A busy day in Charleston - Day Sixteen - January 31, 2017

Oh my gosh what a busy day today was. We started off early with breakfast at the hotel and then

America's First Museum

directly to the Charleston Museum, Americas First Museum. The displays here were wide and varied from the wildlife to Civil War and Charleston history to ancient

Greeted with a cannon!

Egyptian artifacts, and lots of skeletons of lots of things.  We were here for a bit over an hour exploring all that we could in our allotted time and could have spent the rest of the day here just looking and reading. They also had a super collection of model ships, another of my passions. The civil war is a big part of

Confederate hat

this museum and they tell the stories well. From here we drove down to the seaport and the Nation Park headquarters for Fort Sumter, where the very first shots were fired in the civil war.

Our ticket to the fort

We got our tickets - with a senior discount, as expected - and soon were aboard the boat that took us out the the island fort. For those who may not know Fort Sumpter was a Federal fort that protected Charleston Harbor for attack, but when South Carolina seceded from the Union those federal troops became the enemy. After a two day siege the fort was surrendered to the Confederacy, April 14th, 1861. A small portion of the original fort remains today and

Holding the flag

is preserved by the National Park Service. Carol and I, along with others participated in raising the flag over the fort today, and as

Helping hands

hokey as that sounds, it seemed an honor to be a part of that, like a tiny tiny bit of a connection with the past and our heritage. The wind was really whipping today and the flag snapped and popped as it was drawn to the top of the flagstaff, and was a beautiful sight flying there above that old fort where the war between the states began. We spent quite some time exploring the fort which has

Parrott Gun 

many of the original cannon and some later cannon set in

Musket firing

emplacements. We also watched a demonstration of loading and firing a civil war era musket. The guy demonstrating was able to load and fire three times in one minute. Amazing! The time flew by and soon we were back on the boat heading back to the Charleston waterfront and finding more places to explore. We parked down by the City Market, a popular shopping spot for tourists and we were no different, we shopped too. There were several folks there weaving

Busy hands

'Sweetgrass Baskets' which are iconic in the city of Charleston. I

Hand crafted

would have loved to purchase one of the larger baskets but they all seemed out of my price range. We did, however, find a couple that fit nicely in our budget. We also had a good chat about the craft with several of the folks making the baskets and how they gather the materials make their original designs. The lady we bought our baskets from has been doing this for over 30 years and she didn't look to be much older than 35. . . From the market we continued our exploration of the history of Charleston and found

Nana in the Powder room

our way to the old Powder Magazine, where gunpowder was stored. Although this is a tiny place it put things into perspective as gunpowder was an essential for all just a hundred or so years ago. This small building held many tons of powder and was set apart from the city -- for safety, as you can understand. From here we went to the Old Slave Market. This was an eye

Entrance to the slave market

opening experience. Slaver was the main reason that Charleston was one or the richest cities in America. The history of the slave trade was told openly and with dignity and still leaves such a nasty scar on our past. This was one of the more interesting places we visited, and again as we were trying to fit a lot into the day, time was shorter than we would have liked. Another ten minutes of walking brought us to the Exchange which is another very historic place where merchandise from around the world passed through and

The Exchange

most political and civic activity took place. Beneath the exchange is the dungeon and we had a guided tour here. I am constantly amazed at how little I know of certain parts of out history.

Telling stories in the dungeon

Listening to this lady tell us about the human condition of the time, and the hunting of pirates and tea taxes and 300 ships a week in the harbor.. the picture painted is of a bustling metropolis much greater than we know today. By the time we walked back up and out of the dungeon, the day was drawing to a close and we both realized how hungry we were so we went off in search of  supper.

At days end. . .

We just had a beer at the first pub we stopped at, but further down the road we found a proper pub grub sort of place and each had a

Lonely Subaru

sandwich, and fries of course. It was well after dark by the time we made our way back to our car, which was almost the last one in the lot. I took over 300 photos today and got a lot of very good shots but there just is not enough room on the blog for all of them, but here are a few more anyway.

On a shelf in a downtown liquor store

A place to tie your horse

Typical downtown Charleston

Tour boat to Fort Sumter

AN ADDENDUM

Second thoughts on Raising the Flag

I did quite a lot of thinking about what I had written about the raising of the flag at Fort Sumter while in bed last night. I want to add a few things here. The history of the fort and it significance were told to us in vivid detail by the park ranger who brought the flag out to the fort that day. I wish I knew his name so I could

Park Ranger

thank him properly for providing the opportunity for so many visitors to participate in this ceremony. By providing the history and putting things into context he tied us all together and allowed us this moment to

Very serious young man

reflect on our common goals and our dreams and what it means to be a part of this continuing history. As he unfolded the flag and it fell into our hands to keep it safe, the responsibility of keeping our country safe came to mind as well. No matter your political views, your race or your religion a moment like this is binding, and I believe we all took it as an honor to be a small part of this. We held on tightly as the wind was trying to rip this flag from our hand like so many forces are trying to rip our country apart. But we held on. and

Raising

as the flag was raised we could see that that flag will always fly high and be the symbol of our nation.

Our flag, our country