Day 31: Charleston, SC to Summerville, SC

Stops:

Fort Sumter National Monument,Charleston,SC

USS Yorktown, Patriots Point, SC

Magnolia and Bethany Cemeteries, Charleston,SC

The Arthur Ravenel Jr. bridge  merges Charleston,SC to Mount Pleasant, SC. crossing the Cooper River. It is the 3rd longest cable-stayed bridge in the Western Hemisphere with a span of 1546 ft long. It also makes for a picturesque scene.  When I was last here in 1983, it did not exist, so I was quite surprised to see it.  It was relatively new opening in July 2005. 

Nearby is Patriots Point, location of the USS Yorktown aircraft carrier and the boat to Fort Sumter. When I was here at the age of ten as part of my Cub Scout group, it was never called Patriots Point.  It was just a dock, but the USS Yorktown was still there.

We decided to visit Fort Sumter first because we didn't know if the cloudy weather would hold up.  It did.  In terms of the Civil War, Fort Sumter and South Carolina played an essential role.  In December 1860, SC seceded from the Union, thus creating the Confederacy. It was the first state to do so. The Confederate Army was born and states were picking sides.   On April 12, 1861, the Confederate Army fired the first shots on the Union fort, Fort Sumter, starting the first shots of the Civil War.  The Union Army surrendered 34 hours later after being bombarded from all sides.  Now the fort was a Confederate stronghold. The Union Army tried several times during the war to take back the fort but were unsuccessful.  Only towards the end of the Civil War did the Confederates give up the fort and abandon it when they found out they were going to lose the war.  

At almost 10 football fields long, the USS Yorktown is permanently docked at Patriots Point, along with  the destroyer, USS Laffey, and the submarine,USS Clamagore.  Known as the "Fighting Lady" of WWII, this aircraft carrier is almost ten football fields long and weighs 27000 tons.  The USS Yorktown also fought in many epic Japanese battles facing many Kamikaze planes. It also did tours in the Vietnam War.  It was used in the recovery of Apollo 8. It was finally decommissioned in 1970.

When I was ten, we stayed overnight on the Yorktown. I remember sleeping in one of the rooms reserved for higher ranking officers.  It had a set of bunks and its own sink.  The deck under the hanger deck was wide open and we ate in the mess hall.  We had church service in the aircraft elevator shaft. Today, things are different.  I can't get into the officer's quarters, the deck below the hanger deck is full  of exhibits and planes, the hanger deck had fewer planes and no helicopters.  They had setup a tour and marked the paths and setup mannequins and plexiglassed entrances to rooms.  When I was here in 1983, it was wide open and if you can get into it, you would.  Hide and go seek had a whole new meaning.

Charleston has a very unique area known as Rainbow Row, a series of historic houses painted in pastel colors and showcases what houses looked like in the early days after the Civil War.  Here is a small sample.  

Finally, based in Tripadvisor, we went to Magnolia cemetery. It is the location is 5 Confederate generals and amongst other residents.  Surrounded from oak trees with Spanish moss, it's exactly what I expected when I think of the South.  Unfortunately, when we got there, the cemetery was only open for 10 min before the gates were locked, so we hurried through it and thus the lack of photos.  There are no maps here, so unless you know where to go, you need more time here to discover the graves and the history.  It is unfortunate that the cemetery is located and an area of town that seems a little sketchy.  As cool as the cemetery is, we didn't want to get locked in so we left right at 6 pm when it closed.  Still, we saw many old graves and tombstones from the 1800's of men, women, and children. It was clear that children had a hard time surviving back then.

Day 19: Las Cruces, NM to Roswell, NM

Stops:

White Sands Missile Range, NM

White Sands National Monument, NM

Alamogordo, NM

Ruidoso Downs, NM (Hubbard Museum of the American West)

White Sands Missile Range is hugely known for testing the world's first nuclear bomb which was eventually used against Japan when it was dropped in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, in the form of bombs known as "Little Boy" and "Fat Man" respectively.  The project was code named "Trinity" and WSMR was ground zero, well actually 88 miles from WSMR.

When approaching the military base, there are signs warning to stay on the road as there may be explosives scattered in the desert off the road and also radioactive parts.

One must get out of the car and go to the reception office where you must present a valid form of ID, like a drivers license.   Then you can get a pass which which allows you to walk over to the guard gate and they let you walk into the base.  Photography is only allowed at the museum and missile display.

Here, you'll recognize some of the missiles if you have paid any attention to the news or played combat games on your PC or video game console.  They had Patriot missiles a.k.a SCUD Busters used in Operation Desert Shield, sidewinder missiles, Nike Ajax missiles, Pershing missiles, and plenty of other surface-to-surface and surface-to-air missiles. 

They even had the type of bomb dropped on Nagasaki, Japan.  Can you tell, I played plenty of combat games and flight simulators growing up?  They had some great examples of guided and unguided missiles.  Guided missiles use a laser guidance system to adjust the flight course with pinpoint accuracy, some have countermeasures as well, and some the capability to look like a small aircraft to incoming radar.

They have an item that looks like a UFO to many, but it is a weather ballon used for a decelerator test.  I'm almost sure many of the UFO claims are based on this weather balloon.

Finally, they had the V-2 missile, originally known as the A-4 missile, which was German designed and was used by Hitler, but was considered a failure.  The US used it for experiments in space including the launching of a Rhesus monkey into space.

On the way to White Sand National Monument, we had to go through a Department of Homeland Security checkpoint to make sure we were legal residents of the US.  

White Sands NM is blindingly white.  So blinding that I cannot even see the pictures I took on my digital  SLR.  White Sands is the world's largest concentration of gypsum dune fields.  The animals have adapted to the white sand changing their colors to very light or almost white themselves.  We say a few whit lizards scurrying across the sand.

White Sands is known for sledding too.  We saw quite a few people sledding and even tried it ourselves.

B spotted an egg, either hawk or snake, not sure.  We showed the picture to the ranger and they think it is one of those.  The yucca plant grows around here, sometimes having roots that are 15 ft deep and a stem that is 10 feet tall.

At the visitors center, there are barn swallows everywhere.  We even spotted a nest with babies in it.

Finally, we stopped in Alamagordo, NM and Ruidoso Downs, NM to get the scrap metal Roadrunner and the horses, before finally arriving to Roswell, NM where it was a mild 100 degrees.  We actually took some downtime here to do some laundry and saw a cool alien mural.  I'm sure we will see a lot more alien stuff tomorrow.