Fort Moultrie and Charleston- Sunday, June 28, 2026

      Today is the annual holiday here called Carolina Day.  Much like "Evacuation Day" in South Boston, it is a day celebrated every year to remember a Revolutionary War victory.  That event happened 250 years ago today, and it's the reason why we came this far south.

     The British decided to try to take the rich city of Charleston, South Carolina, and they sent a naval force with infantry to try to take the city.  The Americans had prepared defenses around the city, including a fort on Sullivan's Island built of palmetto logs and sand.  When the bombardment from the British navy finally began, the soft palmetto logs absorbed much of the impact of the cannon balls.  The British forces vastly outgunned the Patriots in the fort, and the Patriots were running low of gunpowder.  The Americans fired slowly and deliberately, though, and caused great harm to the British ships.  Eventually, the British gave up and sailed away.  The American victory here came about a week before independence was declared in Philadelphia, and it is the reason that the palmetto tree is pictured on South Carolina's flag today.

      After we had breakfast at the hotel, we made our way towards Fort Moultrie, the site of the battle and the ceremonies this morning.  In front of the fort sits a portion of Sullivan's Island Beach, an Julie figured that would be a great place to take Abby while Scott went to see the ceremony.  Julie had planned ahead and put a swimsuit under Abby's dress to make it easy to change.  Abby played in a tidal pool with two friends that she made, and together they were looking for crabs.  They showed Abby how to use a boogie board, and she had a great time playing with that.   They had a great time, but they were in the direct sun and the temperatures were starting to approach 100°.   Julie put sunscreen on Abby with roll-on and it left blotches of minor sunburns on her.

     Scott dropped the girls off at the beach and headed to the Visitors Center at Fort Moultrie.  The fort is currently named "Moultrie" after the commander who was there 250 years ago.  At the time of the Revolutionary War battle, it was known as Fort Sullivan.  Scott went to the theater and watched the new movie that they had about the battle, then made his way to the large tent that had been set up behind the fort.   Hosted by the National Park Service, many of the dignitaries there were associated with the Department of the Interior.  South Carolina State Historic Preservation Officer, Dr. Eric Emerson, gave a brief overview of the battle to complement what Scott had seen in the movie in the Visitors Center.  The highest ranking person there might have been U.S. Congresswoman, Nancy Mace, a Republican, though His Majesty's Consul General Rachel Galloway represented the United Kingdom.  There was a flyover of big cargo planes from the Joint Base Charleston (We later found out that they were dual C-17 Globemaster IIIs.   At other times in the day, we saw the Royal Air Force Red Arrows flying their jets in formation too.)  The ceremony and speeches lasted for about an hour.

     Scott had found a seat near the back, but at the edge of the tent.  At about 11:00, a very weary looking Julie and Abby tapped him on the shoulder to see if he was ready to go.  There were a few more things that Scott hadn't seen, though.  He took them back to the Visitors Center and let them sit in the dark air-conditioned theater to watch the movie several times through.  Meanwhile, he bought some pins, a book, and an America 250 baseball hat to help cover up with.  After an alert from the rangers, he went up to the observation deck on the roof of the Visitors Center just in time to see a "British sailing ship" fire two cannon shots at the fort, a fitting site for the day.   Scott had not yet seen the inside of the fort itself, so he went quickly through it.  Much of Fort Moultrie today is representing eras stretching from before the Civil War to World War II.  The temperature was in the high 90s and he didn't mind going quickly through the fort in order to catch up with Julie and Abby, who by then were waiting at the car.  Abby was watching a praying mantis that had landed on her window.  

      It was getting close to noon and we needed lunch and air conditioning, so we drove away from the fort to get away from the crowds there.  We found a place called the Come Back Shack, which seems to be a Carolina burger place.  It was a great choice.  Julie got the Come Back sliders that had cucumbers on them  Scott got the "Porky Burger" which had bacon and barbecue on it.  We all had their excellent fries.  Abby got the chocolate shake she had been wanting.  We loved the food and thought it was a great choice for a lunch break.

      The heat had taken a lot out of Abby, and she was asleep almost before we started driving.  We crossed over the Cooper River into Charleston on the impressive looking 2.5 mile long Arthur Ravenel Jr. Bridge, but Abby missed the sights from it.  We found our way to the parking ramp for the city visitors center, and Scott went in while Julie let Abby sleep.  

     Scott returned with tickets for the Old Town Trolley tour of the city.  We had taken a tour from this company back in February in St. Augustine, so we were looking forward to seeing Charleston the same way.  We thought the tour guide was good, but the vehicle was lacking.  Rather than an open air "trolley" like they used in St. Augustine, it was a small enclosed bus.   The bus didn't offer the same views that the trolley did, and it was difficult to see some things.  Julie thought he drove a little fast for a sight-seeing tour, and wasn't able to get as many pictures as she did before because we were already past things before she was ready.   The air conditioning could have been better,  Also, this tour wasn't a hop-on/hop-off tour like the ones in other cities because apparently the city of Charleston doesn't allow it, but we were ok with that.

     The tour took us through several Charleston neighborhoods, including some of the most ritzy.  We heard a number of stories and bad jokes.  We saw typical "Charleston single" architecture, where the homes are only built one-room wide.  Charleston doesn't have a skyline full of skyscrapers because city ordinances keep buildings shorter than the highest church steeples.  There was an opportunity for people to get off at Hampton Park (named for Confederate General Wade Hampton), but nobody wanted to.  There is a marker there for the beginning of Memorial Day.  Scott has lost count of the number of towns that claim to be the place where Memorial Day began, including Petersburg, VA, and Waterloo, NY.   We went through the campus of the Citadel, the military school that was founded to have an army to put down possible slave uprisings, and which continues today like VMI.  At one point we drove by "Hootie's" house-- Darius Rucker formerly of Hootie and the Blowfish.  We went through neighborhoods "South of Broad". where houses go for $3 million and up,  We stopped at the "Battery" where Scott and many others took the opportunity to look around.  This is the pretty point at the tip of Charleston, with a view across to Fort Sumter, over three miles away.  There was a pretty good breeze blowing here, which made the outside temperatures more bearable.  We passed the City Market area, which looked like it would be fun to look around in on a cooler day.  Shortly after that we returned to the Visitors Center.  It was a pretty good introduction to the city overall.

     After the tour, there were two spots that Scott still wanted to see.  The first was George Hazard's family home from the North and South series.  George and his family were the Northerners in the title and their home was supposed to be in Lehigh Station, Pennsylvania.  In fact, the home used in the show was here in Charleston, and only a short distance away from where we were on the bus tour.  Instead of "Bellvidere," which it was called on the show, a sign in front of the home says it is known as the Williams Mansion, and is Charleston's largest private residence.  (We have also seen that it is sometimes called the Calhoun Mansion.)  The scene that Scott knows best, where Orry meets George's family and his abolitionist sister, Virgilia, took place in the front of the house where we were, but there have been some big changes to the spot.  The drive through the gate has changed, and there have been some large hedges added, along with a large statue of Hermes or Mercury that wasn't there in the show.  Not to far away, we also went to the home that was used as the home of Madeline Fabray, Orry's love interest, but it wasn't as recognizable and didn't stand out the way that Orry's home and George's home did.   Scott spent sometime in the park at the Battery where the bus had stopped earlier.  He was able to get some nice better pictures of the impressive monuments to William Moultrie and the 2nd South Carolina who were both at the Battle of Sullivan's Island, 250 years ago.  He looked for a monument to the black Union soldiers of the 54th Massachusetts that was on our bus tour map, but he couldn't find it.  After that, we left Charleston and went back across the long scenic bridge, but Abby was awake this time to see the huge cargo ships and other things below us.

     When we arrived back at the hotel, Abby could barely be contained.  She was rested and ready for the pool!   We ordered a pizza, and she went in with Mom while Dad waited for the food to arrive.  The  pizza was from a local place called Marcos.  It broke the tradition of eating lousy "beach pizza" because it was actually pretty good.   After eating by the pool, Scott joined the other two in the water.  The water was very warm, but still felt good after the heat today.  Abby was practicing swimming with out her vest on and was very excited to demonstrate how she could put her face in the water now.  We had the pool to ourselves most of the time and Abby loved jumping on top of Dad whenever he tried to relax in the water by floating on his back.

 

 

To Charleston and Boone Hall Plantation- Saturday, June 27, 2026

    We stopped driving earlier than we had hoped last night, so instead of 4 hours remaining to drive, we had more than 5 still to go this morning.  We also knew that 5 driving hours aren't the same as 5 clock hours and it would take us more than that to get to Charleston today.   We had breakfast at our hotel and were on the road by about 8:00.    We stopped at the very nice welcome centers for both North Carolina and South Carolina for bathroom breaks, but enjoyed the stops.  Abby had her picture taken at a number of spots in the North Carolina one, and Scott grabbed a handful of brochures and literature at the South Carolina one.

     Lunch was a bit of a challenge, unfortunately.  In Orangeburg, SC, we tried to stop at a Chick-fil-A mainly because we expected that it would have a play area where Abby could burn some energy.  The lines and cars there were ridiculous, though.  After creeping through the traffic in the parking lot and not being able to find a spot to park, we decided it was not a good choice for lunch.  We made our way to a nearby Wendy's and went in, but they had a long line waiting at the counter.  We reminded ourselves that we were in the South.  After waiting for awhile and not getting any closer to ordering, we left there too.  We ended up going through the drive-in at McDonald's.  While we were able to get food, it was way harder than it should have been to place our not-to-complicated order.  We ate on the road, which was just as well because we were behind schedule, but Abby was disappointed about not getting a play break or a chocolate shake.  We told her we wouldn't be able to promise any particular food for this trip if things continue to be like these.  

     Eating our lunch in the car, we left Orangeburg around 1:00, and made our way to Charleston.  We arrived at our first stop at about 2:30.  The heat had crept into the low 90s.  We expected that, but it still was hot. 

     Although the theme of this trip is the Revolutionary War, we decided to step into a slightly different era for today.  Scott and Julie have both been fans of the miniseries North & South ever since they watched it back in the 1980s.  Its Civil War setting not only helped inspire the theme of their wedding, but they entered the reception to the strains of Bill Conti's opening theme from the show.  (That soundtrack was actually the first CD that Scott ever owned, since he had to buy it for the DJ.)  Scott has shown clips from this show probably every year that he has taught about the coming of the Civil War.  When they realized how close they were going to be to some of the locations that were used, Scott made sure they got on our itinerary.  

      Plantations usually aren't our thing (They're too "Lost Cause" and Confederate for our tastes), but we made an exception for this one.  Boone Hall Plantation used as the exterior of Orry Main's "Mount Royal" plantation.  (Orry, of course, was played by Patrick Swayze.)  We arrived there, paid admission, and drove down through the long line of oak trees known as the Avenue of the Oaks.  It was the scene of several dramatic horse rides in the series.  The 88 trees are over 200 years old and maybe even 300 years old.  Their branches spread all they way across the path, forming a canopy that is draped with Spanish moss.   The drive goes on for 3/4 of a mile under their limbs.   To the left are brick cabins that were slave quarters for at least some of the slaves who were here, and at the end of the drive is the main house.

     In some ways, the main house at Boone Hall Plantation is something like Mad King Ludwig's Neuschwanstein Castle in Germany.  Both are more modern than they seem and were built to resemble what an idealized, overly romanticized past was supposed to look like.  This place was an actual plantation since the 1600s.  Five generations of Boones raised cotton and indigo here, and several more generations of Horlbecks added to the profits by having an industry of making bricks here.  The main house, though, was built in 1936 and was meant to represent those "gone with the wind" myths of the plantation era.  It's no wonder that Hollywood loved the mansion and made its exterior the Main's home.   (For that matter, it's also still a popular site for weddings, including one that they were setting up for today, in spite of the horrors that the enslaved people had to go through in the historical plantation,)  In actuality, the earlier homes on this site were much more modest because they were mainly meant for the overseers who were hired to manage the plantations.  The actual plantation owners were living in fashionable mansions in Charleston. 

     We arrived in time to take the 3:00 tour of the interior of the house.  It is still privately owned, and we only got to see three of rooms on the first floor which were the public facing rooms-- a party room lined with books and a grand piano, the dining room, and a covered breezeway called the "Loggia."  There were some interesting antiques in the house, but seeing the inside, it's not surprising that North & South producers decided to use a different plantation in Mississippi for the interiors of "Mount Royal."

     After the house tour, we took a leisurely tour on a large canopy-covered, tractor-pulled tram around the 738 acre grounds.  We saw demonstration crops of indigo and cotton, as well as modern crops that they grow such as peaches, pecans, and grapes.  The highlight of the tour was probably the alligator whose eyes were poking out of a freshwater pond and a nearby tree full of white egrets and some of their chicks.  The wind was blowing a bit and the breeze in the open-air ride made the 90 degree heat more bearable.  Abby proved herself to be a girl like her sisters before her because she was fast asleep by the end of the tour.

    We spent sometime in the small museum and gift shop in the cotton gin house.  Julie bought a Christmas ornament of the house.   Abby's face was a little red by now, so we went to the "Butterfly Cafe" there for some ice cream.  Scott noticed it was getting close to 5:00, and there was one more spot that he wanted to see.  One of the scenes of George and Orry that he shows every year was filmed at the building called the Cotton Dock.  Not only were the grounds closing, but there was a wedding scheduled to begin and the reception was going to be there.  We found a way for him to go to the river side of the building where he got some pictures and video, but he also learned that the building had been rebuilt after being damaged by Hurricane Hugo in 1989, so there were some differences from the one in the scene.  The railing that they leaned against, for example was replaced with benches for people to sit on.  The grounds were closing and the wedding guests were arriving, and we had to move on.  We regretted the time we lost during our travels to get here, because we would have liked another hour to look around.  The brick slave cabins are much older than the big house, and are supposed to have some interesting exhibits inside them.  We would have liked more time to explore them.   The Charles Pinckney National Historic Site was right across the road and we didn't touch that at all, in spite of the fact that he was an important contributor to the US Constitution.

     Our hotel was only three miles away.  Scott had hoped to visit the location of George Hazard's family home today, but we decided that would wait until another day.  Our hotel is a Comfort Inn & Suites, but the exterior of it doesn't look like one.  It is located in a cute complex of coastal colored buildings.  The King Street Grill is right next door, and since their patio seating area also had a small playground, we quickly decided to eat there.  Abby was very wound up by this point and needed a chance to go crazy.  She was thrilled to see that our first floor hotel room is right across from the pool.  The pool itself was very busy.  Julie said that the water was as warm as bathwater and Abby spent a while in it.  She even tried floating without her vest for a little bit.