Sooners in SC: 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.