After spending the previous day in Charleston (Part 1 and Part 2) we decided to spend our last day visiting Fort Sumter. We arrived at the museum, purchased our tickets, and boarded the first ferry of the day. The weather at the time was overcast but nice, although a storm was going to be coming in later in the day.
The ferry ride from Charleston was about 30 minutes and we arrived at Fort Sumter to some increasingly overcast weather and VERY windy conditions!
We had just disembarked the ferry and entered the museum at Fort Sumter when they announced they were looking for volunteers to help raise the flag over the fort. My dad and about a dozen other people wanted to volunteer so we headed outside to watch them raise the flag.
The weather had gotten so windy that it was a bit of a struggle to get the flag raised! If you look closely at the pictures, the flag that flies over Fort Sumter is the same style of flag that flew when the Civil War began. It features 33 stars, one for each state in the Union.
So after the raising of the flag everyone was free to explore the fort. My parents and I wandered around the perimeter of the fort. I was surprised at how small and isolated it was compared to, maybe, Fort Monroe. Definitely not somewhere I would want to be stuck!
Anyways, as we were making our way around the fort we saw a pod of dolphins swimming around! They were pretty neat to see! Just a note, but we saw dolphins then entire time we were in the area. If we were near water, they were there!
We then headed back inside the museum to explore. We weren't in there long before they announced that due to the weather conditions they needed to lower the flag. So back outside we went to take the flag down! There weren't as many volunteers this time since the weather was so cold and windy!
After that we went back inside to look around the museum. The museum wasn't too big but it was interesting with a good assortment of history and memorabilia. There were even people there with pretty little kids and even they seemed to be enjoying themselves. So I would say it's a great place for people of all ages. They offer a seek-and-find type of activity for kids so when they arrive at the fort they have different things to look for and the kids that were there seemed to be having fun with it. And the NPS employees were all really informative and nice.
We were maybe at the fort for maybe an hour when we already had to leave. It didn't feel like enough time to see everything so we felt a bit rushed. I don't know if it was because of the weather (they cancelled the later ferry ride of the day and the employees were leaving the fort as well.) but we didn't get to see everything inside of the museum. And I'm not the kind of person to read every single plaque or anything, but I even didn't have time to look at everything.
Anyways, despite that it was a good and interesting visit. Definitely would recommend if you are into history!
Have you ever visited a military fort?
