Yesterday, Renee and I went to Patriots Point. This is one of the world's largest military maritime museums. We again managed to arrive early enough to be the first ones in line to buy tickets. Got onto the 10:45 Fort Sumter tour, which gave us plenty of time to tour the USS Yorktown and USS Laffey. We were glad to be there in the morning as it was already warm in the ships. We toured the living quarters on the Yorktown as well as the flight deck and engine room. The flight deck was a great place to cool off and get some good views of Charleston and the harbor. The Yorktown serves a Navy style lunch in the CPO Galley. We could not get the lunch because of our Fort Sumter tour, but it looked like they were serving meatballs with gravy and some other stuff. Probably delicious. After the Yorktown, we toured the USS Laffey, a destroyer that was part of the D-Day invasion at Normandy. The submarine that is part of Patriots Point is closed for repairs through mid-summer.
We were second in line to get on the boat to Fort Sumter and found great seats right at the back of the boat by the railing. We saw several dolphins on our way out and back from the fort. A park ranger greets you at Fort Sumter and offers a short history talk. The original fort was much taller than the remains and was supposed to hold a garrison of over 600 men. The 85 Union troops who occupied her for the beginning of the Civil War managed to hold off for 4 or 5 days before surrendering. NO casualties were reported, but 2 men died in the 100 gun salute that the Confederate Army allowed after the surrender. So the first two casualties of the Civil War weren't even during a battle. You have 1 hour on the fort after the boat arrives and that is plenty of time to walk around and explore. The entire trip is 2-1/4 hours. I think it's well worth it.
Renee and I wanted to go back to the beach for the hot afternoon so we got lunch, got our swimsuits and headed back to Folly Beach. Well, the traffic for the last few miles was at a crawl and then there were no parking spots that we could find so we just turned around and sat at the pool at the motel instead.
Today, there was no evidence of subtropical storm Beryl, so we put our suits on again and headed out to Folly Beach first thing. It was a great plan as we found a perfect parking spot on the street (free!) that was right by public beach access. When we got to the beach, we could see that Beryl was helping to generate some giant waves and a lot of wind. We plopped our towels down in the sand, sat down and promptly had sand all over. The wind was just whipping that dry sand and it was pretty painful. Finally, we just walked along the water and watched the kids playing close to the edge of the waves and the surfers trying to stand up and the dogs enjoying the beach. We got our clothes, changed and walked out on the pier. Lots of people fishing, but no one caught anything while we were up there. The sign mentioned shark fishing and that would have been neat to see!
After the beach, we headed to Charles Towne Landing. This is a state park that replicates the original village of Charles Towne. It was quite warm so we only walked as far as the Animal Forest. There are shore birds, otters, puma, bear, deer, bobcat, bison and turkeys. The air was cool walking in the Forest, but not so much when you got back out into the sun. We skipped doing anything else for the day and spent the afternoon sitting by the pool. But that's what vacation is for!
No comments:
Post a Comment