The Most Disloyal State

I have completed the 48 contiguous states.  I got to Hawaii and a whole bunch of random states out west before I got to the state that started the Civil War.  But first, I flew down to Raleigh on Friday night to visit Tom.  It was miserable.  It was mid-90s in New York, all the flights at Laguardia were delayed, and the air conditioning at Laguardia (already a miserable airport) wasn't getting it done.  When I finally got on the plane, that was hot too.  But I made it about two hours late.  The good news was I missed the entire Celtics game.  I think it was 110-60 in the fourth quarter when I landed.  Tom picked me up and we drove to his apartment.  I had only been to North Carolina once before.  It was for Darryl's 30th birthday and it was right before I started the blog.  I might have had some North Carolina beer then, but I have no idea.  So I had a couple of North Carolina beers before going to sleep.

The next morning, we were off to South Carolina, my 49th state.  We took the ferry from Mount Pleasant to Fort Sumter.  It was really cool.  You still have the walls of the fort outside, but it doesn't look the way it did when the Civil War started in 1861.  I'll come back to that, but I learned more about the history of the fort.  It was built on an artificial island that was built by slave labor.  It took decades to build the fort.  They started building it and the island began sinking.  Anyway, it had never really been used by the military before the Civil War.  Union forces moved to the fort in December 1860 after South Carolina seceded.  That led to the attack on Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861.  The Civil War had begun.  The South controlled the fort throughout the war.  The Union tried to take back the fort, but didn't take it back until after Lee's surrender at Appomattox Court House in April 1865.  The walls of the fort are not nearly as high as they once were due to Union bombing during the war.  There are a few Union shells that are still lodged in the walls of the fort today.  The fort remained a military fort until after World War II.  I've been to a few Civil War sites now.  It's definitely not Gettysburg, but I'd say it's the second coolest Civil War site that I've been to.

It was nice to see the Stars and Stripes flying over Fort Sumter.

This is what the fort once looked like.

These are the flags that flew over Fort Sumter during the Civil War.

One of the Union shells that's stuck in the wall

We went to check in at the hotel after that.  I rested for a little bit while Tom got food.  Then we were off to see the Charleston Riverdogs take on the Augusta Green Jackets.  It's Single-A baseball.  The Riverdogs are a Yankees' affiliate and the Green Jackets are a Giants' affiliate.  So I was rooting for the Riverdogs.  The Riverdogs scored 4 in the first, but the Green Jackets answered with 4 in the top of the second.  And then they were done scoring.  The Riverdogs, not so much.  The scored ended up being 18-4.  The Riverdogs scored at least four in every inning that they scored.  By the top of the ninth, the Green Jackets could have batted around twice and still lost.  It would have been cool to stay another day and go to another game, but oh well.

Our view for the game

The Riverdogs play at Joseph P. Riley Jr. Park, which Adam Richman visited in his ballpark episode of Man vs. Food.  He had the Homewrecker Dog, which was a footlong dog with pretty much whatever you wanted on it.  That sounded like too much for me.  I had I brisket sandwich with barbecue sauce that was really good.  To drink, I had a Palmetto Amber.  The default size was huge so that was all I had to drink.  If I went back, I'd definitely try a beer shake.  Apparently they're like milk shakes with beer instead of milk.  And I'd try some version of their hot dogs (they had a wide variety of normal sized dogs, but I had to go with some barbecue when I'm in the South for a quick trip).  I would rank Joseph P. Riley Jr. Park second on my list of minor league parks that I've been to.  Good crowd, very good food and beer selection.

We drove back to North Carolina on Sunday.  I started the day by going to mass at Christ Our King Church.  I was a few minutes late because Uber gave my driver terrible directions to my hotel (I had to call him and tell him how to get there).  But it wasn't my fault (I ordered my Uber about 25 minutes before mass and it was a 7-minute drive) and I was there before the first reading.  Then we checked out and got breakfast at Whole Foods.  I had grits for the first time in my life.  The extent of my knowledge of grits was pretty much the My Cousin Vinny scenes (embedded below).  They were fine, but nothing I'd be excited about getting again if I was in the South again in the future.

St. John Paul the Great at Christ Our King Church in Mount Pleasant

So Alaska is all that I have left in the United States.  Maybe I'll get there next year.

I'll finish with my updated minor league ballpark rankings:

10. Arm & Hammer Park in Trenton
9. Dehler Park in Billings
8. Arvest Ballpark in Springdale
7. Memorial Stadium in Boise
6. KeySpan Park in Brooklyn
5. Newman Outdoor Field in Fargo
4. Isotopes Park in Albuquerque
3. Daniel S. Frawley Stadium in Wilmington
2. Joseph P. Riley Jr. Park
1. Regions Field in Birmingham