Charleston, Too

Just thought I'd do an update while we still had WiFi. On Saturday, we decided to drive into town and do the laundry and run some errands. Since McKenzie had been so good and had not gotten to go anywhere special for a while, we decided to take her with us and after the chores, headed out to the Charleston Tea Plantation. It is America's only Tea Garden and there are hundreds of thousands of tea bushes that stretch as far as your eye can see. We took a tour and learned all about picking, drying and packaging tea. McKenzie especially liked the Peach flavored tea leaves, so naturally we had to buy some to bring back to the fifthwheel. She also loves rocking on the porch in the rockers. On our way back to the trailer, we found a "You pick'em farm" for strawberries and picked several pounds of delicious, sweet berries. It is almost the end of the season and we wanted to make sure we got some before they were gone.

On Sunday we did some chores around the trailer and decided to clip McKenzie's coat as there are quite a few ticks and fleas around this part of the country. Since she was clipped to the skin and would get sunburned easily, she is sporting her new Harley Davidson shirt which is black with a pink bone trimmed in rhinestones with "Harley Davidson" in the middle of the bone. She thinks she looks pretty stylish in her shirt that her Daddy bought for her while we were in Savannah. In the evening we went over to Shirley and George's rig for some grilled hamburgers and fried onion rings. They were delicious!!

Monday we all headed out to Charleston again to visit the Fort Sumter National Monument. You have to take a boat out to the island the fort is on and while on the boat, we passed one of the "tall ships" that had been in port over the weekend. This one has been painted as a "pirate ship" and is being used in a new reality TV series about pirates that is supposed to be aired sometime toward the end of May.

Fort Sumter was the place where the Civil War began. South Carolina had seceded from the Union, yet Union forces still occupied Fort Sumter at the entrance of Charleston Harbor. The South demanded that Fort Sumter be vacated. The North refused. On April 12, 1861, from nearby Fort Johnson, South Carolina troops of the Confederacy fired on the Fort - the start of a two-day bombardment that resulted in the surrender of the fort by Union troops. With the North's withdrawal, the South held the Fort until it was evacuated on February 17, 1865. During that time, the Fort experienced one of the longest sieges in modern warfare - for almost two years, 46,000 shells, estimated at over 7 million pounds of metal, were fired at the Fort. The monument today bears only a slight resemblance to the original appearance. The original fort was over 50 feet tall with five foot thick brick walls but was reduced to rubble by the Civil War.

Tomorrow we will have a "road trip" day (McKenzie's favorite words next to "popcorn"). We are headed to Myrtle Beach and will make a stop first at the Camping World to get a new awning installed. We forgot that you can't leave your awning up and level during a rain - it ends up bending the awning tube. Once that is done, we'll meet up with George and Shirley again and spend a few days camped on the beach. The weather has been great - in the 50's during the night and around 80 during the day. For our Houston friends and family - NO HUMIDITY!!!

Don't know when we will have WiFi again, but as soon as we can, we'll continue to update this site so you can hopefully learn a little history that you didn't already know, and travel with us enjoying the sites of our wonderful country. Until next time, take care and hugs to everyone!