A few of my favorite beach things

There are so so many things I love about living the sweet salty life by the sea. But here are a few of my very favorite beach things.

1. Shelling

I could spend hours walking up and down the shoreline looking for interesting seashells. When we first moved here, I picked up almost every shell I found (mostly clams). But now I've learned to be more picky. My goal is to find full shells, not broken, but that is rare. One day I'd love to find a sand dollar or a full conch.

One day's finds drying on my kitchen counter. Not many full shells, but several pretty colors, shapes and textures.

I like to display my shells in all my spare vases. This one usually sits on our mantel. Can you tell the ones at the bottom of the vase are the ones I collected when we first moved here (aka plain). You can tell I got pickier as time went on.

I have learned that the best time to go looking for shells is the hour before and the hour after low tide. Low tide comes twice a day, but the one that comes in the morning is usually the best for shelling.

Mom and Larry on Folly one morning helping me look for shells and enjoying a beautiful sunrise.

Mom, that's not a shell, that's a crab. Let's not take it home.

2. Boogie Boarding

While Mom and Larry were in Charleston they bought us a couple boogie boards. I had never boogie boarded before and I soon fell in love. So much fun when you've got good waves! Maybe one day I'll advance to the surf board.

Yeah, my board is pretty hard core. What?

Mom tearing up some waves. She schooled us on all the advanced boogie board moves.

3. Strolling

Need I say more?

4. Silliness

Actually I just love these silly photos we took at Folly the last night Mom, Larry and Sarah were in town. Who knew John had such good form?

John the leapster

Sarah kicking small children.

Me

Think happy thoughts, Mom! :)

Exploring Fort Sumter

Is there anything more famous about Charleston than Fort Sumter? While Mom and Larry were visiting, we decided to take the ferry out into Charleston Harbor to see the fort for ourselves.

On the way out to the tiny little island at the mouth of the harbor, we got a beautiful view of downtown Charleston and learned that Katie sometimes gets sea sick :) Ferry's aren't for me apparently.

Charleston is known as the Holy City — evident by the many church steeples dotting the skyline.

Me and Mom in front of the Arthur Ravenel Jr Bridge in the distance. The bridge is the site of the Cooper River Bridge Run (10K), which we plan to race in in April.

Me and Mom on the ferry in front of Fort Sumter.

Is anyone else surprised at how small it is? I thought at least the island would be bigger than the fort. But we learned that the island was manmade specifically for the fort, so I guess that's why there's not much of it.

While touring the fort I also learned several other interesting facts and refreshed my civil war history. Here's what I learned/ relearned:

• South Carolina was the first state to succeed from the union before the civil war.
• The shots fired at Fort Sumter by the confederates during the Battle of Fort Sumter were the first shots initiating the Civil War.
• No one died during that first battle, but when the Union troops surrendered the fort, one of their stipulations was they could do a 100 cannon shot salute to the American Flag. An accident during those cannon shots caused the death of one union solider and the first casualty of the war.
• Despite several attempts, the Union troops never recaptured the fort during the war. The only way the confederates were able to capture it to begin with was because the fort was not designed to be attacked from inside the harbor, which is exactly what the confederates did to begin the war.

Mom and Larry with one of the projectiles from the civil war still lodged in the wall of the fort.

100 cannon shot salute anyone? I swear it's completely safe.

Despite the heat, we had a great time seeing the fort and getting a nice refresher of our American history.

Great eats: Smoky Oak

Of all the things we did with my family while they were in town, eating at some great restaurants was probably my favorite thing. After all, Charleston is known for its wonderful food so we had to show it off. While they were here, we covered a wide variety of food genres including seafood, lowcountry fare, burgers, mexican and breakfast food. But we started it all off with great barbecue!

John and I discovered Smoky Oak, less than a mile from our house, the week before my family came. Its great BBQ sandwich and large selection of beer on tap (similar to Oklahoma's McNellie's) has already made it a regular on our restaurant rotation.

Not the best picture of my pulled pork sandwich, but you get the point. The mac n' cheese is also delicious!

One of the South Carolina beers I tried was Son of a Peach. That's right, peach beer. Sounds weird but was actually pretty tasty!

Another interesting thing we've discovered at Smoky Oak is the variety of BBQ sauces. I always thought red tomato-based BBQ sauce was BBQ sauce. But it turns out different regions use different kinds of sauces on their barbecue. Smoky Oak has all the sauces, so you can try each one.

Turns out a mustard sauce is the main BBQ sauce in South Carolina. It's actually really good! Much better than the plain old vinegar and pepper sauce that's apparently popular in North Carolina. Somehow I lived in Alabama for a year and never figured out that white sauce is the popular BBQ sauce there.

After trying many of these sauces at Smoky Oak, I read a great article on the sauce debate in Garden in Gun magazine. Great magazine by the way! You can read the article here.

Mom loved South Carolina's mustard sauce on her pulled pork sandwich.

Myrtle Beach

After our stop at the sand castle, we headed to lunch and then to North Myrtle Beach. All I'm going to say about lunch is never ever eat at a seafood buffet.

We decided to go to North Myrtle because we heard it was less crowded and touristy than the regular ol' Myrtle. It was Sunday and the beach was still pretty crowded considering it's lined by sky-rise condos as far as the eye can see. We had fun at the beach but I think I'll stick with Folly, 10 minutes from home, from now on.

Note our favorite beach cooler Sarah is using as a footstool. That's the cooler I made for John for the Alphatraz date party back in college. Oh the memories!

Me and John reading in our awesome chairs. It looks goofy, but the face and arm holes make it very convenient to continue reading while on your stomach.

After several hours on the beach we decided to head out to find dinner at some better place than a seafood buffet. We went to Broadway on the Beach, the tourist mothership of Myrtle Beach. The whole strip mall is up on a boardwalk and covered with tacky tourist shops, restaurants and something called MagiQuest (sounded pretty awesome actually).

We attempted to eat at Margaritaville, but the line was too long. So we ate at a little beach-like bar outside Margaritaville instead. Close enough!

Those things in the water below us on the board walk...hundreds of fish begging for food! I've never seen anything like that before.

Haha...caught Mom coming our of the Stupid Factory! :)

Castle in the sand

Myrtle Beach is only 2 hours north of Charleston and Mom really wanted to check it out while she was here. So we left early on a Sunday morning and headed to the Grand Strand (that's what they call the Myrtle Beach area... yeah I didn't know that either).

We stopped on the southern outskirt of Myrtle at Huntington Beach State Park to check out Atalaya Castle. A castle in the sand on the beach? Who wouldn't want to see that?

Atalaya was the winter home of rich couple Archer and Anna Huntington (she's a famous sculptor) and was built in the 1930s. Archer was influenced by Spanish architecture and culture while building the castle and named it Atalaya, which means "watch tower" in Spanish.

The castle didn't have a whole lot of interesting history beyond that, but it was interesting to see and get to explore the many rooms and hallways inside.

The outside of the castle.

Inside the castle courtyard.

John and Larry trying to see the ocean from the rooftop, despite the "Do not enter" sign.

Sarah and John in the bear cages. Yes, bears.

Best sand castle I've ever seen!

Family visits Charleston

This past week my sister, my mom and my step dad came to visit us in Charleston! They were our first official house guests and we enjoyed spending time with them and exploring the city together all week.

On their first day in town we decided to show them some of the classic spots in downtown Charleston, starting with the epitome of tourist attractions — the carriage tour! There are many many many carriage tour companies in town but we decided to go with Palmetto Carriage in the big red barn.

Note in the background the surrey with the fringe on top, made classic in none other than the musical "Oklahoma."

The big red barn also had a small petting zoo of sorts inside.

Mom and Larry enjoying the covered carriage tour. Along the way we learned about some of the historic homes in Charleston and classic Charleston architecture.

John, me and Sarah enjoying the ride.

After the tour we took them to the Charleston City Market (AKA gauntlet of crap)

We ended our downtown trek at the Battery and checking out some of the beautiful houses South of Broad (aka the ritzy area on the tip of the peninsula).

That night we took the family to James Island County Park for a reggae concert in the park. We were all pretty tired so we didn't last long. But we stayed long enough to enjoy some great music and of course, some boiled peanuts.

The boiled peanuts won Mom and Larry over. Sarah not so much.

Great eats: Poogan's Porch

Tonight was my family's last night in Charleston (they've been staying with us for the past week; many more blog posts to come about that) so we decided to eat some famous lowcountry fare at Poogan's Porch for their last dinner.

Poogan's Porch opened in Charleston in 1976 but is located inside an old Victorian-style house that was built downtown in 1888. The restaurant is named after a dog, "Poogan", who used to love lounging out on the porch and begging for table scraps. Poogan died many years ago, but in front of the restaurant there is still a small memorial to him.

Poogan's Porch is also famous around these parts for its great food. Inside the front hallway are many autographs of celebrities that have dined at the restaurant. Larry was excited to see a menu signed by Brett Farve. Jim Carey also had a funny message on his signed menu. But really, the most important people dined there tonight.

Here we are on the famous front porch.

Sarah ordered the crab cakes and said they were delicious...I'll take her word for it.

Really? Who would order Mac 'N Cheese as their entree? Me of course! Calm down, I had a side salad, too. But the Mac 'N Cheese, made with smoked gouda, was to die for.

The lack of people in this famous restaurant is because we could only get a 5:30 reservation. Note for future: call more than three hours ahead for reservation.

Poogan's Porch also has another interesting reputations as one of the most haunted places in Charleston (we learned that on our Charleston ghost tour, blog post to come). The Travel Channel even voted it the third most haunted place in America in 2003.

Some say Poogan haunts the front porch, but the most famous ghost is an elderly lady who was a former resident in the late 1800s. The lady was known to appear in the upstairs window, which the restaurant eventually boarded up because people would so often call the police when they saw her banging the windows to get out.

She also makes appearances in the dining room, most often to the restaurant staff. But she's also known to haunt the upstairs women's restroom, either banging on the door when guests go in or appearing behind them in the mirror. Of course, Sarah and Mom had to try this out.

Mom trying to capture the (lack of) ghost.