Fort Sumter

Two weeks ago, Scott had one of his last real weekends so we decided to head to Fort Sumter. Fort Sumter is in Charleston, SC about two hours from Savannah. It's a fort on a man made island in Charleston harbor where the first shots of the Civil War were fired. The drive to Charleston was gorgeous and the girls were really good. We got there just in time to have a snack and board the boat.

The girls were really good on the boat ride over. It was about thirty minutes there and back. We had a lot of fun watching for dolphins. We saw a couple in the distance and some pretty close. I even saw a manta ray (or something like that) jump out of the water twice. Lydia just loved watching the water.
We hadn't checked the weather so I didn't dress the girls very well. It was overcast, very windy, and cold. Luckily I had our jackets in the car. Martha Ann's poor legs were bare but she didn't seem to mind too much. Scott didn't have a jacket, but only froze on the boat rides back and forth.
The fort was fun to walk around and look at even though it was hard to keep Lydia off of everything that we weren't supposed to touch. We weren't to touch any of the brick work or walk on most of the grass (because of fire ants). Lydia just wanted to go to the zoomeum (museum) to get out of the wind I think.
Snack time was the biggest hit.
The boat ride back did not go as well as the first one. Maren and Lydia were both cranky and tired and wanted to sit on Scott's lap. Maren was very upset that she couldn't see a dolphin. There were a lot of dolphins but you really had to watch close, which is hard for a four year old. There were much tears until finally right before we got there she was able to see one right close to the boat.There was also a museum on the aircraft carrier in the background but the girls were done for the day. We bribed them for some pictures. What the bribe was I don't remember, but there was definitely a bribe involved (Lydia's in a I hate the camera stage)

After driving around Charleston forever in search of Panda Express (which was never found) we had lunch at a BBQ place which was good but not as good as the one in El Paso. We had a pleasant drive home in which I spent almost two hours reading to Scott from his textbook about GI problems and didn't even finish one chapter. Doesn't get much better than that!