Can Navy" who served during WW II
Fort Sumter and and the CSS Hunley are great sites to visit.
Regards
David
 
So I had a complete blond moment and after getting the car (which took about twenty minutes) it took me another 40 minutes to actually figure out how to operate it! It's a minicoop which I had never driven before and I thought perhaps it was a stick. It took the rental car guy coming out to show me how to operate it.

It also rained, which was a nice reprieve from the humidity. Although I can actually breath here and haven't coughed once since getting here!

What this did however was put the kabosh on visiting either the Magnolia or McLeod Plantations. So, I had to make appropriate changes. My battery was always threatening to die (and did when I eventually decided to head to the hotel). Pics though are upcoming of what I decided to do instead.

I took them on my Lumix camera so I'll need to upload them, preferably to an online photo sharing website to prevent duplications.
 
The Humidity is a beast here! When it rained at the airport, it didn't cool it down, but made it super thick. Then, once it stopped raining, it just got hot and wet!

With the Plantations out of the picture, I went ahead and decided to visit Fort Moultrie. I didn't know if the ground would still be accessible near 5, but lo and behold, it appears that the public areas are open until night falls!

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The inside of the fort and the visitor's center is currently closed to the public for the dreaded C-Virus, and at first I originally wasn't sure I really wanted to go to a place I couldn't go inside. However, I found I simply really enjoyed being there.

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I was afraid that traffic would be really bad getting there, but I actually found Charleston traffic, even on a Friday, to be pretty congenial all things considered.

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Your's truly! I had my tripod for my camera in my rental car, but I didn't feel like breaking open my luggage bag to grab it. There was a small block with two initials carved in and I think this came out really splendidly!

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I had never seen magnolias before, but honestly, these are some of the coolest trees I've ever seen!

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Fort Moultrie National Park has an incredibly rich flora enviroment.

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For all it's beauty, we can never forget this place has a long and rich history of violent defense for both the United and Confederate States.

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My second and last stop for the day took me to Fort Johnson, where the first shot of the Civil War was fired. Only one building and a monument still stand in the original spot. I had to get inventive to actual explore it......and that's all I'll say. :whistling:

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The building was part of the fort's original construction as part of the Charleston defenses raised during the Revolutionary War.

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I was morbidly curious to see Confederate statues that had been defaced. Not that I think it's a good idea to do so, but the morbid side of me was interested. What is ironic is that the words come much clearer on the camera then they do in real life. The other side was also vandalized and I took a picture, but due to the vulgarity sprayed on it (which is far more vivid than this one is), I have decided to refrain from posting it.

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What's even more absurd is that this is actually very remote. There is only one road that leads to it, and it's in middle of a pretty heavy business/science center park. Yet one has to really go out of their way to find it. More specifically, they have to know the exact spot and what they are looking for.

So someone literally drove out into the middle of basically nowhere and desecrated it. That shows a level of dedication that is both admirable and chilling to see.
 
My first of seven (I think) stops today was to Liberty Square which has the visitor center for Fort Sumter.

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This houses the Visitor's Center, which also connects to the dock for the ferry out to Fort Sumter. I will leave pictures for that to my next post.

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I highly appreciated that the original flag that flew over the Fort is still there.

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The exhibit there is done well, really condensing the history of the lead-up to war.

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I think this is one of the better Visitor's Centers I have visited. It was fun and gets the info to you without feeling like you've been overwhelmed with the info being given.

I could have even purchased a copy of the Confederate Constitution for $10! But my budget for gas, food, and souveniers this trip is $100 a day, so it has a way of making you make conscious choices on what you spend that money on!

Next stop, Fort Sumter!
 
The joke among Southerners is the phrase: It's not the heat it's the humidity. Welcome to Summer in the South and enjoy your trip.

To be honest, I was expecting a lot more tension, a lot more traffic and a lot more people than what I have run into in Charleston. Driving at times doesn't feel worse than the busier times in my home city, wore a Confederate shirt all day and got zero grief about it, and as soon as I say I'm from Idaho, people seem to be genuinely excited to learn it and what I'm doing.
 
To be honest, I was expecting a lot more tension, a lot more traffic and a lot more people than what I have run into in Charleston. Driving at times doesn't feel worse than the busier times in my home city, wore a Confederate shirt all day and got zero grief about it, and as soon as I say I'm from Idaho, people seem to be genuinely excited to learn it and what I'm doing.
Charleston is tourist driven (something that places like Richmond don't seem to understand), plus it and Savannah are perhaps two of the most gracious cities in the country.
 
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