More Adventures: Fort Moultrie and Beyond

This weekend we switched up our usual beach routine and headed out to Sullivan's Island to check out an old coastal fort called Fort Moultrie. Obviously, we have great timing since this was a mostly outdoor exhibit and the temperature rested at 103 degrees. While it made for sweaty exploring, we did have overwhelming empathy for all the past soldiers who would've been stationed here in wool uniforms. Yuck.

The fort was originally built to fend off attacks from the British during the Revolution, and was used again during the Civil War, WWI and WWII. There are sections of the fort restored to the way it would have looked at each of these periods. Aiden loved getting to go up and down all of the stairs, looking at the cannons and guns and being able see out onto the beach. Of course, this caused him to ask if we were going to the beach over and over and over again.

Inside the fort

After losing all the water in our bodies due to the extreme heat, we went over to Red's Icehouse for lunch. This place is famous around here, and I'd been dying to see why. It sits right on one of the creeks, and it's basically a whole ton of deck space with a sort of oversized garage making up the kitchen and bar sections. We sat inside since the deck was full, but before we sat down to eat we saw three pelicans and two dolphins! It was so cool. For lunch we all ordered a lot of fried fish and seafood, and it was so good it didn't even occur to me just how many calories we'd consumed until about an hour later. And even then, I really didn't care because it was that delicious. I plan on taking my friends here when they visit this weekend.

To continue our adventurous weekend, Aiden and I went to the Palmetto park today, where we go often, except instead of hanging at the playground we walked over the rickity boardwalk out onto a little island, and then over to the fishing docks. We'd never been this far out, and I didn't even realize it was part of the park. Again, I plan on taking my friends here.

It must be crab mating season or something, because every step we took had hundreds of little crabs scattering in all directions. I thought they were spiders at first, which scared me half to death, but seeing that they were just crabs was really neat. Aiden and I walked out on all of the docks and sat under the overhanging trees enjoying the wind. It was so lovely until we headed back towards the car. We saw what looked like a pine cone in front of us and nearly stepped on it when it started buzzing like a chainsaw and wobbling all over. Turns out it was two cicadas in the middle of mating. The sound was so loud and they were so huge that both Aiden and I leaped into the air screaming bloody murder and clutching each other for safety. I'm glad no one was around because I'm sure they would've thought we'd been half eaten by an alligator. Really though, think of how loud cicadas are when they're hidden in the trees, and imagine the sound when it's right underfoot. Yuck.

Well, I hope I haven't scared Tierney and Laura away from visiting that park.