| Charleston, SC September 2026 | |
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Play slide show — just for looking at the pictures. | |
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Sarah saw a note from cousin Carolee (from Lake Murray a couple years ago) that she was organizing a group to work on a Habitat for Humanity build in Charleston. It's a good cause, a great excuse to visit with Carolee and Doug and we have time. So we drove down Monday. Sarah had not been to Charleston before (we did go to Savannah a couple times) and if I've been there before, I was likely single digits old. After the drive, Carolee took us for a walk around their neighborhood. And to show off the movie-set quality beauty of a sunset there. No smoke machines required for those sunbeams. |
| We were introduced to the house and enjoyed a classic southern shrimp and grits for dinner (sorry Sarah). It was great to hear how Carolee, Doug and their kids are doing. And there was time to swap around a few family stories. |
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| The next day Carolee gave us a great tour of Charleston. Having worked for the city for years, she was an excellent tour guide. Our first stop was the McLeod Plantation Historic Site. It's run by Charleston county parks, so untouched by the current administration's attempts to rewrite history. |
| Our docent led a very interesting tour around the grounds. We learned quite a lot about how the enslaved lived and worked. Some new to me nuggets: The Sea Island long fiber cotton (to the right) is an annual (so it had to be replanted every year), and is harvested over several months — very much a year long chore. Also, the quarters for the enslaved were housing descendants as recently as 1990. |
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| Up to ten enslaved would share one of these one room buildings. The one occupied up until 1990, was the same size but had a dividing wall added during the share cropping days. |
| The tour comes highly recommended. It was interesting to get Carolee's perspective on differences between docents, so likely worth going more than once. The history was fascinating to me. And, as you can likely see, the oak trees draped in Spanish Moss were eye catching. |
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| Carolee also took us on a walking tour of downtown Charleston and the Battery, where she pointed out some tidal flooding; a challenge Charleston has been facing for years. After a very nice lunch at The Blind Tiger, she continued our education taking us to Fort Moultrie. Neither Sarah nor I knew about the battle of Sullivan's Island at the start of the revolutionary war. |
| Nor did we know that at the time, Charleston was the wealthiest city in the colonies because of the value of the enslaved workforce. The fort played a role in the Civil War as well as defending Charleston harbor in the World Wars. |
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| We joined Carolee, Doug and Stuart to watch another beautiful sunset from our dinner spot at Bowen's Island. I think it's pretty rare to see boiled peanuts on the menu; of course we enjoyed them. |
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The visiting and touring were great fun. But we were called to Charleston to work. And we did on Wednesday. There were sections of play houses to prime, then a delivery of soffit panels to move and finally a trench to fill in. It was a busy day with a great crew and it's always good to be able to see the tangible impact of your work. And relaxing in Carolee and Doug's pool afterwards was a perfect afternoon cap on a busy day. There is lots more to see and learn about in Charleston so we'll need to plot our return trip soon. |
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Vacation notes:
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