Charleston SC

Another city with lots of history, well worthy of a longer stop than we can give it. Leaving Beaufort SC, the route became somewhat less tortuous, but still very low-land marsh dominated.   The run to Charleston was our longest day yet, almost 60 miles, as there was no good stopping alternative along the way.  It was a beautiful clear, calm day, which made the trip much more pleasant. A great improvement from the previous day, when we steered from inside for most of the day due to the much cooler weather.

There really is a lot to see here.  Charleston was established by the British in the early 1600's and became a major center for trade from the Southern states. There are an amazing number of homes and buildings still surviving from the 1700's and 1800's.  The stretch shown here is knows as "Rainbow Row".  It was also the site of the opening shots of the Civil War at Fort Sumter.  SC was one of the states that seceded from the Union, trying to defend its economic sustainability, based on slavery.  As a result, much of what there is to see here is focused on the story of slavery.

We visited the McLeod plantation, on James Island, just south of the city.  This plantation is now an historic site, and the tour contrasts the lives of the owners and slaves with visits to dramatically different living conditions.  The plantation was once over 1700 acres, and grew a very valuable type of cotton known as Sea Island cotton, which was 5 times more valuable than normal cotton. From this acreage, they produced 28 tons of raw cotton, and after ginning, packed 12 tonnes of cotton, which in those days would have sold for about $1000/tonne.

We visited a city house, once owned by a governor of SC  from the Civil war era, who owned over 800 slaves between his city house, summer house, and plantation.  This house is being preserved in its deteriorated state, rather than a restored state, but is a wonderful visit and story.  Pre civil war, there were more slaves in Charleston than there were free people.







Visited the USS Yorktown aircraft carrier at Patriots Point, which required taking a water taxi across the river from the downtown.  Have been aboard lots of retired warships, including the USS Missouri battleship, destroyers and submarines, but never a carrier.  What impressive ships!  The complexity of the design/build, and the scale of these ships that carried 3500 crew and 100 aircraft. And of course, these WWII ships pale by comparison to the size of the modern carriers.  A very comprehensive tour, with great insight into life on a carrier, and stories from this and other ships from WWII.  One of the little stories that really appealed to Judy, was the recipe, and ingredients all laid out in the galley, for 10,000 chocolate chip cookies.


We ended our day with a walk through more of the French quarter, and the old market, and lastly a visit to the Swig and Swine for 50c wings and local craft beer.  We tried dry rub and smoked with special red sauce, and they were excellent. We had to laugh at their logo.

Lots to see here, and certainly worth another stop.

It continues to cool off here, with the temps barely in the low 60's during the day, and below 40 at night.  This is unusually cool for this time of year for here, but the forecast is to see somewhat better, if still variable weather.