Dave's annual antennas conference was in Charleston in early June, so we all drove south, picking up Nana Kelley on the way down. (I won't bore you with the complex logistics of how we all got there!) While Dave worked every day, the three girls traipsed around this great old southern city -- OK, we drove a lot rather than walked. I, of course, was most taken with the architecture. Dave and I did get a night out, at the conference's opening reception, USO-style, on the USS Yorktown aircraft carrier. We had a lot of fun on that enormous ship.
Mom K has always wanted to take a carriage ride, and there's no better place for them than in Charleston. We did that our first morning, to get a taste of the city's history and architecture. Amazing piazzas (their word for big multi-story porches) and ironwork!
We took one day to drive up to Drayton Hall, a National Trust site that I'd heard about from the time I worked for the Trust, oh, some 18 years ago. Their claim to fame is that they're the only Ashley River plantation to have survived both the Revolutionary and Civil Wars. What I think is really cool is that they haven't done anything to change the site -- they use its state of disrepair (well, they've stopped any further deterioration from about the mid 1970s) to tell the story of the plantation and its inhabitants, free and slave, white and black. They do an amazing job. 
This is Katie (and Elmo) in front of the family's "growth chart" wall -- dating back hundreds of years. We all really enjoyed that day.We also saw the aquarium and the Charleston Museum, and on our last day, all four of us took the boat out to Ft. Sumter. Very interesting -- an island of nothing but the fort.
But I have a clearer understanding now of the military beginnings of the Civil War. And later that afternoon Dave and I went to see the Hunley, the Civil War submarine that was recovered from the harbor less than 10 years ago. It's in a conservation lab, and they're doing an amazing job of the work. That was much more interesting than I expected. Here's Dave in a replica of the Hunley -- can you imagine being in there with seven other men and a few candles, underwater, in a vessel that had already sunk twice? 
Hard to believe anyone volunteered for that assignment.Someday I'd like to go back and wander the streets some more to really fully take in the architecture and history.
(This is the Arthur Ravenel Bridge, a really beautiful new truss bridge that has become a symbol of Charleston.)
