Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

Every year since 1999 Anne and I have taken one road trip to a different part of the United States and seen attractions, wonders, and events we didn’t have back home. From 1999 to 2003 we did so as best friends; from 2004 to the present, as husband and wife. After years of contenting ourselves with everyday life in Indianapolis and any nearby places that also had comics and toy shops, we overcame some of our self-imposed limitations and resolved as a team to leave the comforts of home for annual chances to see creative, exciting, breathtaking, outlandish, historical, and/or bewildering new sights in states beyond our own. We’re the Goldens. This is who we are and what we do.

For 2023 it was time at last to venture to the Carolinas, the only southern states we hadn’t yet visited, with a focus on the city of Charleston, South Carolina. Considering how many battlefields we’d toured over the preceding years, the home of Fort Sumter was an inevitable addition to our experiential collection…

After one last pit stop in North Carolina’s western proboscis, in the town of Columbus…

TOTAL ROAD TRIP MILEAGE AS OF GAS STOP #2: 558.0.

…Day Two continued southeast down I-26 as we entered South Carolina for our first time. Deciduous trees gave away to sturdier, more heat-resistant species along the way from Columbus to Columbia, where we’d search for art, food, and musical tributes, not necessarily in that order.

First stop was, once again, a welcome center — not for long, mind you. We’d barely just left North Carolina’s own, and would’ve been fine passing theirs by. Alas, Anne’s wish for the mandatory photo of a “Welcome to South Carolina” road sign had been thwarted. Their welcome center was our next-best bet.

Not much else about their grounds bowled us over like other rest stops had, though the tourist attendant on duty foisted a huge stack of brochures and booklets at me. Usually by the time we’re walking around another state, we already have a pretty good idea of what we want to see. But hey, you never know. I accepted the free promotional swag.

Before long we were in Columbia, the State Capitol, where the South Carolina State House ranked highly on our to-do list, just as other State Houses have on our previous trips. However, our return trip on Day Five would take this same route, so we held off on a full-length romp around the State House grounds till then.

We didn’t stray far from their capitol, though — practically across the street lay the Five Points neighborhood, a cozy shopping district on the turf of the University of South Carolina (not to be confused with Atlanta’s Little Five Points). Lunch was at DiPrato’s Delicatessen and Market, which touted New York-style sandwiches and cuts. ‘Twas arguably an odd choice on our part, but we didn’t want our entire South Carolina dining experience to be nine straight meals of Southern-fried chicken or whatever. We mixed it up a little.

Not pictured: Anne’s selection was their smoked turkey and cranberry-sauce sandwich with cream cheese, alfalfa sprouts, and so forth. We also bought a few cherry/chocolate chip cookies for the road, if I’m reading my notebook scrawls correctly, though cherry is an uncommon choice for either of us. The background music was a mix of oldies from random decades, more of an upstate New York format.

Not far away was another attraction on our list, largely for “Because It’s There” reasons. Among the numerous art installations around Five Points is a 17-foot-tall sculpture erected in honor of those ’90s pop-chart mainstays, Grammy Award-winning local heroes Hootie and the Blowfish. It was dedicated in 2010 upon the 25th anniversary of the time a young Darius Rucker first met guitarist/songwriter Mark Bryan, and lo a band was ultimately born.

Other selections of art and flora decorated the area on either side of the main thoroughfare. One particular piece was a must-see for us, but took extra effort because several surrounding streets were closed off by police for reasons unknown and ruined any attempts at mapping on the fly. We ended up moving the car for a third time, found a metered parallel space, and walked a couple blocks over to the niftiest sight of the afternoon: Tunnelvision, a 1975 mural by a Columbia artist named Blue Sky (legally changed).

Elsewhere around the neighborhood…

…which seemed like enough sightseeing for the moment. We saved the rest of our Columbia checklist for later and headed onward toward one very, very last stop before Charleston — some handicraft from a galaxy far, far away.

To be continued!

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[Link enclosed here to handy checklist for other chapters and for our complete road trip history to date. Follow us on Facebook or via email sign-up for new-entry alerts, or over on BlueSky if you want to track my faint signs of life between entries. Thanks for reading!]