Soaking up South Carolina

We woke up early to catch our 9:30 ferry ride to Fort Sumter. That is the one site that the kids added to the trip. It was Alastair that suggested that we visit Fort Sumter because he had learned that it was the location of the first shot of the Civil War. Upon seeing the fort, I think he was a little disappointed to learn that there is not much left of the Civil War fort due to the fact that it was shelled to rubble. There is about one story left of what had been a 55 foot high outer wall. We listened to the park ranger describe the history of the fort and the sieges which took place there and milled about the grounds for an hour or so before our ferry took us back to Charleston.

We had a quick lunch at a local bar and grill and had about the worst waitress one could imagine. It was not busy and she seemed much more interested in flirting with a regular at the bar than in waiting on the McLains on the Road crew. We made it through lunch, annoyed but satisfied and visited the Old Slave Mart Museum, which had once been used as a sales room for the interstate slave trade. We learned that in the 70 years between the drafting of the U.S. Constitution and the Civil War, more than 1,000,000 American-born slaves were sold away from plantations in the upper South to work in the lower South. In Charleston, the customarily sold on the north side of the Old Exchange Building until a city ordinance in 1856 prohibited the sale of slaves in public. As a result, the Old Slave Mart was opened along with other sales rooms, yards, or marts. We have spent so much time learning about the civil war we felt it necessary to learn more about the atrocities of slavery and its role as a causative factor of the Civil War.

After the Old Slave Mart, we walked over to tour the Old Exchange Building & Provost Dungeon. We learned a little about the history of the building, its various uses over time and the famous people who had hallowed its halls, but we were mostly there to see the dungeon. It was not as scary as the kids hoped and we didn't hang around too long. We made it back to the RV as it started to rain and we settled in for the storm. The kids watched a movie, Jll and I did some laundry, and everyone is turning in early. We have a long drive to Orlando tomorrow and the kids want to get an early start.

- Dave