When Doug and I returned back to Mike and Nicole's place, we loaded the car back up for a trip over to Charleston. We were gonna drop Josh back home and pick up Mike and Nicole's son, all while enjoying Conference weekend at Nicole's parent's home. We picked up Mike from his school and headed east. We stopped in Columbia for dinner and had ice cream at Cold Stone.
The wet weather continued. We saw that there was a hurricane down in the Caribbean that was pushing up a huge storm system into South Carolina....the rain didn't stop. We arrived in Charleston about 9pm, sneaked a peek at little Dan, my nephew. He was fast asleep and it was the first time I got to see him in person. We headed to bed and in the morning were surprised awake by the little cutie:
At first he was scared of Doug but they bonded by looking out the front window together later that morning.
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| Best Buddies Forever |
The weather was still being questionable but we really wanted to show Doug some of Charleston. So Mike, Doug and I headed into town. Everyone else stayed home. We went and saw the USS Yorktown which is parked in the bay, while the fair weather held.
We parked by the Cold War Memorial. It was pretty cool, it was made to look like a nuclear submarine coming up out of ground.
They were having a WWII USS Yorktown reunion going on. There wasn't many other tourist so it was nice and felt like we had the ship to ourselves. We were instructed to follow the yellow arrows and we wouldn't get lost inside. My brothers had so much fun, like kids in a candy store. We took a lot of pictures. Here are just a few of the good ones:
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| USS Yorktown |
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| All clear Captain |
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| Put me in Sir, I'm ready |
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| Should I tell him its chained down? |
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| Another rare smile |
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| Follow the arrows...uh wait where did the yellow arrows go? |
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| Dentist chair down on the crew level |
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| Dinner up |
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| Big engines |
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| Surgery |
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| Med bunks |
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| Mike's "Goose" moment |
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| Original USS Yorktown was sunk at Midway |
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| We found pictures of the USS Salt Lake City, the ship my Grandpa was on during WWII |
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| Model of the USS Salt Lake City |
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| And back outside |
After doing all 5 tours of the USS Yorktown we explored the rest of Patriot Point. And saw a poor rusted out Submarine, a little ship and a whole section on the Vietnam War.
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| Kind of sobering |
Then back to the car we went. We drove to downtown Charleston to show Doug the cool old buildings. We didn't get out because the tide was really high and some of the streets were flooding.
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| Battery Park, the tide water was lapping level with the wall. |
The after trying to find a road that wasn't flooded we headed back to the house for lunch. Afterwards we tried for the beach. With the weather turning worse we figured we wouldn't be going anywhere our last day. We headed out to Sullivan Island. The South Carolinian coast is made up of swamp lands and islands. The rain stopped long enough for us to jump out and take a few pictures.
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| Light House at Sullivan's Island |
Traveling back to the house we hit some pretty crazy rain. But we made it back okay. And relaxed for the rest of the evening. The rain kept up. We went to bed and spent all of Saturday indoors watching General Conference.
Nicole's parent's house has a screened in porch out in the backyard. Besides the rain the temperature was very nice so I sat outside for a while, enjoying the sound of the rain.
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| Someone wanted to join me. |
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| The backyard was flooding a bit. |
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| Dan is such a cuddle bug. |
As the night came on we had a little scare....the street flooded. Doug and I were leaving on a flight early the next morning so the flooding really had us worried.
But when we got up the road was clear again. Our flight was still on time. So we said a quick good-bye to our hosts and Mike and his father-in-law drove us to the airport. We left really early in case we came across flooding. Luckily we only came across one...and made it to the airport in plenty of time. We said good-bye to Mike and started our trip home.
The ride out of Charleston wasn't as bumpy as we thought it was going to be. And we made it to our layover in Dallas. Grabbed some brunch at Whataburger. And then sat in the airport for three hours. We finally boarded and had another stop in Midland. The flight was a little delayed because of some storm clouds outside Vegas...but we made it home safely.
It was an amazing trip and I hope to go on another one soon.
