Lydia was just excited with anything new and fun.
Before making it to Charleston, we stopped in Myrtle Beach to play at the beach and along the boardwalk. Unfortunately, the weather didn't cooperate. It was drizzling most of the time we were at the beach, and was probably the coldest day of the vacation. Our girls were tough, though, and they had a blast at the beach. Here's Lydia taking Snoopy for a walk...sort of.
I taught Lydia that waves coming in to shore made a "crash" sound and when they go back out to the ocean, it makes a "whoosh" sound. The rest of the day at the beach, she kept saying "Crash! Whoosh! Crash! Whoosh!" over and over again.
Karina loved running along the shore.
Snoopy mostly tolerated it - I don't think he was that excited about being out in the drizzle, and he went back to the car since it wasn't that hot.
In Charleston one day, we went to the Old Exchange & Provost Dungeon. It was a cool building that had seen a lot of history - everything from being a jail/dungeon for pirates and Revolutionary War-era prisoners to a tax collection site to one of the first post offices in Charleston. Of particular interest was the upstairs ball room that had received George Washington himself and where South Carolina formally ratified the Constitution. Here's Karina signing a copy of the Constitution.
And our girls sitting in the ball room.
And saying goodbye to the Revolutionary.
We visited a couple of the old historic churches/cathedrals in Charleston. In St. Michael's, we sat in the Governor's pew (pew 43) where George Washington, Robert E. Lee, and other historical figures have worshiped.
The stained glass windows were really pretty.
We toured the Aiken Rhett House, another historic home in the city that belonged to plantation owners. The garden and home were both very charming. This tour went much better than the other mansion tour we went on a couple days earlier, as this one had an audio tour with headphones. The other mansion we toured in Charleston, the Nathaniel Russell House had a real person as a guide, and she clearly didn't appreciate small children. With an audio tour, Karina got to press the buttons herself on her headset, which was exciting for her.
Fort Sumter was a highlight for me. I wish we had more time to tour it, but Tanja and I are the type of people who like to read every sign when we go to these types of places. Karina and Lydia were more interested in just running around and seeing all the cannons. I thought it was really cool to see Civil War-era cannon balls embedded in the walls.
In the background of this next picture, you can see Morris Island, where we went on a a boat tour with Mimi and Mormor earlier in the week.
On the way home, we stopped for the night in Chapel Hill and Durham, NC. In Durham, we walked around the campus of Duke University. We really liked the Chapel, though the interior pictures we took didn't do it justice.
The exterior pictures worked much better.
And of course, I had to make a pilgrimage to Cameron Indoor Stadium where the basketball teams play. I was only planning on being able to peek in to the court from the stands, but we actually got to go out onto the court and run around. The girls loved it. I was surprised that for as big of a college basketball program as they have at Duke, the stadium was remarkably small - probably part of the mystique and lore.
We had so much fun on our vacation and are very glad we went. We're looking forward to the next trip we decide to take whenever we end up going somewhere else with our girls who proved themselves to be excellent travelers.
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