Nice beaver!
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…
We’re walking, we’re walking, we’re walking. Eventually our day in downtown Charleston came to a close. Just a few more sights to go before we’d have to move on.
Marion Square was nearly the midpoint of our mile-long jaunt. Once known as Citadel Green, it was your typical city park with greenery, benches, and artistic accessories, but with a touch of centuries-old history to the place. And I don’t mean the Jehovah’s Witnesses kiosk on the corner — at least the third or fourth such station we’d seen throughout our stay in town.
Their fountain festooned with fake fauna.
Frog and flamingos.
Cute li’l otters with their cute tiny paws.
Turtle turtle!
A fox, the only statue that sees through the frog’s shenanigans.
Non-animal features include a marker saluting park namesake Brigadier General Francis Marion, a French & Indian War veteran who implemented guerrilla tactics during the Revolution.
The Horn Work, a remnant of the city’s first citadel that fared poorly during the Redcoats’ Siege of Charleston in 1780.
Sample park greenery.
Late afternoon, we returned to the car and reunited at long last with the bottled waters we’d foolishly left behind. We made one last stop on our way out, not far away at the larger Hampton Park, which was named after a Confederate general but hadn’t yet been toppled onto its side by protestors. We had one more statue to add to our sightseeing collection: a tribute to Denmark Vesey, a former slave who’d won and bought his freedom, began an AME congregation, and planned a slave uprising that might’ve freed thousands but led to deaths and destruction on their way out. The plan was thwarted when two slaves narc’d on him to their masters, leading to his execution on July 2, 1822.
Painted lightbox along our drive.
Reaching Vesey was oddly challenging. The streets encircling the park are one-way and took a second lap before I could confidently pull into an adjacent parking lot. There weren’t that many walking paths, but we took longer than expected to stumble across the right inward spiral that led to him.
The dirt path was easier on our feet than downtown sidewalks and blessedly shadier than too-sunny King Street.
The pretty flowers included this canna lily.
A power line cut through the middle of the park, detracting a bit from the prettiness.
Subject acquired. Erected in 2014; sculpted by Ed Dwight, whose work we’d see again the next day in a another city.
Bible in one hand; hat and carpenter’s tools in the other.
We were back at the hotel by 4 p.m., both so very destroyed that we refused to leave our room for supper. Anne ate literally nothing else, which isn’t uncommon when we’ve dined too well in the first half of a given day. I finished the leftover Brussels sprouts from Glass Onion, my bag of Ruffles from DiPrato’s, and just one of the cookies we’d bought earlier.
Evening entertainment included one of the new episodes of Black Mirror season 6 that’d just dropped two months earlier — the creepy true-crime tale “Loch Henry” starring Samuel Blenkin, whom I’ve seen in a few other things (e.g., briefly as The Sandman‘s young Shakespeare) and who two years later would gain far more notice as one of the stars of Alien: Earth.
DAY FIVE: WEDNESDAY, June 28th.
After hotel checkout, our last meal in Charleston was once again on the eatery-lined Savannah Highway — a bakery called WildFlour Pastry, opened in 2009 by a Culinary Institute of America grad who clearly knew her stuff.
It was attached to a strip mall that seemed otherwise dead, which had me worried for a minute.
Quiches and pies in all the flavors of the rainbow.
Still more floury wonders, plus greeting cards you can send to people and make them wish they were here.
Quiches for our main course, both with goat cheese. One was laden with sausage and red pepper; the other, figs and prosciutto.
Our final Charleston chews: a raspberry Nutella turnover and a lemon pecan coffeecake muffin.
Not pictured: a blueberry vanilla latte, to toast our departure. But we had one last stop before leaving the Charleston vicinity altogether — one last breath of ocean air.
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!]
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