Thursday 8th December – Charleston

People had raved to us about how beautiful Savannah, Georgia is but we had decided to head further north to also take in Charleston, mostly following the description from the Rough Guide itineraries which states 'perhaps the finest old town in all America, enriched by the culture of the nearby sea islands'.  We headed in towards the usual place – Visitor’s centre – which in this City has extra spacious RV parking – points to Charleston!  More points were scored when we went into the VC and discovered that there is a free trolley service into and around the City, no having to buy hop-on hop-off tickets.  I also noticed that there is an attraction called ‘Patriots’ point’ which consists of an aircraft carrier, the USS Yorktown, as well as a submarine and a destroyer.  I may have mentioned this out loud and then we were definitely going!  But we got reduced tickets at the VC of course!

We explored the City first via the free trolley and our legs.  It is beautiful there.  Yes, it helped that it was a blue sky sunny day again but the Georgian style houses and State buildings were stunning as was the waterfront park where we saw our first dolphins and pelicans of the trip!

That's about as much of a dolphin you will get to see out of the water anywhere!

Pelicans

Great egret

Just one example of the beautiful architecture in Charleston 

The USS Yorktown from the riverfront walk

We strolled around some lovely streets.  We then reached an official building, which turned out to be the Federal Courthouse, surrounded by Television cameras and vans and also armed Police Officers.

We approached the Officers to find out what was happening.  It was the trial of Dylann Roof, the young white supremacist who had slain 9 innocent church-goers inside the Charleston church right opposite the court house in June 2015.  Walking around this tranquil City today it is hard to perceive that such a horrifically violent and meaningless slaughter could take place here so recently.  Roof has since been convicted of murder and sentenced to death.

We headed back towards the RV, only $6 for parking and then we headed over the bridge (right) towards Patriots’ point for a late lunch on board before it was time to hit the naval museum.

It was our first time on board a carrier and the scale was immense.

USS Yorktown

View towards the take-off section of the deck, towards the bridge we had just driven over, the one on the right is a Phantom F4 I'm reliably informed!

Simon's favourite, F14 Tom cat 

There were so many excellent exhibits to see.  Naturally we headed up onto the flight deck first to take a look at the selection of planes.  Then exploring the bridge and the numerous levels on board kept us occupied… until we noticed the sun was starting to set and we hadn’t even had a chance to view the submarine, the USS Clamagore, or the destroyer, the USS Laffey, yet!

USS Clamagore

USS Laffey

The USS Laffey is the most decorated WWII era US Destroyer still in existence.  It supported the allied invasion of Normandy in June 1944 before heading to the Pacific where it was attacked - there is a scary re-enactment of the kamikaze attack that you can experience whilst sat in the gun mount.  It then went to war again in Korea in 1952 before finally being retired in 1975.

We got to enjoy some stunning sunset views of Charleston:

We learnt about the significance of the USS Yorktown – it served during WWII in the pacific and naval pilots flew numerous successful missions from her decks before she was struck by a Japanese bomb.  The bomb made a hole in the flight deck which killed 5 sailors but the ship survived to be towed back to America and repaired.  In December 1968 the Yorktown had the responsibility of extracting the astronauts of Apollo 8, the first manned mission to orbit the moon, from the Pacific ocean after they splashed back down to earth:

Spot the RV...... view from the USS Yorktown

We never got a chance to look around the whole Destroyer or to enter the Vietnam Museum based on the land directly to where the ships were moored. There is so much to see at Patriots Point that you really need to allow a whole day to see it all.

We had to leave the museum when 6pm struck, and it was dark, but as we were returning to our campsite from last night we didn’t have to worry about finding somewhere to stay.  A late dinner was enjoyed with a rare opportunity to catch the US Bake Off (Simon wasn’t impressed).  I never knew that Mary Berry was employed on this Bake Off too…. She must be raking it in!  It was in exactly the same format as the UK version but sadly I have been unable to catch any other episodes!