Picture Posting

May 19 - 24, 2007 Savannah to Charleston

On May 19 we and about a million other people visited Savannah. We took a bus tour in an open air bus. Savannah has 6 “preservation districts” but the only ones I heard mentioned were the Historic district, the Colonial district and the Victorian district. They all looked pretty much the same to me… Just across the street from the regulated historic district, since the restrictions do not apply there, someone had painted their house a bright pink with purple and other bright colors. Most of the original buildings of Savannah were destroyed by fires or the big earthquake of 1886.

In 1732 James Ogelthorpe was given a charter by the King of England to start a colony between Charleston and St. Augustine. England wanted a buffer zone to protect the very important colony of Charleston from the Catholic Spanish in Florida. While still in England, Ogelthorpe drew up a plan for the city streets, 24 parks and locations for the important buildings. When the colonists arrived in 1733, they started building the city right away. The city has either kept up or renovated 22 of these original parks. For some of them they had to purchase the land, remove the buildings and recreate the parks. They will never recreate the other two parks because there are City buildings built on them!

When the Charter was granted, there were Four Prohibitions included:
n -- There were NO Catholics allowed in the colony. (The Catholic Spanish in Florida were the enemy.)
n -- There was to be NO hard liquor. Wine and ale were allowed.
n -- There were NO lawyers allowed. (This wasn’t really practical since legal work was required…)
n -- There were NO slaves allowed. (This was not practical when it came to running the plantations and growing the crops. The way the colonists solved this problem was to “rent” slaves from their South Carolina neighbors just across the river.)

The City is very proud of the fact that Juliette Gordon Low, the women who started Girl Scouts, was born and raised in Savannah.

Savannah calls itself the “third most haunted city in America” after Charleston and New Orleans. (However, Google calls it the 5th most haunted city after New Orleans, Galveston, Gettysburg, Key West, Savannah and then Charleston…)

On Sunday, May 20, we drove out to Tybee Island to see the Fort, the beach and have a picnic lunch. It was a very interesting little barrier island. There was a lighthouse just off the beach, public parking near the lighthouse and the beach, and a small restaurant just off of the parking lot. The fortifications of the fort were spread out along the shoreline.

We just dropped into Fort Pulaski on the drive back to the mainland from Tybee Island and it was a great stop! We heard a lot about how the Yankees had landed on Tybee Island after the Confederates had taken up positions upriver one mile in the best fort ever built, Fort Pulaski. The Confederates felt safe because smooth bore cannon could only fire about 700 yards, 1000 yards maximum. What the Confederates DIDN’T know was that the Union Army had rifled cannon. The Union offered the Confederates a chance to surrender, which they did not do. Therefore the Union began to shell the fort from a mile away and the new rifled shot began to bore through Fort Pulaski’s heavily reinforced walls. By noon the second day, the rifled shots had opened a hole into the Fort and a shot landed very close to the ammunition room. Confederate Commander Olmstead surrendered the Fort after only 36 hours of battle.

It was neat that we saw the fortifications on Tybee Island first and then toured Fort Pulaski. While we were there they had a musket firing demonstration. The Ranger gave an excellent talk and an excellent presentation. It was especially fun since we only turned in there to see what it looked like and had absolutely no expectations!

After leaving Fort Pulaski, we headed to Hilton Head Island just to see it. Incredible! Anyone coming to Port Aransas from Hilton Head (like Becky Corder did) would be in shock. The island is COVERED in huge trees. They come together to form arches over most of the roads. However, the south end of the island is privately owned. If you don’t live there they charge you $5 to get in. Then you can drive down to the lighthouse built especially for tourists and spend you money in the shops around the lighthouse, also built especially for tourists! The boats at dock there would take you breath away. You can even go sailing on the prior America’s Cup boat, the Stars and Stripes.

On Monday, May 21, we drove to John’s Island, just southwest of Charleston. On Tuesday we went to the Middleton Plantation. The plantation was used for rice farming for quite a while after the owner was given a bag of rice by a ship captain and was told to plant it and see if it would grow. When it grew very well, Mr. Middleton imported slaves who knew the rice growing business and it worked very well until the salt water from too many hurricanes flooded the fields and ruined them for rice growing. They mined phosphate from the river for a while, but that too ended. In the early 1900’s the plantation was inherited by the husband of the last owner with the stipulation that if he remarried the plantation went instead to a distant cousin. He remarried, and the distnt cousin and his wife inherited the plantation. They were living with his parents in Charleston and were thrilled with being given a house…until they saw it. It was in a terrible state of disrepair and the wife lamented “We’ve been left a white elephant!” They did work on it, but now it is owned by a non-profit corporation that has house tours, guided tours describing the rice growing, garden tours and craftsmen of the period working in the outbuildings.

On Wednesday we went to the only tea plantation in North America. They actually grow the tea, cut the new growth off the top of the hedge-like plants, “wither” the leaves for 18 hours so that the leaves lose 20% of their moisture, grind the leaves to a pulp-like texture, fluff up that pulp and lay it 2” on a “drying bed”. It then dries naturally for 50 minutes before going into a dryer that uses heat to further dry it for 25 minutes. The dried tea leaf is then sifted through 2 different sifting hoppers to remove any twigs or debris. Then a machine that uses static electricity further removes any debris from the tea leaves. After this last purification, the little tiny tea particles are put in plastic tubs and shipped to Bigelow Tea Factory and put into tea bags and packaged as American Classic Tea. That American Classic Tea is the tea served in the white house. We spent about 3 hours watching the entire process from picking to packing. Most people spend about 25 minutes there…

Then we drove to Kiawa Island. They were having the Senior PGA Tour there. We took some pictures of some good looking houses…

On Thursday we toured Charleston. This time we took a bus tour where last time we had a walking tour. The walking tour was better. We covered a little more ground with the bus tour, but you didn’t feel as much a part of the history as you did with the walking tour. I won’t tell anyone the history of Charleston, because we have all been here and heard it! There is one interesting tidbit of information: When the Union forces recaptured Fort Sumner, the Union commanders wanted to have a ceremony to celebrate. They really wanted President Lincoln to come down the “rededicate” the Fort. However, Lincoln’s advisers decided that the trip would be too dangerous so Lincoln stayed in Washington and went to a nice safe theater to see a play…

We are in a wonderful campground that has just enough trees and just enough open space. It is a great place for a big rig.

Photos will be coming shortly!

May 16-17 St. Augustine, Florida

On Wednesday and Thursday, May 16 and 17, we visited St. Augustine, Florida. St. Augustine is the oldest city in the United States, founded in 1565! Ponce de Leon actually landed in St. Augustine in 1513 but it took 50 years and 6 attempts before a settlement actually became established. (Ponce de Leon was 4'11" tall which was tall for a man from Spain at that time and he was a good six inches taller than most of the men on his ship. The tour director pointed out a life-size statue of him in the square and I laughed because I thought it was a joke. It wasn't. He was SO little!) Spain felt that they needed this area colonized to protect their interests in the Americas, Asia and and Europe. In 1565 Spaniard Pedro Menedez (who made a huge fortune as a privateer capturing foreign shipping for money) sailed to "La Florida" (the flowers) to expel the French Protestant Huguenots who had arrived in the area in 1564. After a battle the French surrendered and were told to either become Catholics or die. Most of them died. The Spanish believed that they controlled the whole North American coast from the Hudson Bay to the Florida keys, and they did for a while. But they couldn't combat fires, hurricanes and the advances of other European nations. Eventually they surrenered the coastal areas above Florida to other European nations. Spain continued to rule Mexico and Peru.
In 1670 Charleston was settled and challenged Spain's control of the area. From 1672-1695 a massive fort was constructed using coquina (shellstone). (This was mined from an island across from the settlement and is like a big concrete block made of seashells. It gets harder the longer it is exposed to the air.) In 1702 the British tried to take the fort but only suceeded in burning down the town around it. Four Spanish warships arrived to help defend the city and the English burned their boats and fled overland back to Charleston. The Spanish rebuilt the city. There were many attacks after that and the city lived in fear of being captured. In 1740 another English army attacked the city and the ships blasted the fort for 27 days. However, the coquina seemed to just absorb the cannon balls and suffer no real damage. After 38 days the English gave up and returned home. In 1763, at the end of the Seven Years' War (French and Indian War), Spain traded St. Augustine to the English in return for Cuba, which the English had captured during the war. Most of the Spanish in St. Augustine left for Cuba. After the Revolutionary War, from 1784 to 1821, the Spanish returned to Florida after the English left but we unable to control the activities in the city. In 1819 Spain finally gave up and turned the colony over to the United States in return for the US assuming responsibility for $5,000,000 in claims of American citizens against Spain. This was the end of Spanish rule in St. Augustine. In 1821 the Spanish flag came down from the fort for the last time. The city was 256 years old. Not everyone was happy with the agreement with Spain. One Congressman argued that Florida was a place of swamps, insects and reptiles and NO one would want to settle there. The Seminole Indians of the area resisted the advance of American settlers into their territory. The US wanted to relocate the Seminoles to reservations in the west. When the war ended in 1842, many Indians were relocated. But many also hid in the swamps and stayed in Florida. Florida didn't participate too much in the Civil War, but it did seceed in 1861.
In 1869 Florida guidebooks touted the health benefits of the warm weather of Florida instead of the northeast winters. Henry Flagler, a partner of John D. Rockefeller in Standard Oil, came to St. Augustine for his honeymoon with his second wife. He decided to develop the area into a first-class winter resort for rich northerners. He wanted the land that a church was on, so he offered to build the congregation a brand new large church free of charge if they would give him the land under the old church. They did, he did. Then the Baptists asked for the same thing. He told them he wouldn't build them a church for free, but he would give them the money to build it. However, since it was right next to the church he wanted to build for him to worship in, the Baptist Church couldn't have a bell in their bell tower. In 1888, at a cost of $250,000 Flager build the Ponce de Leon Hotel with rooms for 450 guests. Rooms were $20 a night. But you couldn't book a room for just one night. The hotel was open only from January to March and you had to book the entire time at $20 a night. They were always full. It was the first hotel to have electricity, but the guests were afraid of being electrocuted when they flipped the switch to turn on the lights. Flagler solved this problem by having employees whose only job was to turn the lights of and off for the guests. Flager then went on to build the Alcazar hotel, which was only $2 a night, but had lots of activities for the guests including the largest indoor swimming pool in the world at the time, a bicycle practice yard and tennis courts. By contrast, the Ponce de Leon didn't have those amenities. People just socialized and would "see and be seen". A competitor built a beautiful hotel just across the street from the Ponce de Leon and the Alcazar. However, he was never able to get it opened because all of his furniture (which was being shipped on the railroad that Flagler was an owner of) seemed to be lost and no one could find it. The hotel owner ran out of money, sold the building to Flagler, and the furniture was located within a few days and delivered to the new hotel... Tourism is certainly still alive and well in St. Augustine!
The city has done a very nice job of keeping some of the original buildings. However, most have been destroyed by fire once or twice or three times. St George's street is very quaint and full of shops of all kinds. There is an Old Florida Museum there which is a little bit hookey but we still learned a lot. The colonists used to stuff big fabric bags with Spanish Moss to use for beds. All that is fine, except that chiggers live in the Spanish Moss. That is where the saying "Don't let the bed bugs bite" comes from. When the settlers got together to all pitch in for a "bee" they always had food and dancing when the work was done. Everyone would put their "hoe down" and have a dance. Since they didn't dance all that often, sometimes an overzealous partner would dig their heel into their partner's shin--a Shin Dig. Settlers coming into Florida came in buggies drawn by horses. The drivers would crack their whip to keep the horses moving, thus "Florida crackers".
We sure enjoyed our time here and we learned a lot. We go on to Savannah on Friday.

November 2006- May 15, 2007--Really!

Well, the last time we wrote about our travels was months ago! We got to Grandma Etta's in Florida just before we flew home for Thanksgiving. Then we all went to Disney World. Then we had Sam and Hannah for a very fun week in Nettles Island. Then we flew home for Christmas and to help Heather move. Then we drove the motor home to Kissimmee so Mark could fly at the Kissimmee Airport and get his instrument rating. That took almost a month. But that was fine with me because I got to work on my quilt the whole time he was flying! In February we flew home for, we thought, a month so I could do everyone's tax work. However, we decided to go ahead and furnish 5 condo units we had for sale so that we could rent them out for short-term summer rentals. That meant that we had to stay for an extra month in Port Aransas. After Easter and the soon-to-be-Annual Spring Birthday Bash in Houston (since 3 of the 4 kids now live in the Houston area!), we finally flew back to Florida. We had the motorhome in storage in the same campground where we had camped for the month of January, so we got it out of storage and put it back on a different site in the same campground. Then I got to help with the long-arm quilting on my quilt. One of the campground owners teaches quilting and quilts on her long-arm machine both for residents of the campground and others in the area. It was VERY exciting to finally finish it--I started in 2004!

Mark drove with Grandma Etta back to New Jersey after we all visited with Aunt Mary in Ormond Beach. Then he flew back to the campground. (Love those free tickets from Brian!!) It is really quite ironic that on Sunday, May 13, we drove down to Fort Pierce and Grandma wasn't even there! We went to the SEAL Museum there.

Here is a short history of the SEALS. In 1941-1942 Draper Kauffman talked the government into setting up a training school in Fort Pierce to train Underwater Demolition Teams for the upcoming war. At first there were only 6-man commando teams, but these grew to become 100 man Underwater Demolition Teams (UDT). The Seabees (Navy engineers) constructed barriers and obstructions on the beaches and in the water for the UDT's to learn how to demolish them. In late 1942 the Army Scouts and Raiders came to Fort Pierce to train with the UDT's. After training in Fort Pierce, the UDT's went to Maui for further training.

In November 1943 a battle in the Pacific on the island of Tarawa taught the UDT's that they needed MUCH better reconnaissance and MUCH better maps before the troops came ashore. The training procedures were changed and with additional reconnaissance before the troop landings the results began to improve. The UDT's really had their work cut out for them in Normandy and proved their worth.

In 1962 a new, better, more elite group of UDT's started training to be Navy SEALS. These men trained for 6 extremely hard months. For one of those weeks of training, known as Hell Week, they were on the go constantly for 6 days with a total of about 4 hours of rest or sleep. They have a slogan for that week, "The only easy day is yesterday." The wash-out rate is extremely high. But for anyone who makes it through, they are regarded as the toughest of the tough.

New vehicles have been developed to enable the SEALS to arrive even more stealthily than ever before. The SDV (SEAL Delivery Vehicle) is an all black underwater craft that can open and disgorge the SEALS for their reconnaissance and return them to their ship. There is also an ASDS (Advanced SEAL Delivery System) that rides atop a submarine and enables the SEALS to arrive and leave without anyone knowing they were even close.

Probably every one but me already knew this, but Rudy Boesch was an enlisted man for 45 years and 3 months and a SEAL for most of that time. He competed on Survivor--but you probably know how that turned out. I don't...

We drove up A1A instead of taking the Interstate and then back to our campground.

On Tuesday, we finally packed up and left that campground that felt like home. We came in January and left in May--but we were home for 2 of those months.

We headed to Polk City to visit Fantasy of Flight for a second time. It was just as great as it was the first time. I know Sean would love the B-17 that you can walk through and pretend that you are in the war.

We are now in St. Augustine, Florida, which neither of us has visited in about 50 years! We are happy to be "back on the road again"!

A few pictures will follow when Mark gets to hook up to the Internet!

Editor's Note: They also had 5 grandkids in Port Aransas for the week of Spring Break!