Last night, I had judged the campground to be all friendly and pristine. That was before I checked out the bathrooms, which are abysmal. This morning, two of the four toilets were generously, gloriously clogged. The whole room smells like pee. The floor is flooded with an ocean of standing water, and there are wads of toilet paper, diapers and maxi pads just marinating in it. Nevertheless, the girls and I braved these conditions for quick showers. Natalie has declared that she's never again going near that bathroom. Good luck with that.
Clare had it in her head that we would be spending the day at the splash park here at the county campground. When we broke the news to her that we had other plans -- like, to actually visit Charleston -- she was so outraged that she refused to eat breakfast in protest.
I had a short list of things to see while we're here. And even though we ignored Clare's objection, today that list still kind of unraveled. It would have been too much to ask to match the fantastic day we had yesterday. Our plans are bound to come apart eventually. That's why we try to be flexible.
The waitress who plied us with drinks at the hotel pool in Myrtle Beach was excited to hear that we were headed for Charleston, and she suggested visiting the downtown farmers market. Somehow her recommendation superseded any of the other ideas I had about sights to see. So first-thing this morning, we headed to the market, which takes up a full square block on the uptown side of the Charleston peninsula. It was crowded and colorful, with dozens of farm stands, food vendors and art booths, and lots of good people-watching, but it was not much different from the farmers market in Lafayette, and it wasn't uniquely Charleston.
From there, we drove several blocks east, trolled for parking, found a two-hour zone and headed for the Fort Sumter visitors center. (We couldn't find any parking lots, though we passed a few public parking garages. Careful readers -- and any friend of Keith -- and anyone who's asked to borrow our Yakima, for that matter -- will understand why we could not avail ourselves of those.) We got as far as the front gates before we realized that ferry boats depart the visitors center for the Civil War-era fort, which sits at the mouth of the Charleston Harbor, only three times daily. If we caught the next ferry, explored the fort and then returned as soon as possible, it would still amount to a three-hour-plus excursion and we would risk getting a parking ticket, or worse, getting towed. So that was out.
I also wanted to explore the historic waterfront area about a mile farther south. But on this hot, humid day, the rest of the family vetoed the idea of walking that far in the noonday sun. So, scratch that, too.
Plan C involved stopping by the Hominy Grill -- a Southern comfort food restaurant that comes highly recommended in every guide book and web site that I researched -- for lunch.We found it on the near-north side -- an undeniably trendy restaurant sticking out in the middle of an otherwise gritty, overgrown neighborhood. Guests were overflowing onto the sidewalk, which is both a great sign (all these people can't be wrong) and a terrible sign (the wait for a table is almost an hour). With three kids on the verge of the lunchtime grumpies and nothing to do within blocks except maybe pull weeds on the sidewalk or clean up some graffiti on the building next-door, we opted to ditch that plan, as well.
Moving on to Plan D, we drove out to Middleton Place, a former rice plantation, now a national historic landmark, that includes a museum and the oldest landscape gardens in the country -- about a 30-minute drive up the Ashley River. I was glad to leave downtown, which had been frustrating me all morning with construction, traffic and lack of parking. We have yet to discover where all the people hang out -- other than the sidewalk outside the Hominy Grill. I really want to get a sense of Charleston, but I feel like I can't get any footing here, yet. The city is giving us the Heisman.
Clare complained of a headache on the drive out to the plantation. She didn't eat breakfast, remember? We pulled into the parking lot and let her out of the car just in time for her to throw up everything that was in her tummy -- basically the can of root beer she had at the farmers market. After that, she felt much better. What do you do after you've thrown up in the middle of a parking lot? If you're Clare, you crave lunch. So, we went straight to the Middleton Place restaurant, housed in an historic brick building on the grounds, and feasted on a lunch buffet of fried chicken, corn pudding, squash casserole, collard greens, pulled pork with mustard barbecue and Hoppin' John (black-eyed peas and rice). Clare wolfed down cornbread and three pieces of fried chicken and asked for more, but we pleaded with her to slow down.
We took a guided tour of the plantation home, which was one of three homes on the plantation, and which is the only one left standing. Established in the late 1600s, Middleton Place was home to four generations of the Middleton Family, many of whom had prominent roles in the colonial and antebellum history of South Carolina. The kids did a fantastic job of feigning interest, but they really couldn't have cared less. I was disappointed in the staff, who seemed aloof and not at all interested in accommodating us during our visit. So after the home tour, I declared that a self-guided tour of the grounds was in order, ignoring the dark, ominous clouds that were gathering above us, to my family's chagrin.
About ten minutes into the stroll, we were caught in a soaking downpour. We were too far away from any of the buildings to make a break for it without getting completely drenched. So we managed to squeeze onto a covered bench that must have been set into the landscape for this exact reason, though it offered only a scrap of shelter. For an hour, we sat there waiting for the rain to pass. To pass the time, we played Eye Spy, and it went like this:
Mom: "I spy something with my little tiny eye, and it starts with the letter T."
Everyone else: "Tree."
Clare: "I spy something with my little tiny eye, and it starts with the letter L."
Everyone else: "Leaf."
Charlie: "I spy something with my little tiny eye, and it starts with the letter R."
Everyone else: "Rain."
Having exhausted all the possibilities in that game, we moved on to Twenty Questions, which is a miserable game when Natalie's around, because she comes up with, for example, some obscure Harry Potter creature called an Acromantula, and expects you to guess it. We commanded her to please make us guess something that we actually know. But still, the game went something like this:
Everyone else: "Is it a person?"
Natalie: "That depends."
Everyone else: "Is it bigger than a breadbox?"
Natalie: "If it's in this dimension, then yes."
Everyone else: "I'm out."
The rain finally eased up, and we made our way back to the car across washed-out paths and flooded yards, with only a quick stop in the stable yard to greet the farm animals and watch a singular costumed interpreter demonstrate the craft of coopering, and an even quicker stop at a circa-1870 freedman cottage to study a small exhibit on the African-American experience on the plantation, which was probably the biggest reason I wanted to visit in the first place. I may have been the only one disappointed that we didn't really the full Middleton Place experience. Everyone else, it seems, was relieved to be done with the place.
We made a quick stop at the grocery store to stock up on supplies, and by the time we made it back to the campground, the weather had cleared up completely.
We made dinner at the campsite and wrapped up the evening with a round of National Park Matching Game, which may have been the highlight of the day.
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