The Firefly Distillery

After touring Ft. Sumter, Murphy and I headed to the Firefly Distillery to take a distillery tour. 

While the tour itself was not going on due to Covid, the distillery has their history on display with their first still:

They also had some history of local lowland distilling in South Carolina.

 

Firefly Distillery makes some pretty awesome products, including  a Sweet Tea Vodka.

 

Sweet Tea vodka just works.

Did I forget mention the distillery had a tasting?

Their banana pudding liqueur tasted like a complete banana pudding - not just bananas but also the vanilla wafers as well. The moonshine was great, as was the straight vodka.

They also have a decent gift shop with some appropriately whimsical items.

 

Quite an enjoyable experience, and I got to buy some there to bring home since I'm pretty sure their products are not distributed up here.  If you get the chance, do try out their sweet tea vodka - it's worth it.

Onward to Fort Sumter!

The day after our tour of Patriot's Point, Murphy and I headed over to Fort Sumter.

After all, if one is in Charleston, one should take the time to see the location of the first clash of the Civil War.

To get to Ft. Sumter you either do an endurance swim which is frowned upon, or take a Ferry.  I'd highly recommend the ferry.

Leaving the harbor you get some nice shots form the water side of Patriot's Point:

 

USS Laffey

 

USS Clamagore

 And of Course the USS Yorktown:

It was nice of that boat to give the Yorktown and Clamagore a sense of scale.

It's a working harbor so there's many a civilian ship doing work on the water.

The Ocean Jazz, a US-Flagged Heavy Load Carrier was in port.

As we left the harbor, a tug was coming in.

On the way to Sumter you pass by other fortifications.  This one, I believe, is Ft. Moultrie:

Then we reached Ft. Sumter:

USS Yorktown: The Hangar Deck, Like Gaul

Is divided into three parts.  

The hangar deck has enormous blast doors dividing the deck into three separate sections.  This protects the hangar deck and stores located inside from damage during battle. Originally there were three aircraft elevators to move the planes to and form the flight deck from the hangar deck.  Later modifications removed one of the elevators.

It's a very large  space, crammed with interesting exhibits, history and many artifacts of the Yorktown, and a special exhibit about her sister carrier the USS Franklin and how it survived crippling damage from an air attack in March 1945 due to the heroism and effort of her crew.  The attack had killed 800 of its crew, yet the ship was saved and returned to service after incredible damage.

A 40mm gun mount from the Franklin is on display  on the hangar deck, with some damage from the attack still visible.

 There's also a very good movie shown in by the memorial about the Franklin to the left of the gun mount that is well worth watching.

There's plenty of aircraft on display as well:

A Stearman biplane navy training aircraft:

 

The many types of aircraft that the Yorktown operated are on display:

The F4F Wildcat -

 The initial main American naval fighter of the war.  While inferior to the Zero, it was made famous in the hands of aces like O'Hare and Thatch, and proved to be able to meet the Zero on its own terms when the right tactics were used.

The F6F Hellcat - The US Navy's highest scoring aircraft of World War 2 and successor to the Wildcat:

 

The F4U Corsair:

 

The Douglas A-1 Skyraider

 

The Grumman Avenger TBM torpedo bomber:

 

The SBD Dauntless dive bomber:

 The F9F Cougar - bringing the Yorktown into the jet age.  Subsequent Navy jets quickly began to become too heavy to operate off the Yorktown.

Yorktown recovered the astronauts of Apollo 8, after their historic flight around the Moon in December 1968; so there are some space related exhibits, including a mock Apollo capsule:

And a mock up of the Friendship 7, the Mercury spacecraft piloted by John Glenn.

The hangar deck makes for an impressive display of the history of American naval air power.

Back From A Week's Respite

We left the snow and cold of Michigan last week to head to Charleston. South Carolina.

On the first leg, we drove to Cleveland and stopped to check out Case Western Reserve University as a potential university choice for the eldest daughter. This was on a Sunday and the place was rather deserted and pretty locked up and locked down.  The grey bleak weather didn't help much, and Cleveland seemed rather deserted.  However, the open Insomnia Cookie store helped, as did a nice Chinese restaurant that was open for table service, which was a nice change as Michigan does not allow such at the moment and has not for quite some time.

The next day we departed Cleveland and headed south.  The weather began to  improve the farther south we got on Highway 77.

We reached Charleston late Monday night and checked into our condo on Folly Island that we had rented for the week, and then I went and picked up Murphy's Law at the entrance to the complex. We got settled in and then headed out for a light meal and some drinks.

The next day offered a beautiful clear sky, highs in the 60s and the promise of adventure that awaited - and no need for winter jackets.