the great american road trip take 3 - charleston

Soaking up a bit of the old South was on our list, so we decided to spent 2 days in Charleston, South Carolina. We had breakfast at the hotel, before heading to Boone Hall plantation in nearby Mount Pleasant.

After touring the mansion (the same one used in the movies The Notebook and The North and The South), we toured the slave cabins, where up up 16 people lived at once. Kooka seemed to be the most taken with this side trip, wondering how people could live in such opulence, at the expense of others. She noticed the receipt for a bag of sugar, a teapot and one Negro girl. We were all quietly scanning the advertisements for slave sales which listed the name, age and attributes of each human being. (Jane, age 14, house girl, bad leg).








Punk got up to leave shortly after the Gullah speaker gave a pointed look at both kids and announced that most people wanted to buy slaves between the ages of 9 and 14, because children were easier to break. Kooka listened to the rest of the talk, while Punk headed down to the cotton docks to be alone with his thoughts, and about a thousand crabs scuttling across the rocks.


Nobody could shake the deep sense of history after this, so after a quick lunch at Chik-fil-a for lunch, and a walk through the City Market, we pressed on.





We drove past the Slave Mart - a sobering visit to one of the only places left in the U.S. where slaves were actually bought and sold. We were all pretty quiet as we pulled away.

Next we headed to the Old Provost and Dungeon, which held pirates before they swung from the gallows. The animatronic pirates looked Disney-esque (circa 1964), and were more distracting than informative. And while the dungeon was creepy the third floor was beautiful, and we all had fun dancing on the exact same floor that George Washington waltzed upon during a visit to Charleston.











Dinnertime was spent at the Early Bird Diner. Homemade meatloaf, fried-green-tomato sandwiches, cheesy mashed potatoes, buckwheat pancakes and home style mac and cheese.

A swim in the pool, packing up for tomorrow, and bedtime for everyone.
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