The South May Decide to Secede All Over Again

A child is a curly dimpled lunatic. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

It turns out that Logan and Liam are remarkably good travelers. What they are not, however, is remarkably good visitors. They're not even passing average. If they were on the Visitor team, they'd be the waterboys, or maybe the ones the coach sends to pick up another box of Skoal. No offense to them, but if on the one hand you have Logan and Liam visiting Charleston, and on the other hand Charleston is overrun by a large pack of howler monkeys, it would be fairly hard to tell the difference.

After getting into town last night after about 10 hours on the road, finding the hotel, checking in, and coaxing the boys into displaying at least a semblance of humanity, we headed out to dinner. Our hotel is thankfully right downtown, with a plethora of restaurants, suprisingly good restaurants, right nearby. We found a little bar and grill called T-Bonz that had cheap eats for the boys, a good burger and a tasty raspberry wheat for me, and the Bama-Georgia game in HD right where I could easily watch. It was a great decompression, even if Liam's dinner did amount to what was essentially a $4.95 french fry, since that's all he ate of it.

This morning we had breakfast at a little place right next door that Jill had heard about called Poogan's Porch. Pretty good breakfast, nice service and a great atmosphere. However, in one of those picture-worth-a-thousand-words moments, this photo really captures the tone that permeated most of the day:




Poogan was apparently a dog that sat on a porch. Or perhaps was left a porch in some old lady's will, so that the expression "Poogan's Porch" expresses a literal ownership of said porch. I don't know. The statue wasn't talking.



After breakfast we headed out to Fort Sumter, which (if you're not a Citadel grad) was the site of the first shots of the Civil War. When South Carolina seceded from the Union (the first state to do so), they also claimed ownership of all Federally-constructed fortifications in Charleston Bay, including Fort Sumter. The Union soldiers manning the fort decided not to surrender immediately, and the other 5 or 6 forts ringing the Bay opened fire on Sumter in the early morning hours of April 12, 1861. Interestingly, Fort Sumter is built on imported granite from several Union states, and at the time was an island. It's still pretty isolated, and you can only get there via boat. So we took a boat.



Liam spent most of the boat ride asking when we could go home. We've been telling him we can go home at the end of our vacation, which is in 7 (now 6) days, so he's been asking when 7 days will be over. He eventually calmed down and sort of enjoyed the ride.

The fort's actually pretty cool, although smaller than you'd think. There was a brief but informative (and entertaining) talk, then we got about half an hour to walk around. Liam got a big kick out of manning the guns and "shooting bad guys".


After the fort we grabbed a quick bite of lunch and headed to Folly Beach. This was the first time the boys had been to an actual at-the-ocean beach, and they both had a grand old time. Within the first 90 seconds on the sand Liam found a hermit crab.
Logan made a friend with another boy there visiting and increasingly braved the surf, which was fairly calm but to him was probably monstrous.

The boys were hacing so much fun that Jill and I even got to relax a little and have some fun. When we left, Logan said "Hey, can we come back to the beach again? That was actually sort of fun."

Okay, so it hasn't been all bad. We're having a pretty good time, taking it easy and not trying to cram in too much. We had an awesome dinner tonight at a place called Justine's Kitchen, a sort of down-home soul food kind of place. We forgot the camera, so I can only describe it. There's no waiting list, you just wait outside until there's a table free and they invite you in. We had pot roast, pecan-fried chicken, mashed potatoes, green bean casserole, the boys had peanut butter - banana sandwiches and we had a whole mess of desserts - banana pudding, berry cobbler and chocolate Coca-Cola cake. I'm still stuffed.

So next up will be more beach, maybe a trip out to a plantation and probably the aquarium before we head out west for some nature immerson. Assuming we haven't shipped the boys to Zimbabwe and bolted for the Ligurian coast. Relax, we'd pack them some snacks.