Author: Philip Weiss

First stop this morning was Starbucks. I needed coffee. There I looked up where I needed to go to get to Fort Sumter. The ferry from Patriot’s Point next to my hotel is closed for a bit, so I had to cross the Ravenel Bridge to downtown Charleston. I mention that because it’s a beautiful suspension bridge.

I got to the Fort Sumter Visitor Education Center about 10:45 a.m. and the first ferry leaves at 11. Great timing and I hadn’t even known the timing of the ferries. During the trip across the harbor, the wind blew the deck chairs into a tumbled mess. Due to the breeze, I mostly couldn’t hear the canned audio telling some of the history of Fort Sumter. Lots of uses of states rights and a debate on the meaning of freedom. Very disappointed.

We had a brief wait to dock at Fort Sumter and then a short talk by ranger Olivia. She also repeated the debate on the meaning of freedom line. I wish they’d given her a better summary to repeat. We then had just short of an hour total

Then we got to wander around Fort Sumter, which looks quite different from 1860. During the Civil War the Fort was reduced to rubble and then rebuilt during the 1870s with much lower walls. In 1899, a large cement battery was built in the parade grounds as a defense during the Spanish-American War. So although the stuff I photographed is over 100 years old, it isn’t what I was hoping to see. Ah well.

After the ferry ride back, I viewed the exhibits at the Visitor Education Center (I hadn’t had time on arrival). These were excellent. Didn’t dance around the issue of slavery in the slightest.

By this point, I was hungry. So I drove closer downtown and looked for a place to eat. Most of the places were either closing up for the end of brunch, or had a line. I ended up at a place called Barbara Jean’s which is a small chain serving Southern food. It was mediocre. I need to find a better way of finding good restaurants than walking around, or looking at Yelp. The thing is that people with poor taste in food use Yelp too.

What I thought was a Confederate Museum turned out not to be. On looking closer, the museum was upstairs and an entrance to the Charleston City Market was below. I have no interest in a Confederate Museum, particularly one run by the Daughters of the Confederacy. But the City Market I did want to see. There were a lot of basket makers. A few people selling shea butter. Not a whole lot that was interesting to me. But I did see one booth with some great jewelry made by Sheinata Carn-Hall. I chatted with her a bit, and ended up buying something from her. When I left on my trip, my sister-in-law told me to buy her something pretty, so I’ve been picking things up for her.

Then I drove to Georgetown. I thought about staying in Charleston one more night so I could have another stab at Southern food Charleston-style tomorrow. However, weekend rates were in place there and I didn’t feel like paying them a second night. $40 cheaper here than there. Hopefully I’ll find some good breakfast here in Georgetown.

19 January 2012

On leaving Titusville, I decided to get off the interstate and drive closer to the coast. So I headed over to US-1 and drove north. For a while that seemed like a good choice, although a bit boring. The towns along US-1 in that section aren’t particularly interesting. But on approaching Daytona Beach, the traffic increased, and 45 minutes of my driving was like driving highway 99 from Seattle to Everett. Lots of signs and traffic and intersections with lights and crappy businesses lining the road. Bleah. So when US-1 crossed I-95 I jumped back on the interstate.

But a few miles later I saw a sign for Saint Augustine and I remembered my middle school history: Saint Augustine is the oldest continuously occupied European settlement in the United States. So I got back onto US-1 and drove into the town. I need to do some research to find out if there are any native American settlements that have been been extent in some form for longer.

After parking in the city parking garage and stepping through the visitor center, I saw two things across the street: a Ripley’s Odditorium, and Castillo de San Marcos. First I headed toward the castle. Along the way is the Huguenot Cemetery, which is closed to public access unfortunately. My inner genealogist couldn’t help but snap a few photos from the wall. I didn’t get more because I figured such a prominent cemetery would have already been extensively photographed. Looking it up on Find A Grave right now it appears that is sort of true. Most of the markers have photos, but they are small versions. Grrr… I wish people more people would post large, high resolution photos on F.A.G.

Then across the street to Castillo de San Marcos. This was a military fort built to protect Saint Augustine and Spanish Florida in general from predation by English privateers based in Charleston. The literature on site trumpets the fact that San Marcos was never taken in battle. However, it was only attacked twice, and one of those times the English completely sacked Saint Augustine before retreating north on land.

The castle has extremely thick walls made of a rock that absorbs cannonballs. Outward from it lie additional protections including a dry moat, a covered way, and a sloping hill called a glacis. It has four diamond shaped bastions designed to make anyone approaching the fort come under crossfire from two of them. On top is a wide flat area where dozens of naval cannon are mounted. It would be very hard to take it.

The old Spanish part of Saint Augustine is mostly a pedestrian mall now. Lots of tourist shops in historic buildings, most of which seemed to be rebuilds rather than original construction. That made it less intriguing to me. I had lunch at a place that served English food called Prince of Wales. Hand battered fish and waffle chips. Very tasty. Decent singer playing on the porch as well.

For the late afternoon, I headed to the Ripley’s Believe It Or Not Odditorium. I had some trepidation that turned out to be justified. A significant chunk of what Robert Ripley found and promoted was foreign cultural practices that seemed strange to him. His cartoons and the Odditorium don’t usually draw attention to those practices in order to put them down. But what they do isn’t celebrating them either. The actual presentation is very othering. There are also a lot of fun things there: a sculpture of a manatee made entirely of soda cans recovered from Florida wetlands, a three story erector set model of a ferris wheel, and a couple of dizziness-inducing spinning tunnels. And lots more of course.

Then, driving on to the outskirts of Jacksonville.

20 January 2012

The reason to get to Jacksonville on the 19th was that I wanted to stop by the Florida Department of Vital Statistics and request a few death certificates for my genealogy work. A few people in my family tree retired to Florida and died in that state. I could have requested the death certificates via mail or online via Vitalchek, but the latter charges a hefty processing fee and I knew I would make mistakes on the applications if I did the former. So as long as I was going to be nearby, an in person visit seemed perfect. The bonus is that Florida, unlike a lot of other states, only charges $5 per death certificate. I did not ask for rush service, so my copies will be mailed to me in Seattle. The clerk was unable to direct me to a coffee shop afterward though. How do you people in Jacksonville live without coffee shops downtown?

And then I drove to Charleston. Other than gas and food, I didn’t stop in Georgia. I thought about possibly staying the night in Savannah and checking out that city, but I just wasn’t interested in genteel antebellum life and architecture last night. After crossing an immense suspension bridge into South Carolina, I kept to US-17 most of the way to Charleston. I’ve seen more swamplands in South Carolina than I did in Florida.

Just after I drove through downtown Charleston I remembered I wanted to see Fort Sumter, where the South started the Civil War. Where it was slipped my mind, so I pulled over and checked Google Maps, finding out that it was in Charleston harbor. So I found a hotel for the night as it was too late for a visit. Thought about heading out for a nice dinner, but the road food wasn’t sitting well, and I was tired, and my hotel room had a giant whirlpool tub. After an hour of soaking in the tub, I wrote a couple of blog posts and slept.

18 January 2012

Wednesday morning I woke up, hugged Lenei goodbye as she went off to work, caught up on my internets, then packed up and headed out the door.

First destination? Royal Palm Cemetery in West Palm Beach, where a relative was supposedly buried according to the Veteran’s Administration National Gravesite Locator. However, according to the cemetery office, he was not. Strike #1.

Then, a block away from the cemetery, I was waiting to turn right when my car got rear-ended. Fellow behind me was watching the light and not me. I was watching the crossing cars. In Florida there often seems to be one car at every light that blazes through the red just after it turns. I did not want that car to hit me. The car behind me did. Minor damage to my car. I’ll have it looked at when I get home and if a shop determines it’s a safety hazard, then I’ll get the guy or his insurance to pay to replace it. I’ve got other dings on the bumper, so I’m not going to fix it if there’s no safety issue.

Planned stop was the Kennedy Space Center. But on the way, I followed a fire truck in I-95 for about 20 miles. It was running with its lights, but under the speed limit. I wondered what was up, but after a few miles I noticed a giant smoke cloud in the distance. There was a 20 acre brush fire in one of the towns near the K.S.C. Police had all roads nearby closed, so I couldn’t use them as a shortcut to K.S.C. The smoke cloud was immense though.

I arrive at Kennedy Space Center around 1:30. The approach is via a long straight causeway from the mainland. The parking lot wasn’t very full, but I still arrived after the last up close tour had sold out. So I had to settle for general admission, which includes a tour to an observation gantry and to an on-site exhibit covering the Apollo program.

The bus drives past the assembly, but doesn’t stop. Still, it’s closer than we got to anything else that wasn’t an exhibit.

LC 39 Observation Gantry was pretty meh. Basically you can see the assembly building and a bunch of launch towers in the distance.

Heading back to the bus to go to the Apollo exhibit, I ran across a cup laying at the bottom of the tower.

Why the Stanley Cup was being shown at the Kennedy Space Center I don’t know. Cool for hockey buffs I suppose, but it seems kind of a non-sequiter at the space center. The Hockey Hall of Fame in Toronto makes more sense. I checked out the event page for the Stanley Cup at the Kennedy Space Center. The C.E.O. of the company that runs the K.S.C. visitor complex is the owner of the Boston Bruins, the 2011 winner of the Stanley Cup. They were also letting some folks try on an actual N.H.L. Championship ring and get photos with it. One guy was really really chuffed about that!

The Apollo/Saturn V Center was really awesome. There they have what they claim is the actual equipment from the Apollo 8 launch set up in a theater. The exhibit plays the audio from the final 3 minutes of the Apollo 8 countdown with spotlights on the seats where the person speaking each part would have sat. Also, the auditorium rumbles with what I assume is the same amount of motion that accompanied the Apollo launch.

In the main part of the center is a full size Saturn V rocket suspended from the ceiling. It is immense. It took me about 3 minutes to walk the entire length of the rocket.

The center also had a treasures exhibit with a number of items including prototype and actual moon space suits and other tools. There are some moon rocks there, including one visitors can touch, though it felt to me like it was encased in a thin film of plastic. Pretty cool.

After the center, I returned to the main visitor center. I was tiring by this point, so the only exhibit at the main visitor center that I hit up was the rocket garden. I have no idea if these are actual rockets or mock-ups. I didn’t spend a lot of time there because it started to rain and I didn’t want to ruin my camera.

And lastly, I saw that the visitor center had one unusual item.

I didn’t feel like driving very far afterward, so I only got as far as Titusville, about 15 minutes away. When I checked in, the woman at the front desk looked at my identification and noted I was from Seattle. She knew someone from Seattle. He was a DJ. He DJs goth/industrial. And it just so happens I knew who he was because DJ Turbo had added me on Google+. I may even have heard him DJ once or twice, though I wouldn’t swear to it. I don’t go out as much as I used to.

I did have one goal that night though. Extract everything from my bags and repack it so as to be more useful for the next couple of weeks of travel. I needed to get the stuff I wanted to wear in my small suitcase so I don’t need to carry both in every time. And find all my electronic stuff and get it into my electronics backpack so I know where it is. Also, laundry.

And then bed.