Road Trip Diary: Chillin' in Charleston

After rolling into Charleston in the early evening hours, we dumped our bags in the hotel and immediately made our way down to Waterfront Park to have a quick look around, grab some beers, and watch the sunset.  

When driving downtown, I was struck by how beautiful Charleston is.   Its fine old colonial style houses, the humid temperature, the trees, and the relaxed pace are all the elements that have pulled me back to Savannah, Georgia, on numerous occasions and it was so fantastic to find another city that ticked all my boxes (so to speak..)

I love the American south and I do tend to favour the southern states above all others.  I’ve now visited 42 from 50, but the south is always first on my list when I’m heading stateside.  Apart from the relaxed way of life, people in the south are fantastically friendly and the accents are to die for.     

Apart from the world renowned Southern hospitality, Charleston is also famous for many other things; one of which is being it was the location of the start of the American Civil War, when South Carolina seceded from the Union and attacked a ship docked in the harbour.    Shortly after, they opened fire on the Union controlled Fort Sumter, which is located nearby, and so the Civil War began.    

I’m pleased to say that there was no warring during our visit and we stood on the waterfront, where the Rivers Ashley and Cooper meet to form an inlet of the Atlantic Ocean, and enjoyed the glorious sunset.   Obviously, we took some time out to fool around with the photos, pretty much detracting from the colours with our attempts to look like we were holding the moon.   Tourists, eh?

Did I get it??  Did I get it??

Charleston is often referred to as the Holy City, which might well be to do with the sheer number of churches and places of worship.    This includes the beautiful Emanuel African Methodist Church, which is the oldest African Methodist Episcopal church in the South and really is a sight to behold. 

The American opera ‘Porgy and Bess’ was also written by novelist Du Bose, along with composers, George and Ira Gershwin in 1934.   It’s also where jazz trumpeter extraordinaire, Louis Armstrong, first came to the wider public’s attention.  

Charleston is crammed with history.  Some good, some not so good – pretty much like everywhere else.   However, it is great to see so much history remembered and celebrated within the city.    As well as the buildings and the people, the mixtures of African, British, French and American influence on the local cuisine is not to be missed.   You can’t go far in Charleston without indulging in some seriously good food, which you can experience at the City Market, amongst other places. 

The Market is open daily and houses a fantastic range of individual vendors, including fine food and drink, shoes, hats, glass, and jewellery.     The market is also opened on a Friday and Saturday evening and the atmosphere is wonderful.     If you'd like to experience a true taste of Charleston, you can't go far wrong with a trip to the City Market.  

US Custom House

US Custom House is in the historic district and dates back to 1853.   The construction of the building was stopped prior to the Civil War and started again afterwards.   It is used to house government agencies and is a beautifully designed building, with its imposing pillars and lovely staircase, which is now used as seating for special events in the city.   

Fort Sumter, as mentioned earlier, was the location of the beginning of the American Civil War and is now a historic visitor attraction run by the US National Park Service.    Entrance is free, but is only accessible by boat as it is located on an island.   Swimming is not advised, obviously.    Due to transport restrictions, planning ahead is key to ensure that you're at the departure point at the correct time to get there and back.     During the Summer months, there's also a Sunset tour.

Boone Hall, like Magnolia, is a Southern plantation and brings alive the history of African Slaves and gives an insight into the 'Gullah' language and culture.    The plantation is huge and includes a butterfly pavilion, house tours, garden walks, and a self guided tour of Black History in America.   

Nathaniel Russell House Museum is a fine antebellum house located in the Downtown district of Charleston, and was the family home of Nathaniel Russell, a successful merchant of cotton, rice and other commodities.    The house is open to the public and tells the story of the Russell family and the slaves that served them during their time in the property. 

Rainbow Row

Rainbow Row (pictured above) is, as it says, a row of rainbow coloured houses.   13, to be precise, and the longest continuous row of Georgian houses in the US.    They are a major tourist attraction and included in pretty much every walking tour in the city.    It's easy to see why, with their colourful facades glinting in the sunlight of the leafy street.    

The Charleston Museum is also a wonderful spot for learning about the history of Charleston, the Civil War, the slave trade and the American Revolution, amongst others.   The Museum also offers joint entry to two other historic houses, the Heyward-Washington and Joseph Manigault, which both tell stories of more wealthy Charleston families and the slaves that served them. 

Charleston, aside from the mass of history it has preserved, is a thoroughly relaxing and welcoming city and I can't wait to go back and see what else it has to offer.

Have you visited Charleston?  What are your favourite sights?  

USS Alabama Battleship Memorial Park, Mobile

We uncovered the USS Alabama on our last US road trip when we were headed from Moblie to New Orleans and decided to swing by and check it out.   I'm so glad we did.  

Built in the Norfolk Naval Shipyard in Virginia, the USS Alabama was one of four South Dakota-class battleships constructed in the late 1930’s and early 1940’s.   The Alabama, along with the Massachusetts, are the only two ships still remaining.   The others; the South Dakota and the Indiana, were sold for scrap.  I can’t imagine how much scrap they produced, but I’m guessing it was a fair bit.

A beautiful tribute to fallen soldiers

Alabama residents raised money to have the ship preserved and housed it as a memorial to those that served in the Second World War.   They raised almost  $1m and the battleship was moved to Mobile Bay in 1964.    That’s quite an incredible achievement and it got even better, when it was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1986.  

Don't shoot!  

Not only is the Memorial Park home to an enormously fabulous battleship, it also has so much more to see and do.   Seriously, it's a huge area and it's so thoughtfully laid out, ensuring the ship is the unrivalled centre of attention, but also that the memorials to fallen soldiers are set in beautiful, peaceful surroundings.   

Apologies for the reflection

The USS Drum is a submarine with a long and distinguished military career and is the oldest US submarine on display in the world.  The world, people!  If that’s not a reason to visit, I don’t know what is.   During her work, she sank 15 ships and received 12 battle stars for service during the Second World War.    It’s a really fascinating attraction and it gives you the smallest sense of what life must have been like sneaking around far beneath the sea…

The Military Equipment portion of the park displays a selection of guns and tanks, which are bloody huge and the teeniest bit scary to stand in front of.  This is, of course, despite the fact that, you know, there’s no one in them and they’re not live.  I hope not, anyway.

I could absolutely use one of these some days

It's amazing how it managed to land on that post....

In addition to the USS Drum and the Alabama, other notable features are a river boat and B52 used in the Vietnam War, a Sherman tank, and a medium baltic range missile.   

The Alabama is obviously the main attraction, and it's so vast that you'll need at least a couple of hours to cover everything.   We needed this amount of time so that LT could pretend he was driving.  I also needed to extra time because I have no sense of direction and got lost a few times.    

I'm not a person who is in the least bit interested in war or war machinery, and I was surprised to be quite so impressed with the park.  If you're in the vicinity of Mobile, it's well worth a few hours of your time.

Suzanne x 

Getting To Grips With Gatlinburg

After driving across Tennessee in the glorious autumn sunshine, we rolled past a Walmart and decided to stock up on the essentials (and by that I mean Moonshine and Vodka) because I was fairly certain that, by the time we made it to our log cabin in the Smoky Mountains, there would definitely be nowhere to buy supplies.

I mean, Smoky Mountains National Park is in the middle of nowhere, right?  All that wide open space, the walking trails, the rural towns and villages, and the big scary brown bears, mean that it’s an idyllic spot where you can get back to nature and enjoy total silence.   I’ve been road tripping around the US for more than a decade and you’d think I would know to expect the unexpected by now.  Except that I don’t. 

On arriving on the main street in Gatlinburg, I was speechless.   It reminded me of going to Blackpool in England.   And I don’t like it there.   Both sides of the massively long street was packed full of restaurants, gift shops and tacky touristy stuff, which I was not at all prepared for.    I had visions of some remote location where I would have to walk miles to meet another soul if I wanted to ask for a cup of sugar.   As it turns out, if I wanted sugar, I could buy it in a million different forms from a million different places.   

How can a place that sells these gorgeous jars of moonshine possibly be bad? 

After staring out of the windows and spluttering some incomprehensible words at LT, I pulled in to a parking lot and we got out to explore.   After getting over my initial shock, I realised that my opinion didn’t really matter.   We were staying in a log cabin for a few days and we were only a few miles from Gatlinburg, which meant that we really had the best of both worlds.   If we ached for peace and tranquillity, we had it, and if we were desperate to buy tourist tat, we had a whole plethora of stores to offer it to us.   We also had more than a few bars to choose from, so that’s always guaranteed to cheer me up.

To be fair to Gatlinburg, it is offering what people want, and couldn't really deny the effort they were making to satisfy their visitors.  

Gatlinburg is a holiday resort in the boundaries of Seiver County, Tennessee, sitting on the edge of the fabulous Great Smoky Mountain National Park.   On all sides, Gatlinburg is surrounded by mountains, which rise majestically from the land and have wonderful names, such as Sugarland, Cove and Big Ridge.   

The name ‘Gatlinburg’ originated from the local post office, which was run by a chap called  Radford Gatlin.   Radford and his neighbours, the Ogle family, didn’t get along very well and, with Gatlin being very much a Confederate supporter and the majority of the townsfolk backing the Union, he was kicked out of the town just before the start of the American Civil War.   

The area was fought over during the War due to the lucrative salt mines at Alum Cave, on the Tennessee/North Carolina border.   On the arrival of the Union Army, Confederate fighters were pushed back towards North Carolina and beat a hasty retreat over the Smokies.  Life then returned to normal in Gatlinburg.   Or whatever can be classed as normal when your country is at war.   

My kind of visitor attraction.

In 1992, the town was partially devastated by a large fire, which took out Ripley’s Believe it or Not, various shops, and stores and almost an entire block.   Ripley’s also caught fire in 2002 and in 2003, so I decided not to visit.   Plus, I’ve been to the one in Orlando and I figured it might be fairly similar.    

Apart from the fire attracting Ripley’s site, there are countless other visitor hot spots to explore in the surrounding areas (no pun intended).  Other attractions include the fabulous ‘Dollywood’ and ‘Dollywood Splash Country’ in nearby Pigeon Forge; Ober Gatlinburg, which is the states only ski resort; the Hollywood Star Cars Museum (which houses the General Lee from Starsky and Hutch), and a haunted house called Mysterious Mansion, to name but a few.   There is certainly no shortage of things to do and families with kids must have a ball in town.  

What a way to make a livin'... 

As we were mainly in Gatlinburg because it was the closest town to our cabin and wanted some peace and quiet, naturally we didn’t venture to any of these attractions.  We did, however, spend some time and up and down the main strip eating and drinking.  There are numerous lovely little diners and restaurants to choose from.   After clocking a Happy Days sign at the side of the road, we made a beeline for it.  Who could pass this by without going in for a look? 

Monday, Tuesday...

The lovely thing about Gatlinburg is, if you can see past the fact that it's nestled between some gorgeous scenery and looks a touch out of place, is that amongst some of the more touristy stores, there are actually tons really beautifully designed buildings and lovely little independent stores.     It is certainly worth taking a closer look at, and I'm so glad I did.   I ended up being disappointed at myself for having judged it so harshly on arrival and, after a few days passing through, I came to find it quite charming.     It's not somewhere I would necessarily stay, but it was great to have the contrast of the tranquil mountains with the very lively town just a few miles away.    

If you look beyond the main drag, this is the kind of beauty you'll find in Gatlinburg

Have you been to Gatlinburg?   Where did you go and what did you think of it?

A Day Out With President Clinton...(in his library)

Presidential Libraries have been in place since the reign of Herbert Hoover, (reign is probably not the right word, but I’m British, so go with me) who was the 31^st Pres. of the United States.   Since the US is now on their 44^th, and have started to work backwards to pick up the men who came before Hoover, there are now quite a few dotted across the States.

The obligatory exterior shot...

The memorial centres and libraries are located in the home city of the specific President that bears their name, so it made sense, when road tripping through Arkansas, that I pop in and visit Bill Clinton.   So to speak.   

It’s a fantastic idea to have a public building, with many other uses, that can celebrate the life and work of each President (regardless of whether you voted for them or not).    It’s not something that’s done in the UK and I’m not sure how well it would go down, to be quite honest.  I can almost visualise what the graffiti would say on any Prime Minister’s library that was based in Scotland.    Most people would require some sort of translation, which might not be a bad thing…

Anyway, the William J. Clinton Memorial Library and Museum (to give it its full title) is located in Little Rock, Arkansas and is open seven days a week.  It’s only $7 for an adult ticket and is well worth the money for the sheer quality of the building and the vast amount of information on offer. 

I could totally blog from here

The perfect spot for ordering people around and keeping control of your minions. 

Within the building is the Library, a replica of the Oval Office, one of Clinton’s official limousines, and literally tons of information about his Presidential timeline and the things that he achieved in office.   It’s a really fascinating place and you could literally spend hours reading through the information and recalling the highlights of his years of service.    They don’t say much about The Scandal, but the existence of the Library and Museum is more to focus on his work, rather than his personal life, so I guess that’s fair enough.    And after all,  we all know, he did not have sexual relations with that woman.

It probably doesn’t sound that interesting (and I’m not making it sound any better, am I?) but it really does give a detailed insight into everything Clinton’s administration worked towards in their time at The White House.      

The Center is open all year round, except the usual holidays at Thanksgiving and Christmas. 

Yeah, what he said.

Have you visited any Presidential Libraries?  What was your favourite?