The Explore All 50 States Project
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Walking through The Charleston Museum we had a hard time wrapping our head around the fact that this indeed was America’s first museum, founded in 1773-but I guess there has to be a first of everything, right?. Sadly most of the original items, many of which were scientific in nature, were destroyed in a fire in 1778. The museum resumed collecting artifacts and was opened to the public in 1824. As we made … [Read more...]
The Citadel is one of the most famous military colleges in the country established in Charleston in 1842. Cadets go through rigorous academic, athletic and military training and the college has a long and storied history of churning out distinguished officers. There are tours available if you have the time and inclination. You are in for a special treat if you happen by on a Friday as the "Friday Parade" is … [Read more...]
One of the highlights of our visit to Charleston and an absolute must see for anyone visiting is a tour of Fort Sumter. We made our reservations well in advance and you should too to make sure you get a good time that works for you as these tours do fill up quickly. The whole tour takes about 2 hours and 15 minutes with about 1 hour spent at the Fort, the rest of the time is spent on the boat heading from the … [Read more...]
Charleston is a beautiful and charming city that has a long and storied history as a port city on the shores of South Carolina. The Historic District is a wonderful place to explore some of the well preserved architecture and take a peek at life during an earlier time period. Everywhere you look, restaurants, shops, hotels are all housed in these amazing old buildings oozing with decorative charm. If you want to … [Read more...]
The whole time we'd been driving around the region we'd seen tons of fried chicken restaurants everywhere we looked, Popeyes, Church's, Bojangles just to name a few. Fried Chicken is a staple of the south and clearly something we needed to try so as we were making our way from Charleston to Columbia we decided to sample the fixin’s at…The Kickin Chicken. This is a causal sit down restaurant chain with a … [Read more...]
The South Carolina State Capitol Building is pretty in terms of architecture, but it doesn't stand out as memorable. in terms of aesthetics. Inside we found some pretty stained glass pieces, a pretty dome and some bronze commemorative plaques but not much else inside. Outside, on the surface nothing seemed particularly notable until we started to notice a few things that clued us into the history and spirit of … [Read more...]
Rhode Island is the smallest state, but it's a giant in my book. It's lovely and green, and a pleasant cross between rural and urban. Newport is a charming town and it's easy to see why so many titans of industry chose to build their mansions here. I'd only wished we'd had enough time to see them. We loved the harbor, and the historic places. But was really drew me to Rhode Island, and I'd say it's a top … [Read more...]
Nebraska is the land of the Cornhuskers, and truth be told there was corn in every direction as far as the eye could see. I even pulled over on the side of the road so the kids could get out and see it up close and personal on the stalk. We drove through miles and miles of crops with a sprinkling of farmhouses all along the way. I wondered what life is like for those families and how different it is from mine in … [Read more...]
If you'd like to find out what life was like in 1897 and don't have a time machine handy, you can do what we did and visit the Stuhr Museum of the Prairie Pioneer. We entered this wonderful historic village and explored all the hands-on exhibits. What I loved was that each exhibit had some terrific senior citizens in historic dress ready to show us lots of cool stuff. You could just tell how much they … [Read more...]
I was really sad to read that the Weaver Potato Chip Factory just closed costing 70 folks their jobs. Weaver's had been around for 76 years-and that's a long time. They had their ups and downs during hard economic times but with an infusion of some new investment money they were making progress turning the company around. Sadly just as they were getting going, their Nebraska potato supplier sent their much … [Read more...]
