This will conclude the epic saga of our vacation for 2009. I will endeavor to hit the high spots of the last two days and move on to other topics for your consideration in future blogs.
Before I get started I need to set the stage a bit for what typically occurs on vacations we have planned during our anniversary which is on June 24th. Evidently every city in the United States has reserved the week of June 24th for their major event of the year. The first place it became truly evident to me was on our trip to San
Francisco a couple of years back. After carefully checking every major travel web site (Priceline, Hotline, Travelocity, Expedia, AAA and Here’s Arnold.com) when we decided to go to San Francisco for our anniversary. Only after we arrived did we discover that June 24th was date of the Gay Pride Parade. After carefully debating if we wanted to take a chance of being featured on all the major news stations all over the world, we decided to get out of town and go to Napa Valley. About half way there we discovered that THE major NASCAR event for the year on the West Coast was being held the same day and was halfway between the Napa Valley and the Queen for a Day celebration. Now I don’t know what evil demented person scheduled a NASCAR event and the Gay Pride Parade for the same day, but those two events could not be more diametrically opposed, so there was no overlap at all of the people attending each event and we were caught in the middle. It’s enough to force a 50 year old Baptist to take a few sips but we did survive and in San Francisco it wasn’t even a blip on the screen.
Anyway with that understanding we found after planning our trip to Charleston that their premier event for the year, Harbor Fest, was the week we arrived. We should have become suspicious that something was up the first day we arrived. We got on the elevator at the hotel and we were the only ones that spoke American. There were Australian, British, Russian, Spanish and a few others I couldn’t begin to understand all trying to get somewhere in a short amount of time. Anyway, being the cosmopolitan travelers that we are, we didn’t have a clue what was going on.
Evidently Harbor Fest is the one weekof the year that everyone in the world tries to come to Charleston. Who knew? There were tall ships from almost every nation represented and I really did enjoy walking the 15 miles to and from the harbor to see them. There is really nothing quite as majestic as these beautiful ships. In addition there were exhibits of all kind and, best of all, great junk food.
The two most impressive ships were the American Eagle, now used as a training ship for the Coast Guard and the Russian Tall ship whose name I can’t pronounce because it only has consonants in the name. We found out they were both built by Germany during WW II and were originally used to train U-Boat sailors. They had the same controls as a U-Boat. Now I never did figure out how they practiced the “Dive-Dive” command on a tall ship, but the Jolly Roger did it in Pirates of the Caribbean so I am sure there is a way.
As we were waiting to get on the Russian ship I noticed that there was only one stand selling American flags and it was located immediately across from the Russian ship. I asked one of the volunteers working the event if this was a coincidence or was it planned. Her response was a vacant stare and then “Why would we do that, they are our friends aren’t they?” Now anyone in my family knows that in most cases when I hear such an absurd statement, I will respond, often before my brain is fully engaged, but in this case her response left me speechless. How do you respond to such an obtuse comment? Granted she was younger than me (most people are). Maybe she was too young to remember the Cold War. Hiding under desks during Civil Defense drills at school. Perhaps she had never read the story of the Cuban Missile crisis. Possibly she’s never seen the footage of Nikita Khrushchev beating his shoe on the UN table and shouting “We will bury you!!” I one the other hand lived through all that and I will never think of Mother Russia as a “friend” of the US.
Anyway, being completely stunned by her comment, my brain delayed long
enough for me to realize we were only three steps from boarding the Russian ship and I thought it was the prudent thing not to anger the sailors until after we go off, so I shook my head, smiled at the lady, held my head up high and asked the Russian sailors at the boarding deck “How ya’ll doin’’ and waddled on board like nothing had happened.
While on ship we saw some of the sailors stocking the food bins and I finally discovered how they were able to compete with our mi
litary forces. They evidently do not purchase uniforms for everyone, thereby saving money on clothing and cleaning bills and investing that money in Cuban missiles and equipment.
OK the other cool thing about Harbor Fest is they had pirates. They were bucking their swashes, shivering their timbers and all that genuine pirate stuff; pirate women, pirate guys, parrots and all. Now my brain sometimes works in odd ways. It was 110 in the shade and these pirates all had on at least three layers of clothing, long sleeves, bandanas, long pants, a vest and knee high black boots. Now I wonder if the real pirates really dressed like that? If so, how in the world did they survive? Another thing. Have you ever owned any kind of bird? If all the stuff at the bottom of a bird cage ended up on the pirate’s shoulder were the parrot always perched is it any wonder that there were so few pirates. Their social network had to be pretty small. No wonder that had to kidnap recruits. It was a real hoot to see those nasty old pirates pulling their wheeled coolers with bottle water in them. Somehow that kinda destroyed to whole image.
We did find one other item I thought maybe Robin or Carrie might want to add to their furntiture collection.
The next day Sandra decided she would rather go to the beach than to see a plantation, so off we went. Took us about an hour to find the beach. Now you would think that all we would have to do is travel east until we hit the Atlantic Ocean, but it was not that easy. Parking places were hard to come by, but we finally found one, again having to walk another 5 miles on scorching sand to the beach. Once we established our beach head and rested for an hour or so, Sandra decided it was time to go into the water. Now in my youth that would have been exciting. Back then I had not yet I discovered that I needed glasses and I could not see what was actually in the water with me. Now, different story. I now refuse to enter a large body of water without my glasses.
So here we go. I had my ball cap to protect my bald head from infrared rays, my sun glasses to keep out the UV rays and my glasses to see the sting rays. We go out about waist deep and God began to smile. He realized that here was an opportunity to have big fun with the fat guy. Let’s send this tidal wave to take him out. Sure enough the wave took out my legs and took me under. No big deal, I have been under water before. Something today was different though. I could not get my legs back under me. The next wave doused me again and knocked off my ball cap. Sandra was close by and caught it and then began laughing, hilariously and uncontrollably while I was causing a low tide by drinking all the sea water. Still struggling, another wave took off my sunglasses and dunked me again. Sandra laughed harder as I sank beneath the wave. At this point I grabbed my glasses because I knew they were next and just decided to die with my glasses in tact so everyone would recognize me at the funeral. Finally after being dragged back to shore where little children were now laughing with Sandra, I got to my feet, declared that I had enough drowning for the day and crawled back to our spot on the beach. Finally Sandra was able to regain her composure and joined me. After I had enough strength back in my legs, we walked back to the car. Since it was low tide when we left add another ½ mile to the walk out. That plus the fact that I got lost again going west and you have the makings of a memorable outing.
This whole episode gave me some insight on the day I fell down the basement stairs at our old house. As I was lying up against the basement wall taking inventory to determine what was broken and if I was still alive, I heard this hysterical laughter. Now there was nothing funny about the situation to me and I was thinking, Lord just let me live to see another day. Meanwhile my daughter was doubled up laughing. Now I know it was not her fault. She inherited it from her mother.
We did eat in two other outstanding places, High Cottons and Hall’s Chophouse. Highly recommend the Molten Chocolate Volcano Cake at High Cottons. When Sandra bit into that I thought I was going to have to call 911. Eyes rolled back, deep throaty moans and smile all across her face. She didn’t take another bite for a few minutes and I finally had to tell her to breath.
Well that pretty well wraps up the highlights of our vacation. Oh except for driving back which was pretty much a repeat of the sleep fest I had going over. Sandra did however let (i.e. require) me to drive first so she did not have to drive the entire trip back. All in all a pretty neat trip. We will definitely consider going back to Charleston.
Maybe next time we can find the slave museum.
