Anne at one end of the mighty Avenue of the Oaks.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

Every year since 1999 Anne and I have taken one road trip to a different part of the United States and seen attractions, wonders, and events we didn’t have back home. From 1999 to 2003 we did so as best friends; from 2004 to the present, as husband and wife. After years of contenting ourselves with everyday life in Indianapolis and any nearby places that also had comics and toy shops, we overcame some of our self-imposed limitations and resolved as a team to leave the comforts of home for annual chances to see creative, exciting, breathtaking, outlandish, historical, and/or bewildering new sights in states beyond our own. We’re the Goldens. This is who we are and what we do.

For 2023 it was time at last to venture to the Carolinas, the only southern states we hadn’t yet visited, with a focus on the city of Charleston, South Carolina. Considering how many battlefields we’d toured over the preceding years, the home of Fort Sumter was an inevitable addition to our experiential collection…

It’s been a while since we had an excuse to post a basic photo gallery of pretty flowers. As it happens, our Charleston trip gives me that excuse. We came for the giant trees As Seen On TV; we stayed for the blossoms. And for some ice cream.

After our long morning and mid-afternoon along Charleston Harbor and in their historic downtown, our final attraction for the day took a short drive northeast to Mount Pleasant, a town within Charleston. The route was our first (and not our last) excuse to drive across the Arthur Ravenel Jr. Bridge that we’d seen earlier from afar. We’ve seen cable-stayed bridges elsewhere such as Boston or even an hour south of us in Columbus, but I can’t help marveling every time.

The Ravenel Bridge: You Are There!

Next stop was Boone Hall Plantation & Gardens, a historic farm still in operation and managing just fine without enslaved labor nowadays. Its centerpiece is a mansion built in 1936 by Canadian ambassador Thomas Stone, labeled on their map as the “Big House”. More impressive to us was the Avenue of the Oaks — a nearly mile-long entrance road flanked on both sides by rows of trees that were reputedly planted in the mid-18th century and live to this very day. The mansion may be familiar to the millions of movie lovers who’ve seen The Notebook. That doesn’t include us, but maybe it means something more to you?

Other works shot on the grounds include such TV miniseries as North and South and that adaptation of Scarlett we all agreed never to speak of again. Supposedly the June 1, 1984, episode of the immortal soap opera Days of Our Lives featured scenes set there, but we’re having trouble confirming that, even through bootleg resources. (It might’ve been that episode where Bo spirits Hope away from her wedding to that skeevy Larry Welch, they ride his motorcycle while “Holding Out for a Hero” blares at us from Hell’s cheesiest speakers, and then they go argue in front of some trees for a while. Or maybe those were someone else’s trees? The world may never know!) In more recent times, celeb power couple Blake Lively and Mint Mobile spokesman Ryan Reynolds held their 2012 wedding ceremony there. So we basically walked in Deadpool’s footsteps.

Stately Notebook Manor!

The majestic canopy of the Avenue of the Oaks.

Same trees, different camera, weirdly different lighting, no idea how.

One of the trees closest to the Big House. In the way back, the map calls those tiny houses “historical dwellings”.

Another giant tree sample.

We opted out of the Big House tour and mostly were in the mood to wander the outdoor acreage of our own accord. What drew our cameras’ wandering eyes more than anything else were the Formal Gardens, a pair of plots catty-corner to either side of the Big House and filled with various beauteous flora, some of them helpfully labeled. I tried nailing down the names of dozens of flowers we photographed, but my flower identification skills are too pitiful to qualify for “amateur” rank. Lots of these are missing their specialty modifiers, subspecies qualifiers, Latin appellates, and superhero aliases. Most of these captions are therefore necessarily too simplified, but do feel free to chime in with your horticultural know-how if you recognize an extremely specific breed near and dear to your heart. I’m sure it’s what your hero Nathan Notebook would’ve wanted!

Crape Myrtle tree. Websites fight a lot over the spelling.

A baby Crape Myrtle.

Elf cups, a different color from the ones in Oblivion.

Mexican fire bush. (See? Signs help.)

Blossomtime roses.

Pink rose.

White roses.

Coneflowers, among the few I recognized without any internet searching.

Cardoon.

Zinnia.

Castor bean plant.

Coleus.

White hibiscus.

Hydrangeas.

Celosia.

Canna.

Something red. After a while I got tired of researching.

Reddy and purply, live together in perfect harmony.

Santa’s Little Helper statue.

For those who prefer fauna over flora, Boone Hall has a butterfly enclosure (the “Butterfly Pavilion” per the map) where folks can wander and goggle at all those bright, colorful wings.

Monarch butterfly!

Another monarch unaware its powers don’t include camouflage.

If any other butterfly species lived there, they didn’t show up for posing.

We capped off our long walk with a stop for ice cream at the Butterfly Cafe. Anne was happy to confirm the gift shop clerk we’d met near Rainbow Row was right: we could indeed find cheaper postcards elsewhere than at her shop. Thanks, Butterfly Cafe!

Anne enjoys her fruit-flavored treat whose specific key ingredient we forgot to note for posterity. Definitely not pumpkin.

…and that’s the story of the one time our lives ever intersected with The Notebook.

To be continued!

* * * * *

[Link enclosed here to handy checklist for other chapters and for our complete road trip history to date. Follow us on Facebook or via email sign-up for new-entry alerts, or over on BlueSky if you want to track my faint signs of life between entries. Thanks for reading!]

Midlife Crisis Crossover!

2025-06-14 03:21:38

Our 2023 Road Trip #7: Across Charleston Harbor

Gratuitous vacation boat ride selfie!

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

Every year since 1999 Anne and I have taken one road trip to a different part of the United States and seen attractions, wonders, and events we didn’t have back home. From 1999 to 2003 we did so as best friends; from 2004 to the present, as husband and wife. After years of contenting ourselves with everyday life in Indianapolis and any nearby places that also had comics and toy shops, we overcame some of our self-imposed limitations and resolved as a team to leave the comforts of home for annual chances to see creative, exciting, breathtaking, outlandish, historical, and/or bewildering new sights in states beyond our own. We’re the Goldens. This is who we are and what we do.

For 2023 it was time at last to venture to the Carolinas, the only southern states we hadn’t yet visited, with a focus on the city of Charleston, South Carolina. Considering how many battlefields we’d toured over the preceding years, the home of Fort Sumter was an inevitable addition to our experiential collection…

Longtime MCC readers may recall our past stops at assorted forts and battlefields at the behest of Anne the American history aficionado, who’d love to be called a professional historian if only someone would pay her to give the sort of lengthy, unprompted history speeches that I routinely hear for free here at home or on long car rides. Charleston offers tourists many reasons to drop in — the food! the beaches! the weather when it isn’t hurricane season! — but of course our primary objective was a tour of Fort Sumter, where the Civil War officially began. Whether you routinely read 100+ nonfiction books a year or struggle to name more than three Civil War battles without cheating, both sides can come together and enjoy the ferry ride across Charleston Harbor to the island where the fort stands.

Sure, South Carolina flowers are pretty, but Anne is here to for history!

DAY THREE: MONDAY, June 26th.

Morning rush-hour traffic did us no favors. We arrived fifteen minutes before our tour’s ferry takeoff time but had bought tickets in advance, saving us an extra line wait. We didn’t have enough time to check out the accompanying museum and had to save that for later once we returned to shore. We brought rain jackets just in case, but the storm clouds we saw across the water never came near us. Mine was light, but began roasting me anyway as the temperature climbed.

Tour guests were directed to use the parking garage of the South Carolina Aquarium, which was next door to the ferry dock.

More piers along the same shoreline, which we landlubbers don’t see back home too often.

Next to those scenic piers is Dockside Condominiums, which were evacuated in early 2025 due to critical structural issues. Units are available as of this writing, priced at $145K-$550K if you’re patient enough to wait for the completion of $151 million in necessary repairs.

Our ferry awaits. By the time we arrived, all the seats were taken, so we had to ride the entire way hanging out on a staircase.

Our same ferry later as we boarded for the return trip. We made sure to grab seats then.

The happy amateur historian on the high seas. That’s the island in the distance.

Bordering us on the north was the Arthur Ravenel Jr. Bridge, which we drove a few times over the next couple days.

COMPUTER, ENHANCE IMAGE.

Everyday life carried on in the harbor.

Boats and beaches and so forth.

Surfboards and knee boards, whether vacationers or locals.

The decommissioned USS Yorktown, docked at the Patriots Point Naval & Maritime Museum, which was on our sightseeing shortlist but missed the final cut.

Seabirds showing off.

More seabirds awaited us on the island. Oh, and some history stuff, too.

…and eventually we disembarked at Fort Sumter. To be continued!

* * * * *

[Link enclosed here to handy checklist for other chapters and for our complete road trip history to date. Follow us on Facebook or via email sign-up for new-entry alerts, or over on BlueSky if you want to track my faint signs of life between entries. Thanks for reading!]

Townhomes next to Charleston's Dockside will also be evacuated after engineers find the tower unsafe

Residents of Charleston's Dockside and nearby townhomes told to evacuate by Feb. 28 at 5 p.m. after engineering firm found the building unsafe to occupy.

^{Ali Rockett and Teri Errico Griffis arockett@postandcourier.com tegriffis@postandcourier.com (Post and Courier)}

Downtown Charleston, brought to you by the Palmetto Council!

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

Every year since 1999 Anne and I have taken one road trip to a different part of the United States and seen attractions, wonders, and events we didn’t have back home. From 1999 to 2003 we did so as best friends; from 2004 to the present, as husband and wife. After years of contenting ourselves with everyday life in Indianapolis and any nearby places that also had comics and toy shops, we overcame some of our self-imposed limitations and resolved as a team to leave the comforts of home for annual chances to see creative, exciting, breathtaking, outlandish, historical, and/or bewildering new sights in states beyond our own. We’re the Goldens. This is who we are and what we do.

For 2023 it was time at last to venture to the Carolinas, the only southern states we hadn’t yet visited, with a focus on the city of Charleston, South Carolina. Considering how many battlefields we’d toured over the preceding years, the home of Fort Sumter was an inevitable addition to our experiential collection…

Our early road trips were all about nonstop tourist-attraction marathons, flitting from one city to the next and seeing how many Roadside America recommendations and top-ranking TripAdvisor highlights we could pushpin on our mental bulletin boards. As we’ve gotten older, we’ve found value in visiting a place and simply being there for a while. We’re not the sort of shoppers who go full-on Blair Warner in large malls or rows of stores and come away carrying so many shopping bags that their cheap twine handles leave friction burns on our wrists, but we do have our particular acquisition interests.

In that spirit we set aside one day of our seven-day vacation solely for walking through the heart of downtown Charleston in general and the pulsating artery that is King Street. In a 21st-century America where small towns and mid-sized cities count themselves blessed if their functional downtown businesses outnumber their abandoned storefronts, there was a certain surprise throughout the first mile of our walk as the stores — a mix of upscale boutiques, mom-‘n’-pop shops, and cultural nodes — just kept going and going and going.

Our quiet hotel elevator ride in the morning accompanied by a happy, abandoned bottle of Clorox.

DAY FOUR: TUESDAY, June 27th.

We took the now-familiar Savannah Highway toward downtown, parked near a visitor center that used to be a train station called Camden Depot, and paused our sightseeing in favor of heading directly to breakfast. After hemming and hawing over whether or not we’d be moving the car later and whether or not to take bottled waters along for our initial walk, we opted to minimize our weight and left them behind. This stupid choice led to suffering later.

We found repast at Glazed Gourmet Doughnuts, a local staple for over a dozen years at the time of our visit.

Happy shop, happy donuts.

Sample temptations tantalized us at the counter.

Breakfast for two, which we’d soon spend the day walking off.

Clockwise from top left: sea salt butterscotch, vanilla bean glazed, sweet corn blueberry, and their “Black & White” powdered donut filled with Belgian dark chocolate. The sea salt butterscotch was our mutual favorite. If any employees noticed me accidentally cough and blow powdered sugar all over myself, they were kind enough not to point and laugh. We sat in for a few, relaxed to local radio overhead, and applauded the heroism of the young clerk who realized a customer had left their credit card behind, ran out the door after her, and succeeded in reuniting them a fair distance down the street.

(One of the drawbacks of waiting so long to write these travelogues is my little game of “Whatever Happened To…?” — in which I curiously peek at how the places we’ve been are doing in the present — sometimes takes me to sorrowful revelations. We were unaware their founder/owner had died in a car accident three months prior to our visit. I was equally unaware till this very day of writing that Glazed closed their doors for good in April 2024, citing the loss of her as a major contributing factor in the decision. “This sucks” is a severe understatement, but we hope those folks have persevered through their next chapters.)

Once fed, then we returned to the vicinity of the visitor center and poked around a bit.

The complex’s structures include one of six buildings that predate the Civil War and were part of the original Charleston-Hamburg Railroad.

Educational topics at the visitor center included the local 1952 case Briggs v. Elliott, one of five such cases that were combined into Brown v. the Board of Education of Topeka, KS.

Murals recommend the city beaches, a bit of a drive from downtown.

“Did we mention the water? GO TO IT.”

Charleston Music Hall is closed for renovations this month, but upcoming September shows include Kenny G, George Thorogood, and Howard Jones (on a tour that I heard Richard Blade plugging on SiriusXM the other day.)

The American Theater, where a scene from The Notebook was filmed. We were just talking about that the other day!

Not everything historic is maintained forever; at least one new facade was in the works, probably to the consternation of its existing ground-floor tenants.

Tours are offered of King Street, including one for investigating its alleys and other nooks ‘n’ crannies. We settled for the self-guided version without helpful narration.

St. Matthew’s Lutheran Church, inc. 1840.

King Street kept going and going, as did its palmettos, and so did we.

“SUCK IT, STARBUCKS!” says Bubbie’s Cookies. I mentally noted that for later.

Another marquee for the collection: the Sottile Theater, owned by the College of Charleston.

“I’m the Son of sports and love! / The Jesus of Athletica..!”

Completing the marquee hat trick: the Riviera, another music venue. Shows coming later in 2025 include Chris Isaak, former Today host Hoda Kotb’s tour for her new book, and forgotten American Idol winner Taylor Hicks.

The farther south we walked, the independent businesses seemed to give way to trendier, higher-end nationwide chains. In Indianapolis terms, it was a bit like walking from Broad Ripple directly into Keystone Fashion Mall. Upon reaching Market Street we turned east and kept going, leaving the car and our water bottles farther behind.

The prettied-up grounds of The Charleston Place, a luxury hotel.

One end of Charleston City Market.

Charleston City Market was four blocks long, a bustling corridor of a bazaar populated with vendors of various arts, crafts, foods, and Christmas stuff. Wandering about without a booth of his own was a Gullah peddler selling “palmetto roses” (read: fronds folded into quasi-origami flowers). Ever cheery about sliding into the “ordinary tourist” role, Anne bought one despite City Market signs explicitly asking patrons not to. To this day Anne remains a fugitive from Charleston market law.

Despite a thorough search of the premises, Anne couldn’t find the sort of souvenirs Anne wanted. We doubled back and looked around the other nearby storefronts and found one she’d targeted in her own notes: a seemingly leprechaun-themed boutique called Sheila’s Shamrock.

Behind the front counter was a photo of Sheila, for any shoppers who thought she wasn’t real. Alas, our photo of her photo came out blurry.

Anne’s primary objective was their smashed penny machine out front. Longtime MCC readers know smashed pennies are her favorite kind of travel souvenir. She has books and books collecting the li’l flattened coins, which might go the way of the dodo once the American penny is phased out forever.

Till then, Anne shall keep on smashing.

Alas, another game of “Whatever Happened To…?” ends with a sad trombone: internet sources report Sheila’s Shamrock went out of business in or before February 2025. Local Yelp user Kim M. reports: “While this was a local business operating for over 35 years it was forced to close due to outside operators coming in and cutting prices to force locals out of business. Sad to see.” That sucks.

In happier memories: carriage rides! Probably not free. We didn’t investigate, though that shade sure looked inviting right about then.

A historical marker of sorts is a reminder of a bygone era.

Other businesses we passed but didn’t photograph included a boutique called Gallery 42, whose hostess foisted a free bar of soap on Anne but didn’t quite entice us to buy anything. After being a tad let down by the T-shirt offerings at Sheila’s Shamrock, Anne was much happier when we reached the French Quarter and found more suitably Charleston-forward options at another gift shop called Palmettoville, which proudly leaned into those ubiquitous flora, which I will never stop pointing out because we don’t have them here in Indy. To us palmettos are officially capital-E Exotic, whereas I chuckle at any out-of-towners who thinks maple trees are mind-blowing. We have maples on our property. I’d mail you one of them if I could — the sicklier one that clogs my gutters every autumn.

As it happens, Palmettoville was also on her list of area businesses harboring smashed penny machines.

Like Sheila’s, their penny machine was right out front.

Upon our arrival, a nuclear family of five who looked like they’d just stepped out of an impeccable JCPenney Portrait Studio summertime shoot were struggling to figure out the penny-smashing process, what with the coin slots and the gears and the giant crank and all. Ever the expert, Anne stepped up, showed them how it’s done, supervised while they created their own souvenirs, and probably saved their entire vacation from utter disaster.

HERO OF THE BEACH. Well, okay, HERO OF THE BEACH-ADJACENT.

To be continued!

* * * * *

[Link enclosed here to handy checklist for other chapters and for our complete road trip history to date. Follow us on Facebook or via email sign-up for new-entry alerts, or over on BlueSky if you want to track my faint signs of life between entries. Thanks for reading!]

Midlife Crisis Crossover!

2025-07-26 01:16:28

Our 2023 Road Trip #10: That One House from “The Notebook” Has a Pretty Garden

Anne at one end of the mighty Avenue of the Oaks.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

Every year since 1999 Anne and I have taken one road trip to a different part of the United States and seen attractions, wonders, and events we didn’t have back home. From 1999 to 2003 we did so as best friends; from 2004 to the present, as husband and wife. After years of contenting ourselves with everyday life in Indianapolis and any nearby places that also had comics and toy shops, we overcame some of our self-imposed limitations and resolved as a team to leave the comforts of home for annual chances to see creative, exciting, breathtaking, outlandish, historical, and/or bewildering new sights in states beyond our own. We’re the Goldens. This is who we are and what we do.

For 2023 it was time at last to venture to the Carolinas, the only southern states we hadn’t yet visited, with a focus on the city of Charleston, South Carolina. Considering how many battlefields we’d toured over the preceding years, the home of Fort Sumter was an inevitable addition to our experiential collection…

It’s been a while since we had an excuse to post a basic photo gallery of pretty flowers. As it happens, our Charleston trip gives me that excuse. We came for the giant trees As Seen On TV; we stayed for the blossoms. And for some ice cream.

After our long morning and mid-afternoon along Charleston Harbor and in their historic downtown, our final attraction for the day took a short drive northeast to Mount Pleasant, a town within Charleston. The route was our first (and not our last) excuse to drive across the Arthur Ravenel Jr. Bridge that we’d seen earlier from afar. We’ve seen cable-stayed bridges elsewhere such as Boston or even an hour south of us in Columbus, but I can’t help marveling every time.

The Ravenel Bridge: You Are There!

Next stop was Boone Hall Plantation & Gardens, a historic farm still in operation and managing just fine without enslaved labor nowadays. Its centerpiece is a mansion built in 1936 by Canadian ambassador Thomas Stone, labeled on their map as the “Big House”. More impressive to us was the Avenue of the Oaks — a nearly mile-long entrance road flanked on both sides by rows of trees that were reputedly planted in the mid-18th century and live to this very day. The mansion may be familiar to the millions of movie lovers who’ve seen The Notebook. That doesn’t include us, but maybe it means something more to you?

Other works shot on the grounds include such TV miniseries as North and South and that adaptation of Scarlett we all agreed never to speak of again. Supposedly the June 1, 1984, episode of the immortal soap opera Days of Our Lives featured scenes set there, but we’re having trouble confirming that, even through bootleg resources. (It might’ve been that episode where Bo spirits Hope away from her wedding to that skeevy Larry Welch, they ride his motorcycle while “Holding Out for a Hero” blares at us from Hell’s cheesiest speakers, and then they go argue in front of some trees for a while. Or maybe those were someone else’s trees? The world may never know!) In more recent times, celeb power couple Blake Lively and Mint Mobile spokesman Ryan Reynolds held their 2012 wedding ceremony there. So we basically walked in Deadpool’s footsteps.

Stately Notebook Manor!

The majestic canopy of the Avenue of the Oaks.

Same trees, different camera, weirdly different lighting, no idea how.

One of the trees closest to the Big House. In the way back, the map calls those tiny houses “historical dwellings”.

Another giant tree sample.

We opted out of the Big House tour and mostly were in the mood to wander the outdoor acreage of our own accord. What drew our cameras’ wandering eyes more than anything else were the Formal Gardens, a pair of plots catty-corner to either side of the Big House and filled with various beauteous flora, some of them helpfully labeled. I tried nailing down the names of dozens of flowers we photographed, but my flower identification skills are too pitiful to qualify for “amateur” rank. Lots of these are missing their specialty modifiers, subspecies qualifiers, Latin appellates, and superhero aliases. Most of these captions are therefore necessarily too simplified, but do feel free to chime in with your horticultural know-how if you recognize an extremely specific breed near and dear to your heart. I’m sure it’s what your hero Nathan Notebook would’ve wanted!

Crape Myrtle tree. Websites fight a lot over the spelling.

A baby Crape Myrtle.

Elf cups, a different color from the ones in Oblivion.

Mexican fire bush. (See? Signs help.)

Blossomtime roses.

Pink rose.

White roses.

Coneflowers, among the few I recognized without any internet searching.

Cardoon.

Zinnia.

Castor bean plant.

Coleus.

White hibiscus.

Hydrangeas.

Celosia.

Canna.

Something red. After a while I got tired of researching.

Reddy and purply, live together in perfect harmony.

Santa’s Little Helper statue.

For those who prefer fauna over flora, Boone Hall has a butterfly enclosure (the “Butterfly Pavilion” per the map) where folks can wander and goggle at all those bright, colorful wings.

Monarch butterfly!

Another monarch unaware its powers don’t include camouflage.

If any other butterfly species lived there, they didn’t show up for posing.

We capped off our long walk with a stop for ice cream at the Butterfly Cafe. Anne was happy to confirm the gift shop clerk we’d met near Rainbow Row was right: we could indeed find cheaper postcards elsewhere than at her shop. Thanks, Butterfly Cafe!

Anne enjoys her fruit-flavored treat whose specific key ingredient we forgot to note for posterity. Definitely not pumpkin.

…and that’s the story of the one time our lives ever intersected with The Notebook.

To be continued!

* * * * *

[Link enclosed here to handy checklist for other chapters and for our complete road trip history to date. Follow us on Facebook or via email sign-up for new-entry alerts, or over on BlueSky if you want to track my faint signs of life between entries. Thanks for reading!]

Midlife Crisis Crossover

Midlife Crisis Crossover. Gefällt 90 Mal. Aging mind hosts pointless fight scenes among cultures of pop, geek, and faith

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Gratuitous vacation boat ride selfie!

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

Every year since 1999 Anne and I have taken one road trip to a different part of the United States and seen attractions, wonders, and events we didn’t have back home. From 1999 to 2003 we did so as best friends; from 2004 to the present, as husband and wife. After years of contenting ourselves with everyday life in Indianapolis and any nearby places that also had comics and toy shops, we overcame some of our self-imposed limitations and resolved as a team to leave the comforts of home for annual chances to see creative, exciting, breathtaking, outlandish, historical, and/or bewildering new sights in states beyond our own. We’re the Goldens. This is who we are and what we do.

For 2023 it was time at last to venture to the Carolinas, the only southern states we hadn’t yet visited, with a focus on the city of Charleston, South Carolina. Considering how many battlefields we’d toured over the preceding years, the home of Fort Sumter was an inevitable addition to our experiential collection…

Longtime MCC readers may recall our past stops at assorted forts and battlefields at the behest of Anne the American history aficionado, who’d love to be called a professional historian if only someone would pay her to give the sort of lengthy, unprompted history speeches that I routinely hear for free here at home or on long car rides. Charleston offers tourists many reasons to drop in — the food! the beaches! the weather when it isn’t hurricane season! — but of course our primary objective was a tour of Fort Sumter, where the Civil War officially began. Whether you routinely read 100+ nonfiction books a year or struggle to name more than three Civil War battles without cheating, both sides can come together and enjoy the ferry ride across Charleston Harbor to the island where the fort stands.

Sure, South Carolina flowers are pretty, but Anne is here to for history!

DAY THREE: MONDAY, June 26th.

Morning rush-hour traffic did us no favors. We arrived fifteen minutes before our tour’s ferry takeoff time but had bought tickets in advance, saving us an extra line wait. We didn’t have enough time to check out the accompanying museum and had to save that for later once we returned to shore. We brought rain jackets just in case, but the storm clouds we saw across the water never came near us. Mine was light, but began roasting me anyway as the temperature climbed.

Tour guests were directed to use the parking garage of the South Carolina Aquarium, which was next door to the ferry dock.

More piers along the same shoreline, which we landlubbers don’t see back home too often.

Next to those scenic piers is Dockside Condominiums, which were evacuated in early 2025 due to critical structural issues. Units are available as of this writing, priced at $145K-$550K if you’re patient enough to wait for the completion of $151 million in necessary repairs.

Our ferry awaits. By the time we arrived, all the seats were taken, so we had to ride the entire way hanging out on a staircase.

Our same ferry later as we boarded for the return trip. We made sure to grab seats then.

The happy amateur historian on the high seas. That’s the island in the distance.

Bordering us on the north was the Arthur Ravenel Jr. Bridge, which we drove a few times over the next couple days.

COMPUTER, ENHANCE IMAGE.

Everyday life carried on in the harbor.

Boats and beaches and so forth.

Surfboards and knee boards, whether vacationers or locals.

The decommissioned USS Yorktown, docked at the Patriots Point Naval & Maritime Museum, which was on our sightseeing shortlist but missed the final cut.

Seabirds showing off.

More seabirds awaited us on the island. Oh, and some history stuff, too.

…and eventually we disembarked at Fort Sumter. To be continued!

* * * * *

[Link enclosed here to handy checklist for other chapters and for our complete road trip history to date. Follow us on Facebook or via email sign-up for new-entry alerts, or over on BlueSky if you want to track my faint signs of life between entries. Thanks for reading!]