Life's a Trip: NPS sites around Charleston, SC

Continuing up along the coast, our next destination was Charleston, South Carolina. There is so much history in this city, the oldest in the state, that we had a hard time deciding where to begin our day. In the end, we decided to take the NPS route first. These sites are super educational and really help to take your mind back to the beginning of a particular area and the events that have shaped it into what it is today. So anyway, on with the day :)...

Liberty Square and the Fort Sumter Visitor Center was our first stop. Here we learned of the leading up to and beginnings of the Civil War...

This is a very busy VC, go prepared to keep your kiddos close. I usually let them roam around on their own, but only if I can keep them in direct sight (the younger kids...Trevor is quite a bit taller than me now, he's fine on his own). Not many photos to show you, I had my hands full ;).

We read all that we could, saw all that we could, the kids finished up their Jr. Ranger books and turned them in, then we were ready to head on to the next stop...

We drove over to Sullivan's Island, just a few minutes away, to visit Fort Moultrie.

Fort Moultrie predates Fort Sumter by about 50 years. It started as a simple log structure and with each battle it was reduced to rubble and rebuilt bigger and stronger...

The kids of course completed the Jr. Ranger program here and by doing this qualified for a special reward...the Junior Civil War Historian patch. Look it up, it's pretty cool :).

By this time it was lunch-thirty, so we set out in search of some good, local food. South Carolina is synonymous with Shrimp and Grits, so that's what we had our sites set on. A quick look around the internets and we settled on Page's Okra Grill. Ya'll, it was SO GOOD. Seriously. Get the fried okra appetizer with remoulade sauce and for your entree go with Ashleigh's Famous Shrimp & Grits. You can thank me later ;). The kids shared a couple slices of Hummingbird Cake for dessert and based on their smiles of satisfaction I'd say it was a winner, too.

With happy tummies we were ready for the final NPS site of the day, the Charles Pinckney home. This site is the only one in the NPS that was owned by a signer of the United States Constitution.

bottom of a bottle found on-site...wow

more fascinating Gullah history...

I look at things like the doorknob on the front door and I have to wonder...whose hands have grasped that same knob? The founding fathers of our nation? Some of our earliest Presidents? It is just amazing to think of the history...