Our trip

PHOTOS HERE

Our trip to Charleston and Savannah was good. I'd highly recommend it, but not with small children in the summer. I'd love to go back with another couple or with a bunch of girlfriends. It was around 100 the entire time and then you got the humidity.--YIKES!

Some random bits of information...

We saw dolphins on our water taxi to Ft. Sumter. While at the fort, I bought Cole and Blake a national parks "passport" that looks like a regular passport only this one has all the national parks and sites listed. When you visit such site, you get stamped (like a canceled postage stamp). Since we would like to visit several of the parks in the West, I figured it would be a neat souvenir of our trips for the boys. I don't know if each place listed has a stamper, but the closest one to us is Lincoln Park in Lincoln City (near Santa Claus, IN). So I may take the boys there for a day trip to check it out one day this summer.

The fort, not what I really thought, but I'm not sure what I was really expecting anyway. It must of been really lonely for the guys there. You feel so isolated sitting in the middle of the water like that.

Patriots Point. You get to tour an aircraft carrier, submarine, battleship and a coast guard ship. You develop a greater appreciation for our armed services on these ships. The living quarters are tight, its really hot and muggy with no air circulating, and they'd have the sleeping quarters next to the engine room which I'm sure was deafening. The submarine is a claustrophobic's absolute nightmare. Ryan is 6'2 and he was having a difficult time maneuvering around in there. There were small port doors we had to crawl through. An obese person could not tour it. it's like a tight cave.

In Savannah, we took a trolley tour with on and off privileges so we could get off at any of their stops and eat/shop/site see then get back on. And while you ride, they tell you all about the city, points of interest, etc. It was very informative... LIKE:

- The city sent President Lincoln hundreds of dollars worth of cotton and other goods to spare the city of Sherman's wrath--and it worked. That's why Savannah is a jewel of the south with hundreds of buildings and homes in original condition.

-They have over 20 "squares" in the town and only 2 are not quite back to original condition.

-Sherman's army did stay in Savannah, at the cemetery. It was cold and he and some other soldiers threw the bodies out of one of the family sized mausoleums and slept in there. They were pranksters with the headstones as well. Of the one's they didn't down right throw out, they would change the dates on the headstones, having people living 200 years, or die before they were born. But he's not the only guilty one of messing with the cemetery. As the town got bigger and they needed more room, they decided to make the cemetery smaller. But they didn't move the bodies, they just built on top. So in their cemetery, there are 600 and something stones. But there are 10,000 buried. They're under the sidewalk, streets, and even the neighboring historic homes. --no wonder their haunted!

-The statue of "Bird Girl" (on the cover of "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil" became so popular they had to move her to a museum for her own safety. People tried to chip pieces off and steal her.