The 33-star U.S. flag flies over Fort Sumter, just as it did before the Confederates barged in.
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…
…and here we were, one half-hour ferry ride later, at the star attraction atop our to-do list — the very place where the Civil War began, in the southeastern waters of Charleston Harbor in full view of the Atlantic Ocean. The Army Corps of Engineers began construction of the island in 1829, using 50,000+ tons of granite to create a new base atop a stable sandbar — a project conceived in the wake of the War of 1812, when British invaders unhelpfully exploited our naval vulnerabilities. Little did the ACE know future attacks would be coming from inside the country.
Midlife Crisis Crossover! 