Sweetgrass Baskets and leaving Charleston

I forgot to include part of yesterday ... and actually the day before as well. The KOA campground was a couple of miles out on US 17 from Patriots Point, a stretch of road that includes a lot of basket sellers. The first day at Patriot Point I had gotten a book on "Sweetgrass Baskets and the Gullah Tradition" and on our way back to Wolf had noticed the various sellers along our route, some of the rickety looking structures were empty but many had women and some men creating baskets.That first day I tried to get Geoff to stop the car at one of the stands but I couldn't seem to see one soon enough to get him to slow down and stop at it <sigh>.

Empty sweetgrass basket stands on US17

The book (and many similar ones I am sure) explains that after the Civil War and the freeing of slaves, many of them in the South Carolina Low Country turned to creating sweetgrass baskets to sell, a cultural skill they had brought to this country from their homes in the rice growing regions of Africa. For generations they had used them for various home tasks from winnowing rice to storing various foodstuffs. Now the money they brought helped put food on the table.

At first they were just sold to the tourists who came to the area after the War but in the early 1900's they began to sell them in downtown Charleston and even to ship them off to New York stores to be sold there. To this day the baskets are made with the same rushes and grasses and tools of decades ago.

On our second day, returning from our trip out to Fort Sumter, I finally managed to get Geoff's attention soon enough to get him slowed down and turned into a small dirt drive where a basket seller was located. Sitting in a shady part of the flimsy structure was Mae Hall working away on a basket and surrounded by shelves of baskets in various shapes and sizes.



I finally found one I liked, a small basket with a lid. About seven inches across and four inches high with the lid on. Mae puts her name and location (Mt Pleasant S.C.) on the bottom of every basket she makes. Along with the basket, Mae handed me a brochure about them and her card and said if it ever had anything wrong with it just send it to her and she would fix it. Not sure if either of us would live that long as I am coming up on 75 and she is 79 and the basket is sturdy!

Charleston

Jacksonville

Back to Wednesday morning & our departure ... one of the things I noticed as we headed for York County is that Charleston and Jacksonville are similar. Not only is the land flat but there are numerous rivers, creeks, and waterways, crossed by a multitude of bridges.

Charleston seems to have a bit more swampland closer in but both have considerable container ship traffic and as we headed out of town on I-26 I noticed a lot of container truck traffic.

An accident over on our side around mile marker 203 with an upside down vehicle in the grass, left a tire lying on the white line between two lanes. Other than that traffic and weather were good to us and in spite of a stop at a Flying J for fuel and a WalMart stop for miscellaneous stuff we arrived at Crown Cove RV Park just south of the South Carolina/North Carolina line in mid afternoon.

This park is a little out of the way, farther from main roads than most but their email confirming the reservation had clearly given directions and warned us not to trust our GPS to get there. The main problem seems to be that the GPS tries to take you on little roads through housing developments that are marked private. The park itself is on the side of a hill and all in all not quite as nice as the KOA in Charleston had been.

The Late Great Unpleasantness Begins ...

... at Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor where the first shots of the Civil War were fired 12th April 1861 by Confederate guns around the harbor. Major Anderson surrendered it the next day. The Fort stands on what was originally just a sand bar in the middle of the entrance to Charleston Harbor. Tons of granite were transported from New England to build the sand bar up and build the Fort.

Fort Sumter today

The fort was ruined during the war and for decades was used as an unmanned lighthouse station. In 1897 reconstruction began and a massive concrete blockhouse, Battery Huger, was built in 1898 within the original walls.It was deactivated in 1947 and the fort was turned over to the National Park Service as Fort Sumter National Monument in 1948. The Wikipedia article on Fort Sumter has a number of excellent photographs of the original interior.

 

Ferry similar to the one we took the other direction

Access to Fort Sumter is only by water on a ferry from one of two locations, Liberty Square near downtown Charleston and Patriot Point where it shares wharf facilities with the USS Yorktown. The ferry has handicap access so we took it from Patriot Point.

Early on in the ferry trip there is a great view of the Ravenel Bridge, completed in July of 2005 after four years of construction. This bridge replaced others crossing the Cooper River connecting downtown Charleston with the suburb of Mount Pleasant.

Fort Sumter itself is interesting although at present the museum portion is not accessible unless you walk up two flights of stairs to the top of Battery Huger where both the museum and the store are located. Geoffrey climbed up but I stayed on the ground and investigated the cannons and read the many excellent explanatory plaques around the inside of the fort. The original Civil War era fort was demolished by the bombardment at the beginning of that war but a few bits remain.


While he was up all those stairs Geoffrey went in the store where he got me a Fort Sumter ball cap for my collection and a very nice tote bag with Civil War all over it. The Ships Store back at Patriot Point had also had some excellent books on Fort Sumter of which I had gotten one as well as a nice magnet for my file cabinet but they didn't have the tote bag which I will treasure.

On our return to Patriot Point we went to the nearby Charleston Harbor Fish House which we had noticed signs for the day before. The place is nice and our waiter, Ruel, was very helpful but I think I like yesterday's restaurant a lot better, both the food and the view.

The menu bragged of being the "Best Place to View the Ravenel Bridge" but we had a nice view of the Yorktown instead although the bridge is off in the distance sort of behind the ship. The window is heavy duty and blocked a lot of the view with a major piece of the frame cutting right across at eye level.

We headed back for the RV park and decided to return the rental that afternoon instead of delaying an early departure. After a light dinner we had an early bedtime, something of a habit I think on our trips. At least this night I managed not to fall out of bed again!

Patriots Point

After the digression for the delivery of the rented car from Enterprise, a Dodge Grand Caravan which easily held the Go-Go mobility scooter, we headed for Patriots Point, home of the USS Yorktown aircraft carrier and other ships comprising a naval and maritime museum.

Most levels of the Yorktown,known as the Fighting Lady, were accessible with the mobility scooter including the Hanger Bay, Flight Deck and Quarters. On the Quarters level, models of life size figures and food show the chow line and kitchens and there is an engine room experience with interactive kiosks.

An Avenger with wings folded up

In the Hanger Bay are various planes including a some like the Avenger similar to those my father would have worked on repairing at Iwo Jima and other islands in the South Pacific during World War II, probably what he was doing while I was being born halfway around the world in Connecticut in December of 1944.

The Flight Deck also has several planes, a helicopter, and a great view of Charleston harbor. On the side of the island tower on the flight deck are plaques showing the ship kills of the various air groups on the Yorktown.

Most of the icons were clear but one of a duck was a bit puzzling until we found a plaque giving the legend for the plaques ... it represented "aircraft destroyed on ground" or, in other words, sitting ducks.

This gave me an interesting visual perspective on my father, sitting in a foxhole, trying to sleep, read, or even write a letter to my mom, while Japanese aircraft bombed or shot at the 'sitting duck' airplanes on the ground that my dad as a US Marine Master Technical Sgt and his crew were trying to repair. He spoke of bullet holes in the radios they were fixing or replacing and having to interrupt the work when the air raid sirens went off for incoming enemy planes.

While doing research online about this I found a photo that fits well with the stories my father told me about his time in the South Pacific ... It isn't him but it could have been. He often said he thinks he spent more time in foxholes than anywhere else.

Marine sleeping in a foxhole in WW2 South Pacific

Charleston Harbor viewed from the USS Yorktown

Geoff at Parade Rest at the Yorktown Bell

Also at Patriots Point are a destroyer, the USS Laffey, and a submarine, the USS Clamagore. Neither of these is handicap accessible so we did not see them although I understand that the submarine has an excellent demonstration of what it feels like to be the target of a kamikaze attack.

The exit is of course through the gift shop, named The Ships Store, where I got a ball cap for Patriots Point, of course, as well as a baby Sea Turtle figure which now resides on a book shelf with other memorabilia from our trips.

It is our general habit to have breakfast early at TimmberWolf and then eat a late lunch/early dinner out at a local restaurant avoiding the chains that are available at home. We then have either a light dinner or just a snack back at Wolf in the evening. The Hanger Deck included an information desk staffed by several volunteers. Here we asked for suggestions for a nice sit down restaurant and a very helpful gentleman suggested several. We ended up at R.B.'s Seafood Restaurant on Shems Creek where I had excellent Oysters Rockefeller!

Our table was right at a window looking out on the creek which looks more like a canal actually with another restaurant across the way and parking for various watercraft. There are also kayak tours in the creek. There were dolphins playing in this canal! They seem to know the minute you get a camera out and refuse to show themselves until you put the camera away! So ... no pictures of them but we saw at least three of them playing and jumping.

Oysters Rockefeller

After our sumptuous meal we returned to Wolf and the only eventful thing after that was when I managed to fall out of the bed in the middle of the night bruising and scraping my arms. Not fun but could have been worse I suppose.